Collaborative Activity (II) Svetlana Kazanova and Anastasiia Samosudova

Read pages 82-89 in Unit 8, Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary (Allen 1983), in which the
author explores how dictionaries are effective tools to teaching vocabulary in advanced
classes.

a. Are there any limitations on the use of dictionaries in class? If so, please provide
examples of situations in which dictionaries should not be recommended.

Limitations of print dictionaries:

 Time constraints (students can spend too much time of the lesson trying to find the
word in the dictionary)
 Dictionaries occupy too much space in the classroom (if they are stored in the
classroom)
 When the lesson focuses on pronunciation and some students don’t know how to read
transcription (even some advanced students may not know the phonemic signs)
 Many dictionaries are outdated (if some words/meanings have become obsolete or
there has been a semantic change/change in connotations, the dictionary must contain
such information).
 Two-language dictionaries provide a direct translation from English into our mother
tongue (thus, they kind of ‘support’ the translation method which is not very
effective). It’s better to have monolingual dictionaries where the concept is explained
in English. (since not all concepts mean the same in different languages)
 There are people with different types of intelligence and learning styles. Thus, for a
student with the auditory style, the use of dictionaries may be inconvenient.
 Dictionaries can be useful to check the meaning, but not to learn new words (since
some of them don’t provide context/useful examples).
 Dictionaries don’t show all the word forms (for example, they don’t include past
participles)
 Paper dictionaries can cause difficulties for people with lexical disorders (such as
dyslexia).

Limitations of online dictionaries:

 Internet connection is needed
 the ability of students to bring electronic devices to class
 b. By using Allen’s (1983) strategies in the use of dictionaries, elaborate an activity that
is aimed at both teaching vocabulary items and using a dictionary to gain more
learning autonomy.

Instructions

 SS (students) will read a science fiction short story written by William Gibson. It’s
called ‘The Gernsback Continuum’.

 SS read the story. When an unknown word appears, they don’t have to check it
immediately in the dictionary. First, they need to ask themselves the following
question: “Do I understand the meaning of the whole sentence without this word?”

 If SS understand the meaning of the phrase, they don’t need to look it up in the
dictionary. However, they need to underline it.

 If SS don’t understand the meaning of the sentence, then they need to analyze the
unknown word. (whether it is a noun/verb/adjective; whether it has a positive or a
negative connotation, etc).

 After the analysis, SS try to guess the possible meaning of the word.

 In the case that SS don’t understand the word at all, they can look it up in the
dictionary and write it down (including the definition in English, category of speech
and connotation). If the word is polysemantic, they may include other meanings in
their ‘glossary’.

After the reading

 SS have underlined some words (that didn’t impede the understanding of the text)
during the reading. Now they have to write down possible definitions of the given
words according to the context. Then, they need to check them in the dictionary and
compare the definitions. If SS got the meaning right, they feel satisfied and motivated.
If not, they do the correction work (They write down the new word, its meaning(s),
category of speech, connotations, etc. Also, they need to write a couple of examples
with the new words).

 At the end SS will have a glossary with the new words which will contain the
meaning(s), connotations, parts of speech, etc.