TEFL New Boston New Hampshire

The dictionary is arguably the most important book at a efl student's disposal. Initially, an english-Second language dictionary may be helpful to the student, as they progress in their studies an english-english dictionary can be of great benefit as not only offers usage, phonetics and pronunciation information, but also offers students a description of the target word in clear language. Training students in the correct use of a dictionary can provide enormous benefit to the student. Good monolingual dictionaries vary in what they offer for each entry, but many good dictionaries will include sections such as word grammar, compound words, idioms and fixed expressions, British and American variants, opposites, synonyms. The student can take an active role in their learning by becoming familiar with the dictionary and its uses. An efl teacher can include a number of areas when teaching dictionary skills to their students. Firstly, the teacher can introduce the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardised representation of spoken speech. Each entry in the dictionary will be spelled out in IPA beside the standard Latin alphabet spelling. The teacher can teach students the abbreviations for the different parts of speech, how to recognise if a verb is transitive or intransitive, where to find irregular past participles of verbs, how to recognise compound words, and how to find phrasal verbs. teachers can integrate dictionary training into their course syllabus in a number of ways. Once students are proficient in the basic skills, teachers can devise worksheets and activities to practice dictionary skills for increasing the students vocabulary and to help students become familiar with common idioms. These can be completed individually, in pairs or in groups. Completing dictionary skills training in pairs or groups also introduces a communicative element to the task to get students interacting with each other. Another way to integrate dictionary training into the class is to have dictionaries at hand for whenever a student encounters a word or phrase they do not understand. teachers can devote part of a class to having students find the definition of a group of words and then asking them to create sentences using those words. They can also devote whole classes to dictionary skills if time constraints allow. Including dictionary skills in progress tests can be another way to integrate dictionary training into class time, and can help teachers assess the students' competence in using the dictionary. As previously mentioned, teachers can devise worksheets for task based learning. These can either be completed during class or set as homework. For lower levels, the teacher can set simple tasks such as identifying abbreviations and symbols used in the dictionary, finding words and identifying whether a verb has an irregular past participle. As students gain experience in the language, these tasks can become progressively more difficult, such as coming up with their own sentences to illustrate the uses of a word entry, finding phrasal verbs, working on idioms, and differences between British and American english spelling. To conclude, the dictionary is an important tool in a student's learning experience. It provides a wealth of material for helping the student to pronounce,understand the meaning and usage of a word. Dictionary training can be used to help expand a student's vocabulary effectively. It allows the student the freedom to take an active role in their own learning. Dictionary training in the class is an important aspect of esl teaching. Dictionary skills can be taught in a number of ways, from simply teaching the basic skills and having them to hand when needed in the classroom, to devising worksheets which get the student to examine words and their uses in detail. 1 - Clark, Neil (2003-07-14). "Great thinkers of our time – Noam Chomsky". New Statesman. Retrieved 08/09/2011. "Regarded as the father of modern linguistics, founder of the field of transformational-generative grammar, which relies heavily on logic and philosophy."