Job Discussion Forums

[santi84]

I'm curious - what policy, if any, do you have about dictionaries in class?

I teach government-run newcomer classes (similar to LINC, for anyone familiar with Canadian ESL), and I don't mind if my students use them. My students "graduate" to entry-level university ESL programs, and most of them are not allowed dictionaries in class. One student was told by her instructor that dictionaries are a "drug". I do see that perspective, but I also think there is value in physically looking through words, seeing it, parts of speech, and so on.

Thoughts on this? I'm talking plain ole' paperback, not those god-awful Korean electronic ones with robotic pronunciation.

[scot47]

I gave up on the battle to get Saudi students to use real dictionaries. The electronic devices ruled when I was last there. Satan has triumphed !

[spiral78]

I guess it's probably developmental, in part. CLB learners up to (what? 5/6?) probably benefit at least in some respects. Another aspect of this would be how classes are structured and whether that structure actively supports the effective use of dictionaries. It's also an option to have a vocab list that students should 'look up' as homework outside of class -especially if there's a clear pattern to the items on the list.

Lots of possible answers to the question!

In my own case, it's not very often that students need to look up a word (high level learners) but when they want to, I've no objection. Our classes are structured so that we have a bit of time for any interesting/useful tangents, so dictionary use can easily fall into that category.

[fluffyhamster]

They should certainly be used outside of class, and not least by teachers during planning. In class, there shouldn't be as much need for them (unless you're doing lessons on dictionary use or something), though they should always be readily available if needed e.g. during word games.

Electronic dictionaries are actually more useful than the paper products, as they may include a whole host of reference works (including bilingual), have jump functionality between said works, and allow you to search for every example sentence containing certain word(s), and for wildcards etc. The pronunciation (when included) surely isn't that bad for single words (but yeah, forget listening to whole sentences, as the devices usually then just stitch together the same word-by-word audio, without contractions, prosody etc).

[santi84]

Thank you for the opinions on this topic. I agree that by a certain proficiency level, dictionaries should not be required (with occasional exceptions). My major dilemma is that I frequently teach multi-level classes that can range from pre-CLB to CLB 6+ (that's below A1 to B2/C1). In the same class. It can be very challenging. I implement the typical strategies for the situation (jigsaws, similar pairs, mixed pairs, asking higher levels to define words for us), but at some point it makes sense for students to use a dictionary to catch-up on basic vocabulary. It's not an ideal situation, for sure.