Dictionary activities for esl learners

Dictionary Activities for ESL Dictionary Activities for ESL LearnersLearners

Dr. Vandana PathakDr. Vandana Pathak

Classroom Set Up

Learner’s Dictionary

Dictionary Activities

Fastest Person/ Group

• The topmost word on any page (both columns) and the lowermost word

• The shortest spelling & the longest spelling, along with definitions and page number.

Spell Check• The initial alphabets of

the word should be given correctly.

• List of ten wrongly spelt words is given to the groups/ persons

• Correct spellings in minimum time.

Dictionary Activities

Vowel Chase• Five vowels on B.B. -an

activity in which vowels from given words missing

• Fill in the blanks with correct vowels with the help of a dictionary. eat, rat .., and rat etc, bet, set, den, and hen, etc.

• Use other three vowels. • Longer words later

elephant, ice creams…

Alternate Alphabets

• Alternate alphabets missing with definition is provided.

• Word like ‘Daffodils’. Its meaning should be given and it should be written as ‘D-f-o-i-l-.’

• A list of ten to fifteen words should be given at a time.

• New words…

Dictionary Activities

Dice Game• Snakes and Ladders kind

of game- 5-• Plus points for the right

spelling• Correct definition bonus

points• Wrong spelling and

definition-Negative points• Move ahead and down in

the row in time bound frame

‘ antakashari ’ • a circle game or one after

another kind of a game: It is played like ‘antakashari.’

• First student to spell a word, Elephant-tiger-radiant… the highest number of words and a student who is able to correct maximum number of wrong spellings are the winners in the activity.

Dictionary Activities

Advanced Antakshari

• Eg: Superstition• Words with ‘on’-onion• Words with ‘on’-Only• Lynch..• Chart…• Artist….• …….

Parts of Speech• a list of fifteen to twenty

words• include all parts of speech • be instructed to find out

what part of speech it is & jot it down.

• a list of suffixes to be added to words to form nouns, adjectives & adverbs, etc

Specific Vocabulary

• Students prepare a list of vocabulary on a topic with the help of members & with dictionaries.

• Topics- birds, animals, games & sports, automobiles, parts of body, kitchen utensils, cooking ingredients, electronic gadgets, basic colours, trees ,flowers, family members, etc

Collocations

• make and do’ (make noise, make a bed),

• ‘verb and noun’ (cash a cheque, keep a promise),

• ‘adjective and noun dominoes’ (heavy traffic, a light breeze, pastel colours, etc) can be taught with the help of games.

Collocations

Phrases and Idioms

Phrases

Break…

Come…

Idioms

Dictionary

• Idioms too can be taught with the help of a dictionary. The teacher writes a word like ‘fish’ on the blackboard and with it writes ‘ a cold fish’. Then the students are asked to find out its meaning from a dictionary and enlist more ‘fishy’ items with meanings.

‘Fishy’ Examples

Apple Idioms

Relay Race• Dictionary Race -activity to be tried out in the

classroom. • Class is divided into teams &each group has

one dictionary (same dictionary). • The teacher provides lists of words and the

corresponding page numbers. One member of the team comes up per round to find a set of words, or at times it is made into a relay race.

• The fastest or first to finish with all correct answers.

Spelling GameCheck It

• In this game, the teacher provides a list of words in which some words are spelt correctly and some wrongly. The students, by referring to the dictionary, mention which spellings are correct and which are the wrong ones. Then they write the correct spelling of the wrong words.

Second Version

• The teacher mentions the first two alphabets of a word and after leaving some gap, mentions the last alphabet. One of the meanings of that word is provided. Students have to write the correct spelling with all missing alphabets and provide all other meanings of the word.

‘Hairy Headlines’• A very unique and offbeat activity • Newspaper is a commonly available

resource. It contains many amazing headlines containing polysemous terms. The teacher, with the help of students, collects a number of different headlines and distributes these among groups of students.

‘Hairy Headlines’-cotnd.• Headlines such as• ‘Drunk gets nine months in violin case’,• ‘Milk drinkers are turning to powder’, • ‘bank of China floats in Shanghai’, • ‘Red tape holds up bridge’ and • ‘People turn to beans’ create mirth and

humour on comprehension after referring to a dictionary.

Picture Game• Students watch various pictures in books

and magazines. • The teacher provides one picture each to

different groups of students and asks them to enlist whatever they see in the picture or what they think about it.

• They can name the objects/birds & animals etc.in the picture. This game helps the teacher in knowing if the students have acquired adequate range of vocabulary.

Pelmanism• An advanced game to learn, practise,

revise and master phrasal verbs. The students can be divided in a group of three each. Two of them play the game and the third one checks their work. The teacher prepares different cards like verb+ participle + meaning cards that form a correct set. These cards are kept upside down.

Pelmanism• First player turns three cards & tries to form

a correct set. If he fails, the second one gives a try. If a player gets a correct set, he keeps it with him. The game continues in this manner and the player who collects maximum sets becomes the winner of this game. The students refer to the dictionary to form a correct set. For example, three different cards like ‘hack’, ‘into’, and ‘to get into someone’s computer system without their permission.

Summing Up…• “There is tremendous amount of

information in a good learner’s dictionary – sometimes an overwhelming amount. Helping students tap into that information efficiently is one of the best ways to help them become independent, lifelong language learners”.

• A well-chosen dictionary can be a lifelong learning tool.

Summing Up…

• Different connotations of words, word building and word families, multiword expressions, grammar, parts of speech, word formation, collocations, prefixes and suffixes, idioms and phrases, synonyms and antonyms, etc can be learnt.

Works Cited

• Facebook.com/student committee mexico• http://www.amazon.in/Cambridge-Learners-Dicti

onary-Ed-CD-ROM/• https://www.google.com/search?

q=Oxford+concise+dictionary&rlz• Facebook.com(learn eng 1)• Cork English teacher facebook• www.grammar.cl.• https://www.google.com/search?rlz/parts of

house

Works Cited• www.google.com/search?

rlz=1C1VFKB_enIN627IN627&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=collocations+list&oq

• www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1VFKB_enIN627IN627&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=phrases+and+idioms&oq=phrases

• www.google.com/search? Fish+idioms• http://www.pagat.com/misc/pelmanism.html• www.google.com/search apple+idioms&oq• www.englishcoursemalta.com• Leaney ,Cindy. 2007.Dictionary Activities.• Cambridge University Press.

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