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Dictionary Skills
Description
Course title: Dictionary Skills / Contact hours: 2
References: Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (A.S. Hornby et.al eds.)
Use Your Dictionary: A Practice Book for Users of Oxford Advanced Learner’ Dictionary
Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Lexicography, CUP
Linguistics and Bilingual Dictionaries, Al-kasimi, Leiden, E. J. Brill.
A Thesaurus
A Specialized Dictionary
Two Bilingual Dictionaries
Skills
Looking up words in monolingual dictionaries
Learning word pronunciation, stress, spelling, class, and meaning
Developing the reflex that there is no perfect synonymy and being aware of shades of meaning when writing, speaking, and translating
Using efficiently a bilingual dictionary
Developing caution in using a bilingual or specialized dictionary
Content and objectives
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with visual aids and symbols, abbreviations, order of entries, and cross-references used in dictionaries. The course focuses in particular on dictionary use and its relations to (i)- writing, e.g. alternative spellings, inflected forms, acronyms and abbreviations, word divisions, (ii)- speaking, e.g. sounds, phonetic symbols of consonants, vowels, stress, (iii) grammar, e.g. countable/uncountable nouns, regular/irregular noun plurals, plural occurrences, comparative/superlative forms, etc., and (iv)- semantic information, e.g. correct definition, meaning of phrasal and prepositional verbs, prefixes and suffixes, compounds. In addition to the use of monolingual dictionaries, the course also introduces the students to other kinds of dictionaries, such as etymological, pronouncing, and synonym dictionaries.
The course has other long-term objectives. It prepares students for the future translation courses. It also provides them with some basic terms and notions that they will develop in the linguistics courses.
Weekly schedule and Skills to Be Developed
Weeks 1 & 2
Phonetic symbols in dictionaries
Word transcription and stress
Alternative pronunciations
Weeks 3 & 4
Word classes
Spelling
Abbreviations for word classes
Prefixes, suffixes, infixes and meaning change
Compounds
Abbreviations
Weeks 5 & 6
Word Entries, Multiple meanings
Definitions
Illustrations and exemplifications
Synonyms, antonyms, formation of opposite words,
Homographs, homophones
Midterm test
Weeks 7 & 8
Using a bilingual dictionary
A comparison of bilingual dictionaries
Equivalence and non-equivalence in a bilingual dictionary
Weeks 9 & 10
Phrasal verbs and their equivalents in Arabic and in English
Similes, metaphors, proverbs and their equivalents
Midterm test
Weeks 11 & 12
Using a thesaurus
Etymology dictionaries; their significance and use
Weeks 13 & 14
Using a specialized dictionary
Final exam
Note: Students have hands on experience in using different dictionaries. A number of exercises is given at the end of every session as homework. The homework is then discussed and checked in the session that follows. |