This article aims to explore new ways to improve dictionary skills for language learners by promoting the use of active dictionary rubrics. It also tries to get a deeper understanding on how students ...perceive dictionaries before and after this type of training in dictionary use. To this end, a total of 75 students participated in the study and answered a questionnaire on dictionary use previous to the experiment. A second questionnaire was delivered after the instruction period to compare the users' perception of dictionary affordances. A mixed-method approach is used to collect quantitative and qualitative data via both questionnaires. This study reports on students' dictionary content awareness and how this awareness may increase by creating a habit in dictionary use routines. Keywords: dictionary use, dictionary users, dictionary rubrics, English Language Teaching (ELT), dictionary skills, online dictionaries, dictionary consultation, writing skills, learners' dictionaries, dictionary use training
Genuine instances of communication are multimodal in nature. Thus, important aspects of effective communication such as gestures, facial expression, visual context, or interpersonal distance, are ...usually present in listening events and participate in the communicative act, creating a given multimodal message.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages places an important and active role for listening skills within the communicative activities that language learners need to develop. A number of situations are described in the framework, including understanding interaction between native speakers, listening as a member of a live audience, listening to announcements and instructions, listening to radio and audio recordings and watching TV, film and video. However, this framework will not be complete until we consider the principles of Universal Design where all students are included and work towards making learning goals possible for diverse students.
This article defines the listening construct from a multimodal perspective so that different abilities needed to understand and work with a variety of communicative modes form part of the listening construct definition. This implies reflecting on how the definition of the construct considers students with special needs and their perception and understanding of the different modes as part of the listening construct.
Metaphors are an intrinsic part of thought and language that allow us to construe a cognitive domain in terms of another domain. Metaphors are especially relevant to the study of idioms, inasmuch as ...idioms are commonly underlain by metaphorical patterns of conceptualization. As figurativeness is a common phenomenon in everyday language, tackling metaphors and idioms effectively in the EFL classroom can enhance students’ metaphoric competence and, consequently, increase their level of linguistic proficiency. This article explores the potential of online dictionaries and the multimodal affordances they bring to the teaching of metaphor and idiom in the language classroom. Dictionary skill descriptors are used to relate task types with idiom and metaphor content in online dictionaries and how it may be used to promote students’ learning of both dictionary skills and metaphoric language understanding. Five dictionary skills descriptors are proposed and illustrated with specific metaphor related tasks that show online dictionary affordances present in six selected online dictionaries. On the whole, this article envisions online dictionaries and their multimodal affordances as a powerful learning tool for steering EFL students through the intricacies of metaphoric language.
Assessing dictionary skills Campoy-Cubillo, Mari Carmen
Lexicography,
2015/12, Letnik:
2, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article discusses the role of dictionary skills in language learning as part of professional reference skills and as life-long language learning skills. It advocates for the integration of these ...skills in the language teaching and assessment cycle in a systematic way. Drawing on Nesi’s (Dictionaries in language learning. Recommendations, national reports, and thematic reports from the TNP sub-project 9: dictionaries,
1999
) and Lew’s (Electronic lexicography in the 21st century: thinking outside the paper,
2013a
) stages of dictionary use skills, it suggests that assessing dictionary skills is necessary if we want to study and analyze these skills in dictionary users under a common framework. Research on the use of dictionary skills in different countries and under several situations as well as responding to different reference needs can only be systematized if dictionary skill assessment is carried out under the same general assessment criteria. Several dimensions for assessing dictionary skills are considered.
As an alternative to the use of dictionary workbooks a group of 85 chemistry students were asked to produce their own dictionaries. Students were told to use the texts they had been referring to ...during the course and to design a dictionary according to their own needs. The aims of this project were (1) for the students: (a) to revise vocabulary for their final examination and (b) to familiarise themselves with dictionaries and their macro‐ and microstructures; (2) for the teacher/researcher: (a) to understand the way in which this particular group of students visualised dictionaries, i.e. how they viewed the structure and content of a dictionary, (b) to analyse students' needs regarding dictionary reference skills, (c) to check the results so as to improve future explanations of dictionary content and dictionary use and (d) to increase awareness of the scope of an ideal dictionary for these chemistry students – and its limitations.
This chapter provides a theoretical approach to the multidimensional relationship of the student with functional diversity with his/her own educational and sociocultural context. Inclusion is a key ...issue in a foreign language classroom where the ability to communicate is of paramount importance. Students with different special needs are bound to find challenges in those language skills that pose problems related to their functional diversity. In order to address these challenges, higher education institutions need to organize multidimensional networks that pay attention to the different stages, events, and situations of the educational process. Furthermore, the ability to communicate that students with functional diversity develop in the foreign language classroom may become an instrumental competence that will become useful for other subjects as well as to respond to daily life challenges. The theoretical model proposed here acknowledges that there are two paradigms that coalesce into a defined educational model. On the one hand, the syntagmatic paradigm ensures that subjects offered in the educational programs are designed bearing in mind the needs of students with functional diversity and are flexible enough to accommodate those needs. On the other hand, the organizational paradigm relates the needs of the students and their teachers to institutional services and protocols.
Corpus-based Approaches to ELT Fuentes, Alejandro Curado (Review of: Campoy-Cubillo, Mari Carmen; Belles-Fortuno, Begona; Gea-Valor, Maria Lluisa)
Iberica,
04/2011, Letnik:
21, Številka:
spring
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