Dear Colleagues,

 

Thank you for attending today's presentation on using Oxford Reference Online. This message contains all relevant materials and links discussed in our session. I welcome any feedback you can offer on today's session so that I may improve the effectiveness of future workshops. I appreciate your participation.

 

Best regards,

 

Gabriel Skop

Senior English Language Fellow - Budapest

 

Here is the link to Oxford Reference Online:

 

 

And the link for those with a paid subscription:

 

 

The article we used for the vocabulary activity:

 

 

Google:

 

 

If you are using a school-based e-mail account (or freemail or axelero), I strongly recommend opening an account with a web-based e-mail provider that is easy to access from any computer and offers high mail storage limits. Yahoo is particularly easy to use:

 

http://mail.yahoo.com/   (Click on "Sign Up.")

 

Ministry of Education homepage:

 

 

You can use the search function and type in my first name to take you to the Quick Resource Sheets, or here is a simple direct link:

 

 

 

 

Here is the sheet describing the vocabulary activity we looked at today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether studying English in primary school, at university, or with a private tutor, what most students of English have in common is reliance on a dictionary. But how effectively do students use their dictionaries? Try using Oxford Reference Online to help students get the most out of their dictionary searches.

 

1)      From the home page, click on English Dictionaries & Thesauruses. Have students compile a short list of unfamiliar vocabulary from a text they are currently reading in class. They should choose one word from the list, and enter it in the search field on the English Dictionaries & Thesauruses  page. Choose "Search this subject" below the search field and click "Go" or just press the Enter key.

2)      This will return results from four different dictionaries and two different thesauruses. Have them note the different types of information provided in a search (part of speech, definition, explanation, synonyms) as well as how the results from various sources differ from one another.

 

3)      Have students brainstorm all the different ways they might use this information. This should help them develop their skills in choosing the most appropriate reference tool, depending upon the task.

 

4)      Have students click on the word in blue in any of the six results. They should take note of what new information is now made available to them: how to cite this information in a research paper, the other word forms from the same root*, as well as nearby entries - useful when students know the first several letters of a word but not the entire correct spelling.

 

 

*http://depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks/exercises/main/grammar.html (one of many sites with exercises for practicing parts of speech)

 

5)      Here's an opportunity to take the crucial next step. Students are often good at finding and memorizing dictionary definitions, but we could do more to help them with appropriate usage of new vocabulary. We sometimes ask them to create sentences with the new words, but they feel unsure of how to best use them. Have students go to a search engine such as Google and type in the word in question. As an example, I've used the word "finale."  When I type "finale" in the Google search field, it yields over 12,000,000 results. However, many of these hits do not show the word in a meaningful context. Since I know from my dictionary search on ORO that "finale" is a noun, I try searching on Google for "finale" plus a verb, to see real-life examples of how the word is used in sentences. Be sure to put the search terms in quotations ("finale was").

 

6)      The search for "finale was" turns up over 96,000 hits. Without even opening one site, or even scrolling to the bottom of the page, I can instantly see five different examples of how finale is commonly used:

 

 

7)      Now students should have a better understanding of the real-life use of the word, and are ready to try their hand at using the word in their own writing and conversation activities.