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//-->Dictionary skills in advanced learners’coursebooks — Materials surveyMarek MolendaZuzanna KiermaszUniversity of ŁódźAbstractNowadays, almost 65 years after the publication of the first advanced lear-ner’s dictionary, this particular consultation source is considered “a usefuladdition to any [language] course” (Sharma & Barret, 2007: 52). However,as it was remarked by Leany (2007: 1), the ability to successfully utilizeadvanced learner’s dictionaries requires a considerable amount of practiceon the part of students. Thus, dictionary skills appear to constitute one ofthe key aspects of EFL education.Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify key dictionary skills anddescribe how they are promoted in advanced learner’s coursebooks. Follo-wing the set of guidelines described in Leany (2007) and Welker (2010), theauthors developed criteria that were used to assess the dictionary-orientedcontents of selected teaching materials. It is hoped that this article high-lights the advantages and exposes the shortcomings of dictionary-orientedmaterials and activities included in EFL coursebooks.Keywords:EFL, monolingual dictionaries, learner dictionaries, advancedlearners, educational materialsSome abbreviations used in this articleldoceonline.comtionary.comcambridge.orgfordlearnersdictionaries.combuild.comDevelopment of advanced learner’s dictionariesAdvanced learner’s dictionaries(ALDs) date back to the 1940s1when the firstconsultation source of this type (Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary)was created by A. S. Hornby (TheMan Who Made Dictionaries).His aim wasto publish a monolingual dictionary for students, as opposed to consultationsources for native speakers that were available at the time. Thus, he createdwhat came to be known as the first ALD2. Its basic featuresincludedsimpli-fied definitions and information concerning collocations and word usage.The next milestone in the development ofadvanced learner’s dictionarieswas connected with the advent of corpus linguistics. Computer-generatedword frequency lists made it possible for the lexicographers to revise in-formation provided in the previous editions, e.g. to rearrange the order ofthe entries for a given lexical item, basing on the frequency of usage of a gi-ven word sense in the language. The first corpus-based ALD was CobuildAdvanced Dictionary (History of Cobuild), published in 1987 and based onJohn Sinclair’s electronic corpus which was compiled in 1980 (John Sinclair).Other publishing houses soon adapted the same approach and, nowadays,corpora-derived examples constitute a vital component of all ALDs, andsome consultation sources (e.g. LDOCE) offer corpus-based example banks.The next major change was the publication of the first electronic ALD.Owing to digital technologies, the amount of information students could1 Created by A. S. Hornby, was the first learner dictionary.2 ALDs are sometimes referred to as MLDs (Monolingual Learner Dictionaries). This name, howe-ver, can be misleading, as it also refers to a simplified ALDs that are being offered by most publi-shing houses (e.g. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary vs Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary).184Marek Molenda, Zuzanna Kiermaszfind about a given lexical item increased considerably. Nowadays, a CD/DVD with a dictionary can provide the learners with:•British and North American recordings of a given word or sentence•sound effects and animations used to explain the meaning of cer-tain lexical items•quick access to synonyms (as opposed to printed thesauri thatneed to be obtained separately)•wildcard-based word search (useful in the case of word-forma-tion tasks)•sound-based word search (helpful for students who have hearda word, but do not know the spelling)In addition to the features that can be accessed solely by means of computersoftware, the large amount of storage space available makes it possible forlexicographers to include more information about each word (e.g. etymolo-gy, additional examples, more illustrations, etc.). These could, theoretically,be included in print versions, but it would make them considerably longerand might have a negative impact on the ease of information retrieval.Moreover, all major publishing houses encouragelearners to purchaseALDs by providing additional resources, such as interactive lexical and gram-matical exercises, toolsto record and listen to one’s own pronunciation, in-teractive writing guides, printable worksheets, customizable word lists, etc.Considering all these features, one might come to the conclusion that ALDsevolved from relatively simple consultation sources into interactive langu-age-learning workstations where students can perfect their skills, broadentheir knowledge and find in-depth information about a given word.On the other hand, there seems to be relatively little room for improve-ment in the case of printed versions of ALDs. The publishing houses seemto share this point of view and some of them (e.g. MacMillan PublishingLtd.) have already decided to discontinue printed versions of their dictio-naries(Stop the Press).It seems relatively probable that in the nearest futu-re the termAdvanced Learner’s Dictionarywill refer chiefly to a sub-categoryofElectronic Dictionaries(EDs).The process of digitization of printed consultation sources made it po-ssible to publish resources from ALDs online. Using web-based versions ofDictionary skills in advanced learners’ coursebooks…185ALDs is free of charge, but their functionality is limited, and they can beconsidered to be “demo” versions of the EDs. However, since each of thefive aforementioned major publishing houses decided to remove differentfeatures from their electronic dictionary before publishing it online, it isstill possible to gain access to major features of any commercial ALD, byconsolidating pieces of information from different sources. For instance, ifa student wants to find information about synonyms, they should refer toMED, while picture sets (e.g. pictures presenting different types of trains)can only be found in OALD (Molenda, 2012: 163).Moreover, the online ALDs have two main advantages over their elec-tronic counterparts — firstly, they are regularly updated for the latestwords (Molenda, 2012: 164), which is not yet possible in the case of theED’s (one has to purchase a new edition); secondly, they feature differentextras provided by the publishers. These additional pieces of informationare best exemplified in the case of word frequency:•MED marks the 7500 most commonly used English words withstars (from one star — for the least frequently used items — tothree stars, in the case of the most common words);•in LDOCE spoken and written word frequencies are contrasted(3000 most frequently used spoken vs. written items), which helpsstudents decide how to use given words during production tasks;•OALD marks 3000 most popular English words (Oxford3000list)and it also provides theAcademic Word Listwhich “is a list of wordsthat you are likely to meet if you study at an English-speaking uni-versity” (OxfordAdvanced Learner’s Dictionary).To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no single fully-functional, commer-cial electronic dictionary in question contains as much information aboutword frequency as can be derived from the three sources described (as ofJanuary 2013).In conclusion, the ongoing development of the ALDs — both in terms oftheir informativeness and availability seems to have increased their poten-tial of being “a useful addition to any [language] course” (Sharma & Barret,2007: 52). However, the fact that the ALDs are becoming more informativemight result in their increasing complexity. Thus, the number of skills that186Marek Molenda, Zuzanna Kiermaszneed to be mastered in order to successfully utilize these sources seems tobe growing. In order to better understand the potential challenges and/orproblems that one might encounter in the process of a dictionary consulta-tion, let us explore the classification ofdictionary skills(referenceskills).Dictionary skillsFirstly, it needs to be noted that the aforementioned notions ofdictionaryskillsandreference skillsare not synonymous — the latter one being a poten-tially broader category that might refer to other sources available (e.g.Googlebrowser)3. However, sincedictionary skillsseem to constitute a sub-categoryofreference skills,the two concepts are used interchangeably in this article.Secondly, one should be aware of the fact that the classification presentedin this section is by no means the only possible way of classifyingreferenceskills.Its aim is rather to reflect the needs of one particular group (advancedstudents), as well as the requirements that ought to be met in order to suc-cessfully derive various kinds of information from the electronic ALDs. Thus,the list presented in Table 1 differs from its original version proposed by Nesi(1999). However, it was decided to maintain the division of skills that corre-sponds to the consecutive stages of a dictionary consultation.StageReference skillsKnowing which dictionaries existStage One:Knowing what kind of information can be found inBefore StudydictionariesDeciding whether consultation is necessaryStage Two:Deciding what to look upBeforeDeciding which dictionary is most likely to satisfy theDictionarypurpose of consultationConsultationDeciding on the form of the look-up itemUnderstanding the structure of the dictionaryStage Three:Finding multi-word unitsLocatingEntryUnderstanding the hyperlinks, searching for a wordInformationwithin an entry3Google browser was described as a legitimate reference resource by Boulton (2012).Dictionary skills in advanced learners’ coursebooks…187
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