MED Magazine - Issue 41 - August 2006

Using bilingual dictionaries in the classroom
by Gwyneth Fox and Elizabeth Potter

Why use a bilingual dictionary?

Bilingual dictionaries have generally had a bad press in the world of English Language Teaching. In the past, this criticism was partly justified as many bilingual dictionaries were of poor quality. They gave little help to users, offering not much more than undifferentiated lists of possible translations, and they lacked the extra features and explanations that we have come to expect from learners' dictionaries. The use of bilingual dictionaries was also criticised on pedagogic grounds; they were said to encourage a 'lazy' approach on the part of students, who looked to them for quick answers instead of engaging directly with the language they were trying to learn.

In fact, bilingual dictionaries are and always have been very useful tools for language learners. Over the past twenty years or so, great improvements have been made in both the range and quality of information they provide, and the newer type of bilingual dictionaries aim to give as much help to their users as learners' dictionaries. Many, like the new Macmillan Diccionario Pocket (a bilingual Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary developed for Spanish learners of English) are targeted at a specific group of users and so the content can be tailored exactly to their needs. A good bilingual dictionary offers non-advanced learners in particular a quick answer to their language need, whether receptive or productive, an answer that they can understand immediately without having to worry about the complexities of a language they are still struggling to master.

So the first point that needs to be made is that students should be encouraged to buy and use a good bilingual dictionary that is appropriate to their level. It should be made clear to them that a bilingual dictionary is a useful tool that is there to be used, both in class and in private study. Students should never be embarrassed about using a dictionary; on the contrary, learning to use a dictionary effectively and get the best out of it is an essential language-learning skill.

How does a bilingual dictionary help learners?

One good way to introduce students to using a dictionary is to ask them all to bring a dictionary to class. If you have a range of dictionaries available, you can also provide some for them to look at. Students can be encouraged to compare the different dictionaries, looking at their coverage and the different features they offer, and to say what they think is good and bad about them.

Most of us tend to use dictionaries without thinking too much about it, taking their content for granted, so the next step is to raise students' awareness of what kinds of information are in dictionaries and why they are there. Start by getting students to play the 'pick-a-page' game. Ask students to call out a page number for the English side of the dictionary. Then explain that you are going to read out the first two letters of the first word, tell them what type of word it is (e.g. noun, adjective, verb, etc.), and any other special information that comes (e.g. if it's American, irregular, etc.) and then you read out the translation. The first team to tell you the word gets a point. So, if you are using the Macmillan Diccionario Pocket, the first word on page 559 is meeting. You say: "Me… It's a noun, the translation is reuniòn." You should ignore any difficult or controversial words.

Students can then be encouraged to identify the different types of information contained in the dictionary, from the most basic - the fact that there are two 'sides', one for each language - to the content of entries; for example, spelling, meaning, pronunciations, grammar, region, style, fixed expressions, pictures and so on. You can make a list of all the different things they find and then ask them what they think the different types of information are useful for. For example:

When do they look at the English side? And the Spanish side?
Are the two sides the same length?
Do the two sides contain the same types of information? If not, why not?
Which side is more useful when students are reading English?
Which is more useful when they are translating into Spanish?
Which side do they need when they are writing in English?
Can they identify what the different parts of the entry are telling them?

Finding the right meaning

The most common mistake that inexperienced dictionary users make is to take the first answer they find, without scanning the entry as a whole looking for the information they need. So they look up a word like campo and accept the first answer they find (country) when the word they actually want is field. Modern bilingual dictionaries go to great lengths to point the user towards the correct meaning, by signposting meanings in the user's own language and by giving examples of use. Encourage students to look at the signposts and examples and get into the habit of using them to ensure they find the information they want.

One way of raising students' awareness of this issue is to choose a word with several distinct meanings such as bar. Give the students some simple sentences to translate. For example:

We had breakfast in a bar.
All the houses have bars on the windows.
Can you buy me a chocolate bar?
Being a woman should not be a bar to success.
All the gang members are now behind bars.

Ask them if they can use the same Spanish word in each sentence. Clearly they can't, so when they look up a word they should scan the entry using the extra information it gives to make sure they choose the word they really need.

Using dictionaries intelligently

Although we want students to use dictionaries intelligently, we don't want them to become too reliant on them. When you are reading a text in a foreign language, if you use a dictionary to look up every unfamiliar word you lose the flow of the text and become bored and frustrated. Encourage students to guess meanings from context by giving them a passage with several unfamiliar words in it. Tell them to read the passage once without looking anything up, trying to understand the meanings of any unfamiliar words from their contexts. Then tell them that they can choose three words to look up, so they need to choose the ones that are most important to understanding. The students will choose different words and this can lead to a discussion about which are the key words to understanding the text and why, and which can be glossed over or understood from context.

Some common problems in dictionary use

Compounds and fixed expressions
One difficulty in using a dictionary is that of knowing where to find items, with compounds and fixed expressions (idioms) often causing particular problems. You can help students deal with these problems both by increasing their awareness of what compounds and fixed expressions are, so that they are better able to recognize them, and by giving them strategies for how to find them in the dictionary. An obvious point that is often missed is that different dictionaries have different rules about where they put compounds and fixed expressions, so students should not give up if they don't find what they are looking for the first time.

Tell them that compounds may be held under the first word, or they may have entries to themselves; so summer holiday might be shown at summer, or it might be at holiday, or it might be a separate entry. If they don't find it where they expect to, they should be prepared to look in other likely places.

Fixed expressions will usually be found together at the end of the entry rather than in the body of the entry, and are unlikely to be found at the entries for very common 'grammar' words such as be, the or up. So if they are looking for the expression jump down someone's throat it is unlikely to be held at down or someone; it is probably held either at jump or throat but there is no way of telling which, so they should be prepared to look in both places.

False friends
Students also often have problems with false friends, words in the two languages that look very similar but in fact have different meanings, for example, quieto and quiet, or exito and exit. One way of raising students' awareness of this problem is to make two columns of false friends and ask them to match up the ones that really mean the same (there is an example of this on page 23 of the Guía de Uso workbook which goes with the Macmillan Diccionario Pocket).

Another possibility is to play the dictionary game using false friends. Choose some words that are false friends and give students three possible translations for each: one correct, one false friend and one red herring (for example: quieto: quite, quiet and quilt). Students have to decide which is which; they can then check their answers in the dictionary. This game can also be played in the traditional way. Students choose four difficult words from their dictionary that they don't expect anyone in the class to know. They then choose three possible translations, one correct and two incorrect. The other students have to guess which is the right answer, and then check in the dictionary.

Many thanks to Dave Spencer for his helpful advice on issues of dictionary use in the classroom and his suggestions of games and activities, many of which we have borrowed.