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Dictionary TrainingThe dictionary is a tool that is indispensable for everyone, but for people who are learning a new language is it especially useful because it can help them learn new vocabulary autonomously. When teaching a class of English to students it is very useful to encourage them to regularly use the dictionary, to make the dictionary our friend and make it a useful tool. Some student may at first find it boring to use this source as a reference however there are ways of communicating to the student the importance of using the dictionary for their daily work as a learning process. As a teacher, we can encourage the students to use the dictionary through a variety of fun, original and challenging activities. It is also important for the teacher to explain well the variety of useful information that the dictionary will give you and most importantly how you can use this information to learn more about the vocabulary word and how to use is correctly within a sentence structure. The idea is the make the student want to use the dictionary regularly in their daily learning process. In fact the dictionary can be very challenging and can motivate students in learning more about the etymology, the spelling, the grammar and the pronunciation of the word. It can help the student understand how the word is used within a sentence structure as well as the signification of the word. There are many educative games that can be used in the activity stage of the lesson. The goal here is to make the activity using the dictionary as a tool in a manner that is exciting and interesting to the students. Here below are two examples of fun activities for the students using the dictionary as a reference tool. 1) This activity is a variation of the Pictionary game. Instead of using the real board game and the word cards, the teacher can separate the class in two groups. Each team will randomly select ten words form the dictionary and write down the words on individual pieces of paper. All the words from team 1 are then placed in a bowl and the words of team 2 are placed in another bowl. The first team will pick one word from their bowl and select one person from their team to mime the word to the opposing team. The opposing team needs to guess the word being mimed, they have 1 minute to guess the word. The game continues until all the vocabulary words have been passed. The wining team is the team that has guessed the most words. 2) Another fun game could be to use words in order to create new sets of words. In order to perform this activity, the class would be divided in four teams. The teacher writes on the blackboard a list of prefixes and suffixes. In a bowl the teacher has already place a selection of 20 words. One of the students from each team is asked to pick one word from the bowl. Each student from this team write down the word on their sheet of paper, this team must then find and construct new words using the list of the prefixes and suffixes on the black board. The teacher goes from team to team to make sure that once they are finished with one word another word is picked from the hat and the game goes on. The game continues until there are no more words to pick from the bowl. Each team will then count the number of words they have found. The team with who has found the most words is the winning team. The teacher can also go over the new words and explain the definition and use of the word. These new words could then be used as part of another activity.
