Chapter 8

Online reference tools

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Dictionaries and thesaurusesDictionaries

1. Pocket-sized bilingual dictionaries in book form

2. Hand-held electronic dictionaries with audio recordings ---Often inaccurate?

3. Mouse-over dictionary

*We need to use both traditional and electronic dictionaries.

The Free Dictionary….good for words and idioms (ex) separate the men from the boys

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Thesauruses

1. What is a thesaurus? Definition: a book that is like a dictionary, but in which the words

are arranged in groups that have similar meanings (OALD, 2005)

2. Its functions

(1) Help students with their use of a variety of words/expressions

(2) Help students to analyze their writing products critically

3. Exercise on pages 104 and 105: Let us do it!

Thesaurus.com “fear” “disappointment”

4. Use Thesaurus.com for your writing!3

Concordancers and corpuses for language analysis

1. What is a concordancer2. --A small program necessary to use a language database called “corpus”.

Usually it works behind a corpus and is invisible.3. What is a corpus?4. (1) A language database5. (2) A collection of written or spoken text

(ex) British National Corpus, limit of 50 results

(ex) The Collins Wordbanks Online English corpus sampler , up to 999 sentences (This may not be working well, as of June 24, 2010)

(ex) Web Concordancer (English), a new site not mentioned in the textbook Select corpus: Choose “Brown Corpus”

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7. Other uses of corpuses

(ex) I enjoy to play baseball. Use “National British Corpus”

“enjoy to play”

“enjoyed playing”

8. You can do the same thing in “Google”

uncertain expressions

difficult words

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6. Collection of free or online or downloadable corpuses David Lee's City University of Hong Kong collection (p. 107) (2009.6.11, not found) Corpus Concordance English (=LexTutor online concordancer, page 107)

　 Includes: *1,007,000 words of the written British National Corpus *965,000 words of the spoken British National Corpus *1,000,000 words of the Brown Corpus of Standard American English　 *a variety of other, smaller corpuses

Use in class 1. Can be used with low levels as well as higher levels

2. Specific ways to use corpuses

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(1)cloze exercises “remember” from Brown Corpus

(original sentences)All your wishful thinking won't change that. Remember what you used to say in the Army? You can't run a war with ninety-nine generals and one private"! Cady walked the block to the mailbox, almost ashamed of himself for arguing with Anne.

(Cloze test)All your wishful thinking won't change ( ). Remember what you used to say ( ) the Army? You can't run a ( ) with the generals and one private"! ( ) walked the block to the mailbox, ( ) ashamed of himself for arguing with ( ).

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(2) Can be used as exam materials

(3) Investigation of language use (ex) What the difference between “glisten” and “glitter”?

(ex) See two examples on pages 108 and 109

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(ANOTHER EXAMPLE)*Faulkner is recording actuality in the South and XXXXX is following a long-established literary * of F. Scott Fitzgerald, living or dead, and XXXXX I do not suppose that, even if you had*any tangent to Q has a unique image and XXXXX this image is the same for all planes *simulated textures as well as of typography; and XXXXX, he had already begun to broaden and *peace" ("Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant".). XXXXX, the law of the land is not irrevocable; *agent over that city. Biological agents are, XXXXX, suitable for delivery through enemy *with not much else, against a blank background. XXXXX, all three representations must be *certainly alter it, and definitely for the better. XXXXX, the salubrious effects would not be excl*cities will support only so many big branches. XXXXX, the cost of operations is always high in*styles in private brand merchandise as in branded. XXXXX, the larger and more aggressive mass

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Translators for language analysis

1. Translation software is still in its infancy.

2. Caveat: We should know that it includes mistakes.

Translation software: TheBabel Fish ( Alta Vista)

Translate: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” =Groucho Marx ’s (comedian, 1890-1977) one liner

Result: 「光陰矢の如し。 バナナのようなミバエ。」

See the translation on page 111.

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Encyclopedias for research and project work

1. Changes in encyclopedias

In book form (volumes) ……CD-ROMs…….Online

2. Online encyclopedias (reliable sites) Encyclopedia Britanica

Encarta (Microsoft)

encyclopedia.com　 (not usable? 2009.7.4)

Columbia encyclopedia (not found, 2009.6.19)

(user-produced site—reliability?)

Wikipedia

3. Helpful for project work, biographies, and other fact-based lessons

4. See an example activity on page 112

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