Building Meaning with the Dictionary
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Phase One: Make an educated guess about a word.
1.0) First, guess its part of speech.
What kind of word is it?
Guess first.
Look later!
Note: Do not look up the word yet.
1.1.) If you think it’s a noun, ask:
1.1.1.) Is it count or noncount?
1.1.2.) Does it have an adjective? If so, what adjective goes with it?
1.2.) If it’s an adjective, decide:
1.2.1.) what noun it’s paired with. (What is its antecedent?)
1.3.) If it’s a verb, note:
1.3.1.) Look at the sentence you found the word in.
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What kind of word precedes it?
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What kind of word follows it?
1.3.2.) Where is it in the sentence?
1.4.) If you think it might be an adverb, write down:
1.4.1.) where it’s located in the sentence:
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beginning, middle or end?
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in front of the verb?
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after the verb?
2.0) Dissect it into meaningful chunks: prefix, root word and suffix. If you have an idea of what the
word might mean, write down your guesses.
Incidental Vocabulary Dictionary Activity by Elysia Caldwell Bush is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License. Reference: Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle Publishers.
Building Meaning with the Dictionary
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Phase Two: Use an English dictionary to find the following information for each assigned word:
3.0.) Read the example sentence. Ask:
3.1.) Does it look like the sentence I found it in originally? Compare the grammar
structures of the sentences.
4.0.) Read the definition.
5.0.) Note:
5.1.) the word
5.1.1.) Put an article in front of it if it’s a count noun ( a, an) and singular.
5.2.) its part of speech
5.3.) the definition
5.4.) the example sentence from the dictionary
5.5.) the original sentence from your reading.
5.6.) Write a new sentence that uses the word.
6.0.) Now, design one follow up activity for your classmates to learn the word.
6.1.) supply a list of words related to your word and ask your classmates to guess the word. For
ideas, you could go to: http://www.visuwords.com/ or http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
OR
6.2.) supply a list of words that are usually paired with your word (collocations). Then ask your
classmates to guess your word.
6.2.1.) Look up the word in a concordance to see its collocations. Try out:
http://corpus.byu.edu/ or http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/sentences/.
6.2.1.1.) . List four to five collocations. Make an incomplete concept map for
your classmates to complete.
OR
6.3.) Pick a paragraph from the text you found the word in. Rewrite it omitting primary words
and ask your classmates to fill in the blanks using a word bank.
OR
6.4.) Illustrate the word. Look it up in a visual dictionary like: http://visual.merriamwebster.com/index.php . Draw the word in its context. Label its surrounding items but do not
label the word. Ask your classmates to identify it using a word bank.
Incidental Vocabulary Dictionary Activity by Elysia Caldwell Bush is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License. Reference: Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle Publishers.