Dictionaries and theasauruses

Dictionaries and theasauruses

• Dictionaries

Here we will be focusing on monolingual dictionaries. You may well have the experience of students bringing into class small hand-held electronic dictionaries. The one thing we would say about these hand – held electronic dictionaries is that their content is often inaccurate and that, if you can, you should advise your students on the range of products before they purchase, as you probably have done in the past paper dictionaries .

Virtually of the major monolingual learners dictionaries are sold with a CD- ROM. These CD- ROMs often have some or all of these features :

·         Searchability ( which is not alphabetically based )

·         Audio recordings of the words, often in both british and american english

·         Games and exercises

·         Information on tipical errors

·         The ability to bookmark and personalise

·         Thesaurus functionality

·         Corpus informed information on frequency

• Theasauruses

While electronic dictionaries can be used at all levels , it is worths bearing in mind , initially, that theasauruses armor suited to the intermediate and advanced levels then to the elementary or pre- intermediate levels , where much more languages is new to the learner.

Theasaurus can do wonders for writing project . it can encourage learners to be more adventurows in their creative writing at the sametime as helping them to analyse their output more critically.

Consordencers and corpuses for language analysis

A consordencer is similar to a search angine in many respects . essentially , it is small program that can examine large quantities of teks for paterns and occurances of particular words or phrases .

When working with concordancing we have the option to download and install both a concordancing program and a variety of corpuses ( often called corpora in the formal or technical literature) to our own computers, or use an existing website which queriesncorpuses online.

Corpuses

When choosing a concordancer, the main evaluation criterion, apart from the price and ease of use of the software, will be the type of language you want to work with: spoken or written, American or Brithish English, legal or journalistic, and so on.

Whatever approach you adopt, make sure that the corpus fits what you are teaching , test the concordance results beforehand so that you are not caught unawares by the results your learners may get , and ensure that they confortable with the tool and the technology, itself. For more freely-available web-based concordencers, try the following sites:

·         British National Corpus (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/), limit of 50 results.

·         Bank of English (http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx), limit of 40 results.

Translators for language analysis

Translation software is  still in its infancy and at the same time of writing remains unreable and in many instances of dubious quality. However, it is worth mentioning, if only to point out to your learners the dengers it poses if they use it inappropriately, for example to carry out a translation assignment into their own language.

Encyclopedias for reserch and project work

It used to case that having access to an encyclopedia meant also needing to have a large set of shelves on which to store all of the volumes. This collection of volumes then became a small CD-ROM sitting next to our computers, and these days is more likely to be a collection of web addresses to useful and authoritative sources online. Informational reference sides based on printed material are a good starting point and here we would include paper- based volumes such as the encyclopedia britannica , as well as microsoft encarta , which wash originally published on CD-ROM

Dictionaries and theasauruses

Dictionaries and theasauruses

• Dictionaries

Here we will be focusing on monolingual dictionaries. You may well have the experience of students bringing into class small hand-held electronic dictionaries. The one thing we would say about these hand – held electronic dictionaries is that their content is often inaccurate and that, if you can, you should advise your students on the range of products before they purchase, as you probably have done in the past paper dictionaries .

Virtually of the major monolingual learners dictionaries are sold with a CD- ROM. These CD- ROMs often have some or all of these features :

·         Searchability ( which is not alphabetically based )

·         Audio recordings of the words, often in both british and american english

·         Games and exercises

·         Information on tipical errors

·         The ability to bookmark and personalise

·         Thesaurus functionality

·         Corpus informed information on frequency

• Theasauruses

While electronic dictionaries can be used at all levels , it is worths bearing in mind , initially, that theasauruses armor suited to the intermediate and advanced levels then to the elementary or pre- intermediate levels , where much more languages is new to the learner.

Theasaurus can do wonders for writing project . it can encourage learners to be more adventurows in their creative writing at the sametime as helping them to analyse their output more critically.

Consordencers and corpuses for language analysis

A consordencer is similar to a search angine in many respects . essentially , it is small program that can examine large quantities of teks for paterns and occurances of particular words or phrases .

When working with concordancing we have the option to download and install both a concordancing program and a variety of corpuses ( often called corpora in the formal or technical literature) to our own computers, or use an existing website which queriesncorpuses online.

Corpuses

When choosing a concordancer, the main evaluation criterion, apart from the price and ease of use of the software, will be the type of language you want to work with: spoken or written, American or Brithish English, legal or journalistic, and so on.

Whatever approach you adopt, make sure that the corpus fits what you are teaching , test the concordance results beforehand so that you are not caught unawares by the results your learners may get , and ensure that they confortable with the tool and the technology, itself. For more freely-available web-based concordencers, try the following sites:

·         British National Corpus (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/), limit of 50 results.

·         Bank of English (http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx), limit of 40 results.

Translators for language analysis

Translation software is  still in its infancy and at the same time of writing remains unreable and in many instances of dubious quality. However, it is worth mentioning, if only to point out to your learners the dengers it poses if they use it inappropriately, for example to carry out a translation assignment into their own language.

Encyclopedias for reserch and project work

It used to case that having access to an encyclopedia meant also needing to have a large set of shelves on which to store all of the volumes. This collection of volumes then became a small CD-ROM sitting next to our computers, and these days is more likely to be a collection of web addresses to useful and authoritative sources online. Informational reference sides based on printed material are a good starting point and here we would include paper- based volumes such as the encyclopedia britannica , as well as microsoft encarta , which wash originally published on CD-ROM

British or American??

The regional accents of English speakers show great variation across the areas where English is spoken as a first language. This article provides an overview of the many identifiable variations in pronunciation, usually deriving from the phoneme inventory of the local dialect, of the local variety of Standard English between various populations of native English speakers.

Local accents are part of local dialects. Any dialect of English has unique features in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term "accent" describes only the first of these, namely, pronunciation. See also: List of dialects of the English language.
Non-native speakers of English tend to carry over the intonation and phonemic inventory from their mother tongue into their English speech. For more details see Non-native pronunciations of English.
Among native English speakers, many different accents exist. Some regional accents, such as Pennsylvania Dutch English, are easily identified by certain characteristics. Further variations are to be found within the regions identified below; for example, towns located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the city of Manchester such as Bolton, Oldham and Salford, each have distinct accents, all of which form the Lancashire accent, yet in extreme cases are different enough to be noticed even by a non-local listener. There is also much room for misunderstanding between people from different regions, as the way one word is pronounced in one accent (for example, petal in American English) will sound like a different word in another accent (for example, pearl in Scottish English).
by: Wikipedia 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English


see also this resource........
http://www.wikihow.com/Speak-in-a-British-Accent 

Preschool Kid practicing speech

Preschool Kids Do Better When They Talk To Themselves, Research Shows

Mar. 29, 2008 — Parents should not worry when their pre-schoolers talk to themselves; in fact, they should encourage it, says Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University. His recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly showed that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent.

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"Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," says Winsler. "On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children."
In the study, "'Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems," 78 percent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent.
The study also showed that children with behavioral problems (such as those diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD) tend to talk to themselves more often than children without signs of behavior problems.
"Given that kids with behavior concerns need more direction and control from adults, teachers may unnecessarily ask children to be quiet in classrooms out of fear that such speech coming from difficult-to-manage kids will lead to problem behavior," says Winsler. "Yet non-disruptive private speech would actually help these children as they develop. Therefore, teacher training and professional development efforts should suggest that teachers increase their tolerance level for this kind of private speech."
Winsler says that private speech is very common and perfectly normal among children between the ages of 2 and 5. As children begin talking to themselves, their communication skills with the outside world improve.
"This is when language comes inside," says Winsler. "As these two communication processes merge, children use private speech in the transition period. It's a critical period for children, and defines us as human beings."
Winsler also conducted the first-ever study looking at private speech in children with autism. He found that high-functioning autistic children talk to themselves often and in the same ways that non-autistic children do. Talking aloud also improved their performance on tasks.
"Children with autism have problems with their external social speech, so psychologists assumed that their private speech would also be impaired," says Winsler. "But this study shows that it is not the case—that autistic children use their private speech very effectively as a tool to help them with tasks."
The study, "Private Speech and Executive Functioning among High-Functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders," was just published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

                                                                                                                                    
check also this link : http://www.speechforchildren.net/vowel-page.html