Three reference tools that students love!

A Fact Book

When I ask students if they like fact books, they usually stare at me and some of them would say: "Yes, I read nonfiction", while some of them would state: "Fiction is more fun.", but in general, I don't see a lot of excitement. Then I tell them that there is a fact book that gets published every year and it's so popular, all copies are flying off the shelves of the library. "Probably all of you looked at it before." It takes a while for them to realize that I am talking about the Guinness Book of Records, and their eyes light up. 

It's was very much desired and sought after when it first got published in Hungary in 1990, when I received it for the first time. I couldn't stop reading about the weirdest accomplishments! It looked like this: 

 

That's the Hungarian edition I had. I found this page posted on a used book website, 

https://www.antikvarium.hu/konyv/guinness-rekordok-konyve-1990-287043-0

Nowadays, it attracts students with a shiny cover and stunning visuals:

Photo:G.D.

A Geographical Source

In the online WORLD BOOK Kids edition (recommended to grade 3-9, available on FocusEd) students can choose two places (continents, countries, provinces, states, even dependencies) and compare them. They really enjoy discovering trivia about places that they have been to, or studying about. The information is curated, current and interactive.

Screenshots from FocusEd BC Digital Classroom, World Book Kids

 

A Dictionary

I remember how excited my high school classmates (whose English was much higher level than mine) became when the first Hungarian/English Slang Dictionary got published. At that time speaking English and knowing slang words meant being cool, having insider knowledge and elevating to a higher status. But we soon noticed that plenty of those Hungarian terms in the book were already dated, they sounded like phrases that our parents used to say when they were teenagers. It made us suspicious: is it possible that the English slang words in the dictionary would be dated, too? What if we try to show off in front of our foreign friends, and talk about the cat's pyjamas, or call something swell - would they laugh at us?

Slang changes so quickly that using an online dictionary is strongly advised - unless we want to study how time changes and people talked in ancient times, like 5 years ago... An excellent online resource is  https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/ with interesting (and fun!) word lists, featured popular terms, and even visuals, like memes, symbols or emojis. 

Using a slang dictionary requires preparation and supervision: a teacher has to make sure their students won't use their allotted time to indulge in looking up inappropriate terms and phrases. (When I was a high school student, one of the main attractions of the slang dictionary was to be able to freely look up and practice words that we would never find in our textbooks...I am talking about my immature classmates, of course.)

It can easily suck you in: I quickly wanted to look up three terms I picked up from my teenage kids and their friends (yeet, cringey, big Chungus), but I ended up learning new ones (cheugy, hickster, moots). If you don't happen to know these words, here are some visual clues:

 Cheugy

(https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/cheugy-is-hard-to-define-but-easy-to-identify.html)

Hickster

via Facebook (https://m.facebook.com/pg/Hickster-365083966955390/photos/)

Moots

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/04/06/what-are-mutuals-on-tiktok/

...or look them up in the Slang Dictionary!

Analyzing Mon Chéri

A couple of years ago, in my grade 7 core French class we did a project on an app. Students were supposed to choose something they liked or were passionate about (a noun); find three descriptive adjectives; add verb or two; and along with several colourful pictures and their voice recording they arranged the parts into a 10-20 second video that would show the audience the "essence" of that chosen item. There were successful projects on mountain bike, lollipop, Labrador retriever, hockey, and so on. 

One student proudly showed me her work that she had been working on for a full hour. I was very surprised to see the title of the project: Mon Chéri. According to the student, Mon Chéri was sweet, delicious, appetizing - and dripping! It took me a couple of seconds to realize that the project was about "honey"! I asked the student how she had come up with the word, and she attentively and politely explained that she really likes honey, she eats honey every day, and she typed it into the browser and according to Google Translate, honey is Mon Chéri... (then she saw my face, probably noticed how I tried to hold back my laughter)...isn't it?

That was the point when I realized that these days most students don't have the simplest skills of how to use a dictionary. They are used to instant answers ("Hey Siri!"), type, or dictate to a device and the answer pops up. They are often not equipped to critically analyze the answer, or to synthesize the information: they take it as it is. In primary classes we do spend a whole unit on map skills - even if we know that a lot of our students will never see a physical map, only listen to the voice of a GPS - , but we miss to teach them how to use a dictionary. 

This is the entry they would see in a paper dictionary:

and this is what comes up on Google translate:

Learning from that experience, these days I spend at least one hour with my French class to interpret and understand the simplest symbols and abbreviations in a dictionary. Based on entries like the one above, we would talk about alphabetical order, parts of speech, gender, homophones and homonyms, and the importance of spelling. I have an activity for them that requires the use of a paper dictionary, and this is when I realize how many don't understand how words are arranged in order or how to read in columns! 

I truly believe that higher academic learning is very difficult without these skills, even when it just means the visual ability to skim a text, synthesize the meaning or select the useful piece of information. 

An article in The Week listed several advantages of using a paper dictionary versus an online one: exercising the brain, improving spelling, discovering random new words while reviewing older ones, not getting distracted by ads and side bars... Using an online dictionary is definitely faster, and it probably contains visuals with interactive features: search functions, graphics, links and general "maneuverability" - but it's better for students if the organization of an entry mimics a classic dictionary format and allows them to participate in the thinking process.

References:

Riedling, A. Reference Skills for the School Librarian. 2019. Chapter 6. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Kipfer, B.A. 9 reasons why print dictionaries are better than online dictionaries. 2015. The Week https://theweek.com/articles/462575/9-reasons-why-print-dictionaries-are-better-than-online-dictionaries

Maslawati, M. Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Dictionaries to Enhance Vocabulary Learning of ESL Learners. 2017 http://papers.iafor.org/wp content/uploads/papers/aceid2017/ACEID2017_34731.pdf

What? You don't understand your own language?

This is the sentence that I uttered in 1999 and seriously offended my Canadian boyfriend with. (Fortunately, we managed to clarify the misunderstanding and we are still married, living happily with two children.) That argument started when he casually mentioned during a conversation "I don't know that word, but I can look it up in a dictionary..." It was my first time in a native-speaker environment and I was looking up to him like he was an English speaking god. During my time in New York that summer I was improving my English skills in an amazing speed, expanded my vocabulary, refined my grammar skills, polished up syntax on a daily basis, and he was my teacher, example, model for all this - and he is telling me there are words he doesn't know and he needs to look up? In a dictionary? But...but he is...English!

To understand my disbelief, I have to explain where I am coming from.

In my country, Hungary it's basically unheard of to own a monolingual dictionary that everyday people would look up words in.  It's not because all Hungarians are that smart, or that educated. There is a much simpler reason for it. In Hungary in the early 19th century there was a movement led by linguists and writers called “Language Revitalization”. At that time the Hungarian language was used only by the uneducated masses, and if someone was learning science, law, or medicine, or wanted to became a politician, they had to communicate in German or Latin, because the medieval Hungarian language was not suitable, or even capable of providing the vocabulary. We didn’t have Hungarian words for simple terms like train, decoration, victory, season, wave or potato. This group of scholars recognized the increasing demand to be able to study, read and write literature, do business, go to court and simply manage everyday life's challenges in their mother tongue. They decided to "upgrade" the Hungarian language.

The Hungarian Language Reformers 

https://e-nyelvmagazin.hu/2016/03/22/a-nyelvujitas-tobbnyelvu-kontextusban/

The writers created more than 10,000 new Hungarian words, by direct translation from other languages, simplification, using suffixes, adaptation of words from dialects, or descriptive creation. In the 21st century we still use most of these words. And because most of our words are truly Hungarian with Hungarian roots, we have very few words that even a five-year-old would not be able to understand (unless it’s in academic writing, where it’s common to use Latin or Greek words). 

For example, when an average English speaker reads the word ‘magnanimous’, they might need to look it up. The Hungarian language reformers broke it apart, translated it and turned into a Hungarian word: nagylelkű, (=”big-souled”); the direct translation of the Latin magna=big, anima=soul. 

For us, a computer is számítógép (=“counting machine”), conundrum is rejtély (=“hiddenness”), apathy is fásultság (=“wood-being-ness”), ambiguous is kétértelmű (=“with two meanings”), continent is földrész ("earth-part") and so on. (I chose some of these words from a list of "most looked-up English words", which shows that a lot of native-speakers would not know them or would not be able to use them without a quick check.)

When a language, like English starts to use a foreign word, it's called a borrowed word, or a loanword. Sometimes it still feels foreign (bona fide, Schadenfreude, deja vu), but sometimes it adapts it to the point that it feels like it's part of that language (spaghetti, circus, magazine).

When I was learning English, I didn't realize that the English vocabulary was full of words with Greek and Latin roots, words that derived from French, Norse and German: words that often challenge the common reader. That's why I assumed that while I have to look up words, because I am a foreigner, English speakers don't, because it's their mother tongue after all!

https://steemit.com/memes/@just-fun/people-who-use-big-words-meme

References:

Nichol, M. The Most Frequently Looked Up Words. 2007. Daily Writing Tips https://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-10-most-frequently-looked-up-words/

Kemmer, S. Loanwords. 2019. Words in English Public Website https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/loanwords.html#:~:text=Loanwords%20are%20words%20adopted%20by,language%20into%20their%20native%20language.

Loan Words and English Words With Foreign Roots. Logic of English. https://support.logicofenglish.com/hc/en-us/articles/4691779741083-Loan-Words-and-English-Words-with-Foreign-Roots

Loanwords and Loan Phrases. Grammarist. https://grammarist.com/loanwords-and-loan-phrases/

Patrovics, P. A nyelvujitas tobbnyelvu kontextusban. 2016. (Language Reform in the Context of Other Languages) e-nyelv.hu (online Hungarian linguistics magazine) https://e-nyelvmagazin.hu/2016/03/22/a-nyelvujitas-tobbnyelvu-kontextusban/