Challenging Yourself Ⅰ Using Dictionaries A dictionary can

Challenging Yourself Ⅰ Using Dictionaries A dictionary can be a very valuable tool for anyone who is learning a language. 开县铁桥 中学

The First Period Reading Noah Webster and the First American Dictionary

Do you have an dictionary?

How much do you know about dictionaries? Answer the following questions by ticking Yes or No. 1) Do you often use your dictionary? □Yes □No 2) Do you know how to decide if a dictionary is a good one? □Yes □No 3) Do you know what information a dictionary has besides spellings and meanings? □Yes □No 4) Do you know why you can improve your English by making good use of a dictionary? □Yes □No

Study your dictionary carefully and write down the information you may get from each entry. And compare yours with your partner’s. My dictionary includes spellings, __________, __________. My partner’s dictionary includes __________, __________, _____.

What information can you usually get from a dictionary? spelling pronunciation part of speech past tense present participle meaning past participle some examples

How much do you know about this dictionary? How did it come into being?

divide v. division adj. The 1 st farm means 务农 ____ in Chinese. house+wife help sb. with sth. =help sb. (to) do sth. The 2 nd farm means 农场 ____ in Chinese. Della likes helping her mother with the housework. = Della likes helping her mother (to) do the housework. do the cooking, cleaning etc. in a house

…, but Noah loved to learn so much that his parents let him go to Yale, … ……但是Noah是那么的爱学习，以至于他的父母就让他上了耶鲁大学 ……so … that… 如此…… 以至于…… desire to do = want to do in order to= so as to make a living: keep life going on e. g. He works as a teacher to make a living.

They two graduated from Southwest University in 2006.

Crammed means ____. A. filled B. called un+ train+ed

different+ly adv. rather than skunk n. 臭鼬 squash n. 壁球 Accomplished here means _____. A. completed B. wrote come out= be published

1828 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English language

copy+ right: n. the right that a writer, publisher, etc. has for his article, book, etc. 版权 Americanize v. to make sb. /sth. American in character editor n. regard as edit v.

You don’t have to read every sentence. Just find these years and then you can find the needed information quickly.

Noah graduated. Noah wrote his own textbook A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. When Noah was 43, he started writing the first American dictionary. Noah accomplished his dictionary. Noah Webster died.

T F T Scan the text for specific information.

His parents could not afford to send him to college. Because books came from England children’s learning conditions were poor. Because Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently.

4) What did the American people think of Noah Webster? Noah Webster was considered an American hero. __________________________ 5) What kind of person do you think Noah Webster was? Try to use some words and expressions from the text in your answer.

1) skim the text to find out the general theme; 2) analyze the text’s structure to divide it into several sections, and write out the main idea of each section briefly with one or two sentences; 3) write down the key points for each main idea; 4) organize the main points in a logical order with necessary link words; 5) correct spelling, vocabulary and punctuation mistakes.

The Second Period Using Dictionaries

What information can you usually get from a dictionary? spelling pronunciation part of speech past tense present participle meaning past participle some examples

Practise reading the following words before you read the article.

I’m a bracket bookshelf.

Etymology is the study of the origins and historical development of words.