Looking Up Words You Know

Students look up familiar words in a monolingual dictionary and discover something new about each one.

Procedure

1. Ask students to look up words that are either:
   • a) International words (e.g., Coke, Cola, café)
   • b) False friends — words that look/sound similar in L1 and English but differ in meaning (e.g., aktuel/actually, simpatico/sympathetic)
   • c) Words students are sure they know (e.g., table, chair)
2. For whichever category you choose, ask students to find and share one thing about the word they didn't know before — semantic, phonemic, syntactic, or related to usage.

Tips

• Students are almost guaranteed to discover something new (e.g., that coke is also a name for cocaine, or that chairs can be university positions).
• Don't limit to finding just one thing — encourage "at least one, and more if you can."
• A gentle, unthreatening way to introduce monolingual dictionary use to students who prefer bilingual dictionaries.
• The same approach works with a thesaurus: look up a word to find associated words, phrases, or opposites.