Identifying the Different Information Given to a Word in a Dictionary
This resource will help your students identify the different information given to a word in a dictionary like syllabication, stress marks, and multiple meanings
A. Preparatory Activities
In the previous lesson you learned that some words are stressed on the first or second syllables. Choose a partner. Pick out a word from the jar, say it with stress on the first syllable; your partner will say it with stress on the second syllable, and vice versa.
You have been using the dictionary for a long time. Do you know how it started? Listen as I tell its story.
I am a dictionary /dik’-she-ner-ē/. I don’t know how you can study without me. I would like you to know my story.
Thousands of years ago I was handwritten in Greece. I was called lexicon. That is where the name lexicographer came from. This is the name given to a dictionary maker.
English dictionaries were slow in getting started. Sometimes they were just word lists that teachers wrote for their pupils.
One such leader was Robert Cawdry who publishedTable Alphabetical in 1604.
Today however, it is the name of Noah Webster, an American lexicographer, which is remembered whenever someone mentions the dictionary