dictionary'cambridge'org

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• How does Cambridge Advanced Learners
  Dictionary help students to learn the real
  English?
• Patrick Pan
• ELT Representative
• Shanghai, China

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Overview

• Cambridge International Corpus
• Cambridge Leaners corpus
• Key features of the dictionary
• Key features of the CD-ROM

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Why do students use a dictionary?

• To check on meanings 25
• To confirm meanings 20
• To see if word exists 15
• To find a synonym for that word 15

(Harvey and Yuill, 1997)
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Top 1,000 words account for

• of conversation
• words in fiction
• words in newspapers
• words in academic texts

• 84.3
• 82.3
• 75.6
• 73.5

Learning Vocabulary in Another Language P. Nation
(CUP, 2001)
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CALD is a Corpus informed dictionary...

• What are the benefits?

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What is a corpus?

• A corpus is a collection of samples of a
  language, stored in a computer database
• Written
• Spoken
• Specialized - business, medical, etc.

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What does a corpus look like?
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650 million 40 million 25 million
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Uses of corpora

• Frequency information / counts
• Context of use - concordances and collocation
• Samples of authentic language

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One-minute quiz spoken English

• What is the most common word? The, I, yeah, or
  is?
• I
• Must is most commonly used to express obligation.
  True or false?
• False 90 are of the type You must be hungry.
• Which is the most common adjective found after
  Pretty . Interesting, nice, good, big
• good almost 10 times as common as No. 2 nice
• Which is the most talked about day of the week?
• Friday!

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Collocation

• Collocation the statistical likelihood that two
  words will occur together

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• In CALD 3, collocation is shown in Word Partner
  boxes.
• Collocation is almost impossible for the learner
  to predict, so CALD 3 has over 400 Collocations
  boxes, all based on frequency in the corpus
• showing Ss the main collocations and helping them
  to use in English in a natural way.

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The Learner Corpus
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How big is the learners corpus?

• 25 million words
• Over 45,000 scripts or exam paper
• Grows each year by about 2 million words about
  6000 scripts

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What can we find out from the Cambridge Learner
Corpus?

• How often do students make a mistake with this
  word?
• What type of mistakes do they make?
• Which students make this mistake?

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What type of mistakes the students make

• Can search on any specific error or group of
  errors and find examples of that error in
  context, eg collocation error, wrong quantifier
  form, verb inflection error, missing preposition
  etc.

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Over 500,000 words from Asian speakers
Top 10 most frequently misspelled words
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Which language group is most likely to omit the
definite article
frequency of this error by language group
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Top 10 noun countability mistakes
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How can this help students?
500 Common Learner Error notes
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Up to date

• Over 1,000 new words
• New collocation boxes
• Over 170,000 words, phrases and example sentences

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New words
a video stored in a digital form that you can
download from the Internet and play on a computer
or on an MP3 player a website where you can
show information about
yourself, and communicate with groups of
friends,classmates, etc. searching for your own
name on the Internet the distance between the
place where food is grown or made and the place
where it is eaten
Vodcast
Facebook
Ego-surfing
Food miles
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New words and uses...

• Antsy
• Bellwether
• Boondoogle
• Doh
• Scuttlebutt

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When they are using an advanced dictionary,
learners want to

• find a word quickly
• choose the right word easily
• use a word correctly

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Finding a word quickly

• Colour headwords
• simple, clear page design
• Idiom finder - over 30 pages of idioms can find
  them by looking at key words

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Choosing the right word easily

• GUIDEWORDS
• Clear definitions
• Colour pictures

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Guidewords
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• CALD
• bitter adj describes a person who is angry and
  unhappy because they cannot forget bad things
  which happened in the past

Other Dictionary bitter adj having a taste like
that of quinine or hops sharp painful
acrimonious broodingly resentful.
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CALD emphasis noun the particular importance or
attention that you give to something
Other Dictionary emphasis noun forcible or
impressive expression an insistent or vigorous
way of attributing importance or enforcing
attention
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26 pages of colorful pictures
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Using a word correctly

• 90,000 example sentences
• Common Learner Error notes
• Clear definitions
• 25,000 collocations show how words work together
  in real English - highlighted

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Other features

• Frequency information
• Essential - 4,900
• Improver - 3,300
• Advanced - 3,700
• 26 colour pages of lexical categories - fruit,
  vegetables, the body, etc.
• Maps of UK,USA,Canada and Australia
• Study Sections - extra help with vocabulary and
  grammar - 20 pages
• Word families - 12 pages nouns, adjectives,
  verbs, adverbs

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Plus a CD-ROM
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The CD-ROM

• does everything that the book can do and a lot
  more
• Contains 100s of interactive exercises for exam
  practice
• boosts your English in four key ways

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This is what the CD looks like
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7 key features of the CD-ROM

• Sound and pronunciation
• QUICKfind
• Smart Thesaurus
• Pictures
• Super Write
• Interactive Exercises
• My notes

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Sound and pronunciation

• sound recordings in British English and American
  English for every headword
• easy-to-use pronunciation practice
• real recordings, not computer-generated
• meets a very obvious student need

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Sound and pronunciation
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Quick find

• mini pop-up version of the dictionary
• instant definitions while surfing the web or
  reading on screen.

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QUICKfind
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SMART thesaurus

• click on any word and it shows you all the
  similar words
• great for building vocabulary
• ideal for writing tasks
• appropriate for advanced learners

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Pictures

• Hundreds of pictures help students to match words
  with images and therefore facilitate memorizing

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SUPERwrite

• a box of writing tools
• appropriate for advanced learners
• compact and easy-to-use

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Interactive Exercises

• Hundreds of interactive exercises on the CD-ROM
• including real past papers from IELTS, FCE, CAE,
  CPE and BEC
• In 4 categories grammar, vocabulary, picture and
  exam
• Can check answers immediately
• Can clear and re-do the exercise

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My notes

• Function allowing learners to add a note to any
  entry in the dictionary.
• Allows learners to personalise the dictionary
  with information that is useful for them.

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So the dictionary and CD-ROM help learners to

• find a word quickly
• choose the right word easily
• use a word correctly

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• Before you go,just for your information
• ???????????,????,????????????
• ??????????????17??,????1000??
• ??????????25000??????,???400??????
• ???????6000???,??????
• ???????3000?????,????
• ??????500?????????
• ???????????????,????
• ??????90,000????????????

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Special recommendation???? ??

• ????????????????????,????
• Lets talk conversation ????????
• Common mistakes ????
• New words and phrases ???????
• Letter writing ??????
• Writing essays ??????
• Geographical names ???
• Popular first names ????
• Prefixes and suffixes ???????

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• Irregular verbs ??????
• Symbols ???????????
• Units of measurement ????
• Word families ?????
• Idiom finder ?????
• How we show pronunciation in the dictionary
  ??????
• Pronunciation symbols ????

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Thank you very much! Any questions?