On line references tools

In chapter 8, there is an explanation about online references tools like: dictionarie, thesauruses, concordancers, corpuses, translators and encyclopedias.

The monolingual dictionaries are recommended for higher-level learners, but also there are other options of monolingual dictionaries available for students with lower language profiency levels. In fact, there are some characteristicts of these dictionaries presented in CD-ROMs:
1. Searchability
2. Audio Recordings of the words.
3. Games and exercises.
4. Information of typical errors.
5. the ability to bookmark and personalyse.
6. thesaurus functionality.
7. corpus informed information on frequency.

Some examples of language reference material are: A Web of line Dictionaries (Beard, 1996, http://www.facstaff.bucknelledu/rbeard/diction.html), WWWebster Dictionary (2000, http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm), Collins Student´s Dictionary Online (http://springbank.linguistics.ruhruni-bochum.de/ccsd),
Newbury House Online Dictionary (http://nhd.heinle.com/)

Thesauruses are more specialized dictionaries which have synonyms and antonyms. These are appropiated for intermediate and advanced students. These resources can extend the students vocabulary. Webster dictionary has a thesaurus like a small book or you can visit the link http.//thesaurus.reference.com

"A concordancer is acomputer program that counts and lists the ocurrences of a given term, showing examples of its use from a corpus (or body) of text." (Dudeney & Hockly, 2007, pg. 183)
Some concordancing programs are Monoconc (http://www.monoconc.com/), Concordance (http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/), Paraconc (http://www.athel.com/), Wordsmith Tools (http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/index.html)

"A Corpus is an amount of collected texts, held in a computer, which can be accessed and anlysed by means of a concordancer. Corpuses can be based on spoken text, or on written text." (Dudeney & Hockly, 2007, pg. 183) Examples of corpuses are: British national Corpus (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/), COBUILD (http://www.collins.co.uk/books.asp?group=155),
International Corpus of English (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice-gb/index.htm), American National Corpus (http://americannationalcorpus.org/), and
Bank of English (http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx)

These tools are valuable for teachers in order to prepare quizzes, exams and other written practices. This is recommended for higher-level students.
Personally, I will use them to evaluate vocabulary and grammar content for second cycle or for high school students.

Translators are not well develpoed and they have inconveniences. They do not translate long sentences or complete paragraphs, only they translate few words and the quality is not good.
I do not recommend to support completely in this tool for writing purposes.

Encyclopedias are other materials that are also presented in CD-ROMs. They are very useful and updated frequently. One specialized English dictionary is Webopedia On Line Computer Dictionary for internet Terms and Technical Support (http://webopedia.com). These resources are appropiate for extra activities like biographies, web projects, history, etc.

Teachers should keep in mind their learning goals, then planned the activities according to these goals and select the most appropiate internet tools in order to accomplish the objectives proposed.

Taken from: Gavin Dudeney & Nicky Hockly. "How to teach English with technology". Pearson Education Limited. Malaysia, 2007
Warsschauer M., Shetzer H. &meloni, C. "Internet for Englsih teaching". TESOL, Office of English Language Programs. Virginia, USA, 2002.