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How to use a dictionary

effectively

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Keep a lexical notebook!

Each time you come across a new word, write it

down in a special notebook.

For each word, check its pronunciation and

collocation.

Pay particular attention to idioms and phrasal

verbs. When you record them in your notebook,

be sure to add an example of their use.

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Collocations

Collocations are words that co-occur.

If a word collocates with many other words, the result

is a free combination and we say that the word does

not have a fixed collocation (e.g. ‘go’, ‘girl’, ‘car’).

On the contrary, if a word can be found only with

certain other words, we say that the word has or forms

a fixed or restricted collocation (e.g. ‘ajar’ and ‘door’,

'auburn' and 'hair', 'nod' and 'head', 'shrug' and 'shoulder'

etc.).

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For example:

do homework

make the bed

do me a favour

take a risk

a faint smell

a tall order (hard to achieve)

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There are no rules on how these collocations are

formed, they simply ‘sound right’ to the native

speaker.

For example:

• You say heavy smoker but you would never say strong

smoker.

• Referring to height, we would never say Tom is high

(!!!), we say Tom is tall.

• We take a quick shower, not a fast shower.

• We have a heated argument, not a hot argument.

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Collocations and use of dictionary

Always check collocations carefully in your monolingual

dictionary before deciding whether the word you have

chosen suits your text or not.

If you miss the right collocation, your writing might

sound awkward or even incomprehensible!

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Idioms

An idiom is a special type of collocation.

It is a group of words that together have a meaning

that is different from the ordinary meaning of each

separate word.

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Idioms

For example, if you are feeling ‘under the weather’, it

means that you are not feeling very well.

The weather has nothing to do with it; you are not

referring to the weather in a literal way.

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Idioms can show different degrees of semantic opacity.

For instance, 'green light' is less opaque than 'red

herring‘:

to give somebody the green light = to allow a project,

plan etc. to begin)

to be a red herring = a fact or idea that is not

important but is introduced to take your attention away

from the points that are important.

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CAVEAT!

The use of idioms requires very good language

knowledge.

Think carefully before including an idiom in your

essay!

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Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs combine verbs and prepositions to make

new verbs whose meaning may be very different from that

of the original verb.

For instance, 'give up' is a phrasal verb that means 'stop

doing' something, which is very different from 'give‘ and

‘up’ taken separately.

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In transitive separable phrasal verbs, the particle

may come before or after the object if the object is

not a personal pronoun.

Ex.

1) Would you like me to hand the copies out / to

hand out the copies?

2) I’ve made some copies. Would you like me to

hand them out?

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Phrasal verbs

They are widely used in both written and spoken English,

and new ones are formed all the time as they are a flexible

way of creating new terms.

See examples with UP.

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Even if a phrasal verb can often be paraphrased using

words that are more familiar for non-native speakers,

English native speakers tend to prefer and use the

phrasal verb because the substitute word is often too

formal.

Ex. Put out (extinguish)

“Could you put out your cigarette, please?”

Ex. Get rid of (eliminate)

“She decided to get rid of her old car.”

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Prepositional verbs

Prepositional verbs have two parts: a verb and a

preposition which cannot be separated from each other.

ex. The US is the only country in the world that depends

upon for-profit insurance companies for the majority of

their health-care coverage.

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Class shift

We speak of class shift when the basic form of a

word does not change, but its function does.

Example: yield /ji:ld/

(to) yield [verb] = (to) produce profit, food,

information

yield [noun, usually singular] = profits

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Exercise: look up ‘can’ (not the modal verb) in an

online dictionary and write examples of its use as a

noun, an adjective and a verb

Ex. ‘can’ (it. ‘lattina’)

Noun

“Please open the can.”

Adjective

“Use a can opener.”

Verb

“Help me can the food.”

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Class shift coupled with stress shift:

-’progress / pro’gress

- ‘decrease / de’crease

- ‘project / pro’ject

- ‘increase / in’crease

Stress on the first syllable: noun

Stress on the second syllable: verb

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Exercise: Verb or noun?

survey / ’sɜ:veɪ /

noun

survey /sɜː’veɪ/

verb

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1) With which grammar functions has the word

‘survey’ been used in the following text excerpts?

a. We need to run a survey.

/ ’sɜ:veɪ /b. The survey population consisted of 500 men

and 500 women.

/ ’sɜ:veɪ /c. I asked him to survey the population using a

questionnaire.

/sɜː’veɪ/