D is for Dictionary

Last week, the AS Hornby Dictionary Research Awards (ASHDRA) panel got together to discuss the proposals submitted for this year’s awards. We had a fantastic batch of submissions from all across the globe and covering a really wide range of topics and ELT contexts.

 

One thing that seemed to stand out though was that almost 25% of applications were rejected simply because they didn’t involve dictionaries … which given these are dictionary research awards is kind of key.

From my notes ...

… and L is for lexicographic resource

It’s clear that a few of the proposals were ones that people had put together and submitted to various funding bodies, so maybe they were just chancing it with ASHDRA and hoping their topic was “close enough”. In most cases though, I think the confusion has arisen around our use of the term “lexicographic resources”.

The word dictionary obviously appears in the title of the awards, and we often talk about dictionary-related research, but in some of the criteria for applications, we also mention research related to lexicographic resources. We use the term to get away from the idea that projects have to involve what we think of as a typical dictionary, i.e. a comprehensive A-Z resource covering “all” words and set out in a traditional style and format. We’re throwing our net slightly wider than that to include different types of dictionaries, provided they’re aimed at ELT users. In fact, as I’ve explained in a previous post, the idea of creating a complete dictionary (of any kind) is really outside the scope of these awards, so we tend to encourage researchers to focus on a smaller-scale, pilot project to fully research and trial an idea as proof of concept (or MVP, minimum viable product, as one applicant phrased it this year). Those smaller-scale dictionary-like resources might be monolingual or bilingual, they might focus on a specific area of vocabulary (we’ve had projects on Medical English and English for Science), they might be more of a glossary to support a particular course, or they could be picture-based dictionaries. A project could also potentially branch out into dictionaries of collocations or idioms or synonyms or metaphors or phrasal verbs, etc.

What all of these resources have in common, though, is that no matter their format, focus, or scope, they should be primarily a reference resource.

What they are not is a set of general classroom (or self-study) activities to teach vocabulary, what you might term "lexical resources", and which is what many of this year's unsuccessful applications were focused around.

Making ASHDRA more accessible

Last month, I finally got to meet up in person with my fellow panel members for the AS Hornby Trust Dictionary Research Awards (ASHDRA) after two years of meeting via Zoom because of Covid and then train strikes! We met at the British Council offices in Stratford, East London and had a really productive day, properly getting into a whole range of topics.

The rather swanky British Council offices in Stratford

One topic we discussed was how to spread the word about the awards more widely and to encourage more applications. As part of that, we agreed that it would be good to make the information on the website a bit more accessible.

As the first reports have come in from research projects over the past year, I’ve taken on the job of working with the researchers to edit them for the website. I don’t often take on the role of editor, but when I do, it’s the process of helping the writer to see their text from the viewpoint of a reader, drawing out the important points, highlighting what they’ve missed out and sometimes, what they don’t need that I enjoy the most. Seeing a writer pleased with the improvements we’ve made together to their report is really satisfying.

So far, we have four research reports available to download on the website, with a couple more in the pipeline, which should help prospective applicants get a feel for the kinds of projects that ASHDRA funds. However, the reports are quite long - often 25 pages+ - and pretty detailed. Now, of course, that’s what you’d expect from a report on a serious piece of research, and we love all that nitty gritty detail. But well, for someone just browsing the website out of interest or to see whether ASHDRA might be for them, they’re perhaps rather TL;DR!

I suggested that as well as the full reports, we could maybe include shorter, more accessible summaries of each project. Talk about managing to land yourself with extra work! But honestly, it was actually a really fun task, trying to condense each project down to its key points and ‘translating’ it from a more formal academic style to something snappier and more informal. In fact, I think it’s the essence of what I love about lexicography – taking in lots of detailed and sometimes quite specialized information and finding a way to convey it in a clear, concise form.

So, now on the website you can see the full reports of the completed ASHDRA projects, one-page summaries of each, and also a list of the on-going projects too. All of which, hopefully, helps to give a clearer idea of what ASHDRA is all about.

And all just in time for the 2023 call for proposals that’s now open! 

 

If you're interested in digging deeper into any aspect of dictionaries in ELT – how they’re used, how effective they are, how they fit into classroom practice, or maybe researching and creating a new dictionary-style resource (in any context and on any scale) – or you know someone who is – then please do go and take a look at the website here.

“Then we’ll write the dictionary”: underestimating the lexicographic task

Last year, I became a member of the expert panel for the AS Hornby Trust Dictionary Research Awards (ASHDRA). The awards are designed to fund dictionary-related research – that might include research into dictionary usage or research aimed at developing new resources, for example in areas not covered by conventional dictionaries or for under-resourced contexts.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a flurry of Zoom meetings with my fellow panel members to discuss this year’s applications and decide which projects to fund. It was fascinating to read all the different proposals that came in from around the world and to discuss their merits and drawbacks. There are a whole range of criteria used to assess the proposals – which I don’t plan to go into here – but this year, one issue seemed to come up across a number of the applications. In projects that had some kind of resource as an end result – not necessary a full-scale dictionary, but often a vocabulary reference for a specific context – there was an underestimate of how much time, work and expertise goes into producing a good lexicographic resource – on whatever scale.

Time and again, I found myself reading proposals that started off with an interesting aim, a solid foundation in existing research and theory, and a strong proposal for the initial research stages – involving collecting data, reviewing existing resources, maybe creating corpora, conducting interviews/questionnaires with stakeholders (such as teachers), analysing data to create word lists, etc. But then when it came to producing the actual resource, there was often just a couple of sentences which amounted to not much more than “and then we’ll write the dictionary”. Having worked as a lexicographer and materials writer for more than 20 years, my reaction was often “Woah! Hang on a moment – do you realize just how much goes into compiling a dictionary?”

It often seemed to be the case that little detailed thought had gone into the design and format of the resource that would result from all the research. And perhaps of even more concern, there was rarely any mention of plans to pilot the resource with learners to see if it was something they could and would use. Some of the kinds of questions that sprang to my mind included: [click to enlarge the images]

 

I could go on and on. As I looked at the specific challenges of different projects, different issues sprang to mind. Creating a useful reference resource isn’t as simple as throwing the results of research down on paper.

So, how could applicants have got around this issue? In discussing cases where someone had a really promising idea but underestimated the lexicographic part of the project, one potential solution we came up with was a more scaled-back proposal that could effectively become a pilot study. In the same way that a commercial publisher would usually start off with a sample to be reviewed and piloted, researchers could put together just a small number of entries of their planned resource to pilot with students and teachers in order to work through some of the issues above, to try out different designs and formats, and hopefully, come up with something that really works for their target learners.  At the end of this process, they would come out with a solid sample that they could use as a proof of concept to move forward and seek further funding for a full-scale project. This would also, hopefully, give them a clearer idea in terms of where to focus their research efforts to create the final resource and so, to a degree, avoid wasted effort.

From my perspective, the processes of assessing and discussing the proposals has been an interesting opportunity to reflect on my own accumulated knowledge as a lexicographer; all those things you absorb over the years and start to take for granted as an ‘obvious’ part of the process of creating a vocabulary resource, but which perhaps aren’t so obvious after all.