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.

ASHDRA: five years of ELT dictionary research

2023 was a busy year for ASHDRA and we’re looking forward to lots of new developments in 2024, as we mark 5 years since ASHDRA was launched.

Completed research:

This year we’ve published several new reports/summaries from completed ASHDRA projects:

Dr Aisling O’Boyle, from Queens University Belfast, investigated the use of dictionaries by refugees in Northern Ireland. Dr Thomai Dalpanagioti, from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, explored a different kind of lexicographic resource to encourage her university-level EFL learners to develop their use of metaphor as part of a writing course. Dr R Vennela, from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India, developed and piloted sample bilingual English-Telegu picture dictionary entries with classes in a rural village in Andhra Pradesh. And Professor Amy Chi, from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, developed and trialled a Teaching Pack aimed at helping EFL teachers to improve their knowledge of contemporary learner’s dictionaries.

You can, of course, read the reports of completed ASHDRA projects, along with shorter, one-page summaries here.

News, events, & publications:

In 2023, ASHDRA awardees past and present took part in a number of events and conferences. In April, Chinh Ngan Nguyen Le presented her Semi-Med project, which developed a novel reference resource focused on semi-technical vocabulary for medical students, at the IATEFL Conference in Harrogate. In June, ASHDRA researchers, Lorna Morris, Thomai Dalpanagioti, and Priya Mathew presented their research (virtually) at the eLex Conference and again in September at the AFRILEX Conference. You can find a video of their presentations here. 

In other alumni news, past ASHDRA researchers, Yan Yan Yeung and Chinh Ngan Nguyen Le have both been awarded their PhDs – congratulations to them both! And Agus Riadi has received a scholarship to pursue a PhD at Coventry University.

The ASHDRA panel members were also busy. Michael Rundell delivered a keynote at the ASIALEX Conference in Seoul in June, looking at the potential impact on dictionary creation of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. Michael also published an article in HLT magazine about ASHDRA, which you can read here. I spoke at IATEFL in April about the role of CEFR labels in learner’s dictionaries and gave a keynote to the BAAL VocabSIG conference in Nottingham in June about the role of vocabulary research in practical lexicography.

Coming up in 2024:

Two ASHDRA research projects are due for completion this year – so watch out for new reports on the website in the autumn. I’m looking forward to speaking about the fascinating range of research that’s already come out of ASHDRA projects over the past 5 years at the IATEFL Conference in Brighton on 16 April. Amy Chi will be repeating her LexTeach workshop for Japanese school teachers in September as part of the ASIALEX conference in Tokyo. And ASHDRA researchers will be reporting on their projects at the Euralex Conference in Croatia in October.

2024 Call for Proposals OPEN

Finally, this year’s call for proposals is currently open. If you, or one of your colleagues, might be interested in applying, there’s still time to get your application in before the 14 April deadline. Visit the website for more details and an application form.

Is there enough ‘research’ in your research proposal?

The AS Hornby Dictionary Research Awards (ASHDRA) are entering their fifth year in 2024. As new batches of dictionary-related research proposals come in each year, new issues crop up for us to discuss on the ASHDRA panel. I’ve previously written about over-ambitious dictionary development projects here.

Recently, we met up ahead of the 2024 call for proposals going out at the start of February and one of the talking points that came out of last year’s submissions was the question of what constitutes ‘research’.

We welcome any research angle that relates to dictionaries in English language teaching. One popular theme, though, involves developing new lexicographic resources in some form, especially to target the needs of a particular group of learners who are currently under-served. Targeting a need is a valid aim for a piece of research, but in some cases, we found that proposals were really materials development projects rather than research, i.e. the applicant had essentially already decided what kind of resource they wanted to create and just wanted funding to develop it.  And that’s just not what the awards are about.

So, what do we mean by ‘research’? According to the call for proposals, we define research as “original investigation undertaken in order to gain and extend knowledge and understanding” – but what does that look like in practice?

Researching the need:

Many applicants already have a clear idea of what gap they think needs to be filled, often based on their own teaching experience. That makes a great starting point, but is it enough? Could you find out more about exactly what issues your learners have with existing dictionary resources? Are they actually turning to dictionaries at all or just googling their language queries? What kinds of things do they find problematic? What would they find more helpful?  

Is your planned resource going to target learners exactly like your own students (same age, same level, same educational context, same L1/country/culture) or do you want to appeal to a wider audience? If so, how much do you know about the needs of that wider group of learners? If, for example, you work mainly in university-level EAP, you may be used to higher-level learners or those who are majoring in English, so are linguistically-minded and motivated. They will have a very different profile (and needs and skills) from the average high-school student who may not be interested in language at all and just wants quick fixes to get them through. Can you approach other teachers to draw on their experiences?

By investigating these kinds of questions (through questionnaires, interviews, focus groups or activities to find out about dictionary usage behaviours and needs), you might find that some of your initial intuitions were correct, but you might also turn up things you hadn’t considered and that might significantly shape what you do next.

Also, before you jump in feet first, have you thoroughly investigated what other published resources are available? Does the resource you’re planning actually already exist or perhaps, something similar to it? There’s no point in reinventing the wheel when you could learn from others. Make sure you thoroughly research and review what’s already available. Even if what you find isn’t exactly right for your target group, there may be elements you can draw on, especially if you don’t have past lexicography experience.

 ⚠️ A word of warning here: although it’s helpful to draw on already published dictionaries for inspiration; for style, layout, what information to include, etc.:

• Remember that published dictionaries are subject to copyright so while they can provide a helpful guide, you shouldn’t just copy definitions for your own use without permission.
• Make sure you draw on a relevant resource for your audience. Don’t imitate the style of definitions from a reference dictionary aimed at L1 speakers of English, especially not a dictionary of record such as the OED or Merriam-Webster, if you’re writing for EFL.

Research during your initial design phase:

Developing any dictionary-style resource will likely involve some form of corpus research – investigating the meaning and usage of lexical items, sourcing authentic example sentences – these things are a lexicographer’s bread and butter.

But will you be using corpus tools in a novel way to research the language going into your dictionary entries? Will you build your own corpus, perhaps in a specialized area? Maybe, like previous ASHDRA researcher, Chinh Ngan Nguyen Le, you’ll use a novel approach to analysis. She used collocation searches to establish the key senses of polysemous semi-technical medical terms and used the results to create visual representations of each term.

When you’ve created your first few draft entries, you could get some informal pre-trial feedback, perhaps from a handful of colleagues. Is there anything they think you’ve missed out? Anything that’s unclear or potentially confusing? You could design up a couple of different entry layouts to find out which format they prefer. It’s easier to iron out any problems early on before you’ve done too much work.

(Action) Research and development:

Once you have a set of draft entries, then an action research approach works well in this context to trial your material. 

That might involve recruiting groups of learners (your target end users) or it might be more appropriate for teachers to trial the resource in the classroom.

One of the keys to effective trialling is making sure you’re going to get enough detailed feedback that you can then act on to improve on your first draft. A handful of general feedback questions might just elicit rather vague, polite responses and give you little to work with. It’s important to design your trial carefully, to think about how to collect feedback and also make sure you leave enough time for it. Again, you could use questionnaires, interviews or focus groups. If your materials are being trialled in class, is it possible to observe or video the lesson to see for yourself not just how the students react to the materials, but also how the teachers make use of them? In one recent ASHDRA project, for example, the researcher found that despite training sessions with teachers ahead of the trail, in practice, the teachers tended to revert to their familiar teaching style and didn’t fully make use of the new resource as planned.

Once you’ve got your feedback and used it to redesign and improve your resource – or possibly any accompanying teacher’s guide - then you ideally need to go through the same process again. A second trial will tell you whether you’ve managed to get your resource spot-on or whether there’s still some tweaking needed.

Where your main research elements come will, of course, come down to the exact nature of your project, but the key thing to bear in mind is that just putting your existing ideas into practice doesn’t constitute research on its own. You need to investigate something and to come up with results and findings at the end of the process. And remember, it’s often the things that didn’t work that tell us more than those that went smoothly.

“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.