An African User-Perspective On English Children's and School Dictionaries
An African User-Perspective On English Children's and School Dictionaries
An African User-Perspective On English Children's and School Dictionaries
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AN AFRICAN USER-PERSPECTIVE ON
ENGLISH CHILDREN’S AND SCHOOL
DICTIONARIES
Dion Nkomo: School of Languages and Literatures: African Languages. Rhodes University.
Grahamstown ([email protected])
Many children’s and school dictionaries with English as a treated language have limited
user-friendliness in African communities due to the fact that they were produced for
mother-tongue speakers of English. An analysis of a selection of dictionaries within this
category indicates a need to go beyond the application of principles that generally
distinguish children’s and school dictionaries from adult dictionaries in order to cater
for additional language learners of English who also learn the language in a totally
different context from that of mother-tongue speakers. Recent and current develop-
ments in South African lexicography point to an increase in the production of English
dictionaries for the South African market and other African countries. These diction-
aries display localised lemma selection and illustrative examples, in addition to their
bilingual dimension, thereby making them sensitive to the linguistic, cultural and
educational realities of English learning and use in African countries. Such aspects
are identified as the core of an African user-perspective which may improve the user-
friendliness of English dictionaries for African children and schools while also providing
tools that may be used to establish a more solid dictionary culture in African
communities.
1. Introduction
The provision of support for early childhood educational activities and the
establishment of a sustainable foundation for a dictionary culture, which will
remain valuable in the future professional lives of children, may be acknowl-
edged as the main long-term benefits of introducing children to dictionaries at
an early age (Tarp 2012: 95). Dictionary culture is generally patchy in many
African societies, but improving it would be difficult without user-friendly
dictionaries that can win both the minds and hearts of the target users.
Preaching the lexicographic gospel of dictionary use to young users needs to
be anchored on the availability of dictionaries that can address the needs of the
users in an appealing and satisfactory way.
This article argues for an African user-perspective in the compilation of
English that can effectively be integrated in the education systems of African
countries for the use of schoolchildren. Such a perspective, it is argued, should
be sensitive to the linguistic and socio-linguistic realities that characterise the
learning and use of English in the respective communities. While most chil-
dren’s and school dictionaries of English available in African countries may
have been designed according to principles that recognise the uniqueness of the
needs of children in a general way, they unfortunately remain alien and less
user-friendly to learners of English as an additional language. They impart the
primary target users. Secondly and related to the first point, it is mainly in
relation to schoolwork that dictionary using situations arise. This means that
the dictionaries may also be used when doing homework at home.
Furthermore, there are overlaps between school dictionaries on the one hand
and children’s dictionaries, college dictionaries and desk dictionaries on the
other hand. This means that school dictionaries, depending on the educational
level of the target users, will display features of the other types of dictionaries
that are cross-referenced in the DoL article for school dictionary.
The foregoing account regarding children’s and school dictionaries resonates
with the ideas of Edward Lee Thorndike, an American psychologist, who
specialised in language acquisition in the 1930s. Not only did Thorndike ap-
This explanation compels one to immediately refer to the article for pedagogical
dictionary, but before getting to that it is important to offer a close analysis of
the entire explanation. According to the explanation, a learner’s dictionary is
Once again, one may note the narrowness of the sense assigned to pedagogical
dictionary as it is only associated with the learning of a language. An indication
of the useless distinction between a school dictionary as the one directed at
native speakers and a learner’s dictionary as that directed at non-native learn-
ers is significant. Further to that, an implicit statement is made that school
dictionaries and learner’s dictionaries are both pedagogical dictionaries.
Gouws (2004: 268) concurs with that when he suggests that the term learner’s
dictionaries should be used ‘as an umbrella term for both school and
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What adds further importance to the term learner’s dictionary in the context
of the present article is its prominence in practical lexicography where it even
features in dictionary titles. This prominence has also been passed on to meta-
. Only well-resourced private schools reserved for white students during the
colonial era and now accessible to students from wealthy backgrounds
(former Group A schools) stock various types of dictionaries in their libraries.
. Dictionaries are compulsory requirements only for students in the former
Group A schools while only a few teachers in government schools, includ-
ing those teaching languages, own dictionaries.
. The majority of pupils in primary schools have never used nor seen a
dictionary.
. Although some primary schools have one or two dictionaries as part of the
school property, the dictionaries are not usually appropriate for the pupils,
for example, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
An African User-perspective on English Dictionaries 7 of 24
In the light of the above, the dictionary situation within the Zimbabwean edu-
cation system is uninspiring. The former Group A schools which consider dic-
tionaries to be integral elements within the learners’ educational toolkits generally
record impressive academic results at the Grade 7, General Certificate of
Education Ordinary Level (‘O’ Level) and General Certificate of Education
Advanced Level (‘A’ Level) examinations, both in the locally-administered and
the international Cambridge examinations. However, it is those students who
seem to need more help and support who do not enjoy the privilege of using
dictionaries whenever needs arise. School dictionaries provide data that may
address most of the educational needs of learners. Therefore, together with
other learning resources, dictionaries have a role to play within the country’s
education system. The Zimbabwean ‘O’ Level English syllabus does state that
pupils should be able to:
. . . understand and use the different types of reading materials they are
likely to meet both inside and outside school, including fiction, poetry,
drama, non-fiction, textbooks, reference books (especially dictionaries),
magazines, newspapers, instruction manuals and reports . . . (ZIMSEC
2008-2012: 13).
The Oxford Very First Dictionary helps young children enjoy and discover
the features of a dictionary. It contains 300 words in alphabetical order,
each with a simple definition and a colourful picture. There are also
additional end sections with words that children will find useful when
writing. The words have been chosen to support and develop speaking,
reading, and writing . . .
basic dictionary skills in a simple and enjoyable way: they can learn about
the alphabet and about the alphabetical order; they can find out how to
locate a word using the initial letter; they can check their spelling; and they
can learn how to use simple definitions of words (Kirtely 2007: 6-7).
According to the age indication on the blurb, the OVFD is targeted at children
aged four years and above. The quoted introductory text clearly indicates that
the lexicographers took into cognisance the needs of young English learners
when conceiving, designing and compiling the OVFD. This is apparent with
regard to the contents and methods of presentation (see Figure 1 below), which
should be considered to be user-friendly for children in general.
by learning to write in their mother tongue, meaning that they would not be at
a stage where they write a lot in English. Should they become aware of the
inclusion of such words beyond the Aa-Zz text of the dictionary, they may still
have to look elsewhere for their meaning and usage. Yet the main text accom-
modates words like bear, dinosaur, octopus, rocket, etc. whose referents would
only exist through imagination among the privileged minority children in most
African communities. Even for a seemingly simple word such as queue, the
excluded synonym line would be a better candidate for the first 300 words
for the majority of African children who learn English as an additional
language.
A similar argument may also be extended to the use of corpora as the basis
In writing the . . . text I have made extensive use of the British National
Corpus, a language database containing 100 million words of written and
spoken English of all kinds assembled by a consortium of publishers and
academic institutions. This material offers rich insights into the ways in
which words are used and typical contexts in which they occur. Study of
the Corpus, as well as of children’s literature (both traditional and
modern), has been especially important in devising the example sentences,
which achieve a naturalness that is not possible solely on the basis of the
compiler’s intuition (Allen 2003: iii).
The questions raised in the previous section regarding some English diction-
aries that end up being used by schoolchildren in African countries are not
necessarily about the fact that the dictionaries are produced abroad. This sec-
tion will demonstrate that the African user-perspective advocated in this article
is about how the dictionaries are conceived, designed and compiled, regardless
of where this is done. There is so far one English primary school dictionary
published in Zimbabwe, i.e. the Ventures Student’s Dictionary (VSD), by
College Press, an associate of MacMillan Publishers, in 1984. Although not
popular in schools, most probably owing to a poor societal dictionary culture
as the education system displays an indifferent attitude towards dictionaries,
the VSD is still available in print and its publisher continues to market it. The
introduction of this dictionary, quoted here in full, states:
ability. It has been prepared with two particular groups of users in mind:
students for whom English is a Second Language, that is those who are
taught school subjects such as geography, mathematics, physics, and
literature in English; and students studying for examinations at the
intermediate level. The choice of entries and meanings reflects the needs of
both such groups: for example, greater attention has been paid to ‘study
language’ – than is usual in dictionaries of a similar size.
Students sometimes use a learner’s dictionary that is too advanced for their
real needs. It is hoped that this medium-sized dictionary will indeed be a
useful reference book and will be found to develop the knowledge and
abilities of the intermediate learner of English (Manser 1984: i).
Although the last paragraph of the excerpt indicates that the conception of the
VSD was born out of a careful consideration of real problems regarding the
availability and accessibility of children’s and school dictionaries, the diction-
ary itself is far from being the best solution. It may be too advanced for most
intermediate additional language learners of English in Zimbabwe. Its user
guide states that pronunciation is indicated using the spelling of the
An African User-perspective on English Dictionaries 15 of 24
The OFBD series initially paired English with the other ten official languages
of South Africa, leading to the publication of ten dictionaries. This success saw
the expansion of the series into other Southern African countries such as
Zimbabwe where English has been paired with Shona and Ndebele to produce
two dictionaries in 2012. Additional language learning is identified as the main
goal of the OFBD series. The instructions ‘Funda IsiNgesi’ (Learn English) and
‘Learn IsiXhosa’ are prominently marked on the front cover of the isiXhosa
English OFB dictionary. In the series, each ‘dictionary has been designed to
help children in their first few years of learning English or . . . as an additional
dictionaries in the OFBD series much more than mere bilingual versions or
translations of the imported Oxford first and very first dictionaries.
Unlike the OVFD and OFD, which only provide simplified English defi-
nitions and illustrative pictures for the selected words, the dictionaries in the
OFBD series also provide meaning information through translation equiva-
lents. Although the circular and simplified definitions which even use the de-
finiendum in the OVFD and OFD are generally user-friendly for young children
(De Schryver and Prinsloo 2011), they are in all probability more effective to
mother-tongue speaking learners than additional language learners. Some mis-
givings regarding definitions for young additional language learners, no matter
how simplified the definitions are, have been discussed in Section 4. For ex-
ample, the words wild, furry and tail in the definition of the word fox as ‘a wild
animal that looks like a dog with a long furry tail’ in the OFD may impede
the understanding of an eight-year old English additional language learner.
These are some of the words that they will still be learning in the new language
as the majority, especially in rural areas, encounter the language at school.
Figure 4 illustrates how the translation equivalents are provided in the
OFBD series.
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As can be seen from Figure 4 above, a translation equivalent is given for each
English word adjacent to a pictorial illustration. The word mbudzi as a Shona
equivalent for goat, complemented by the pictorial illustration, offers a prompt
recognition of what a goat is to a Zimbabwean Shona-speaking child. Provided
the learner knows the Shona word, the definition for the word goat becomes
less relevant as a source for meaning information. At least the user would have
made progress by adding the word goat to his/her limited English vocabulary.
Another important innovation that provides meaning information in the
OFBD series is represented by bilingual stories under the section ‘Support
for teachers or parents’. Each story matches a particular theme/scene in the
dictionary and narratively explains the meaning of the words dealt with on
each double page spread while highlighting word usage. Given the limited
efficacy of definitions highlighted earlier, the stories can contribute to effective
meaning transfer for the age group at which these dictionaries are aimed, as
acknowledged in the relevant scholarship (Collins 2005; Justice, Meier, and
Walpole 2005; Hickman, Pollard-Dulodora and Vaughn 2004). Through the
stories, teachers are presented with a useful tool that can be used together with
the themed pages in classroom activities.
An African User-perspective on English Dictionaries 19 of 24
The MMLFP dictionary series entered the South African market in 2010. Like
the OFBD series, the MMLFP dictionaries are bilingual. They pair English
with the other South African official languages. They were also conceived to
support additional language acquisition at the Foundation Phase, both English
and the other languages with which it is paired. However, there are a number of
differences between the two dictionary series. Firstly, while the OFBD series
pairs English with all the other official South African languages and others
spoken in the neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, the MMLFP pairs
English with only five official languages of South Africa. This perhaps high-
lights commercial viability of such dictionaries as a challenge posed by the
undeveloped dictionary culture in African communities. Secondly, the
MMLFP dictionaries have three main sections. The first is the thematic section
which is illustrated by Figure 5 below, an article stretch from the Isichazi-
magama-siseko: IsiXhosa/English (MMLFPD: IsiXhosa/English).
Like the other children’s dictionaries, the MMLFP dictionaries make use of
pictorial illustrations. However, unlike the OFB dictionaries, access to the
English word is gained through equivalent words in the respective languages
paired with English. This means that the English additional language learner
should know the word in their mother tongue first, or at least be able to rec-
ognise the pictorial illustration of the relevant object for each lemma. After
that, the learner can learn the equivalent English word for the mother-tongue
word, as well as its spelling, or the name of the illustrated object.
Section 2 of the MMLFP dictionaries is an alphabetically arranged part of
the dictionary as illustrated by Figure 6 below, an article stretch from the
Isichazi-magama-siseko: IsiXhosa/English. This section builds on Section 1 by
providing definitions in the mother tongue, in addition to English translation
equivalents. This procedure certainly increases the understanding of a concept
or object. In this respect, the MMLFP dictionaries fall somewhere in between
the OFD, which provide English definitions and the OBFD series, which uses
20 of 24 Dion Nkomo
Finally, the third section of each MMLFP dictionary adopts the alphabetical
indexing approach, just like the OFBD series. The indexes are available in two
languages and page numbers are used to guide users to the pages in which the
words are treated more comprehensively. The entire arrangement adopted for
the dictionaries make them poly-accessible.
7. Conclusion
References
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