A Study Of Culture-oriented English Learner's Dictionary Compilation For High School Students

Cultural awareness is one of the four key competencies put forward in the 2017 edition of national English curriculum standards for general senior high school.Words,as the carrier of cultural meaning,contain lots of cultural information.For lexicographers,the lexical meaning stands in the central position.The cultural meaning of words hasn't received sufficient attention in existing English learners' dictionaries.The purpose of this thesis attempts to study how to compile a culture-oriented English learner's electronic dictionary for high school students from the aspects of exploring and presenting cultural information of words.Two research questions are discussed in detail:(1)in what ways can the cultural information of words be explored effectively for the compilation of English learner's dictionary?(2)In what ways can the cultural information of words be presented effectively in English learner's dictionary? Ten noun words are selected purposefully for case studies on exploring and presenting cultural information of words from the perspectives of word definition,illustrative examples,pictorial illustration,etymology,and usage.Case studies proposed in this thesis tend to be used for making a comparison with OALECD8.The present study has made the following findings.In terms of the exploration of the cultural information of words,the identification of cultural primes is based on the technique of cultural script.The thorough examination of cultural primes,such as substantives,space,time,taxonomy,attribute,logical concept,and other elements,etc.,is conducive to revealing the cultural information of words.For the application of resources,the general or special corpora,dynamic corpora,Google Search,Google Images,and relevant dictionaries,etc.,should be combined and fully used.With regard to the utilization of methods,corpus-based approaches are employed for typical cultural contexts,including collocations,clusters,semantic prosodies,idioms,and proverbs,etc.In addition to the above common findings,there are some more specific findings in different dimensions.For word definition,even if there is no significant cultural difference between some senses of English and Chinese,it is necessary to reveal the cultural information of words by focusing on the exploration of more cultural primes.Concerning illustrative examples,the examples should be selected precisely for the diversity and comprehensiveness of the cultural information of words and avoiding the circularity.For pictorial illustration,the examination of the cultural information of words should not only focus on employing cultural phenomena,including associative word,semantic field,style,region,idiom,and proverb,etc.,but also focus on identifying the incidental cultural information behind the illustrations by the application of Google images,the Movie Corpus,the TV Corpus,and other resources.For etymology,the diachronic corpus can be very helpful for identifying the etymological information of words.There are two ways for usage: one is the comparison of cultural information;the other is that a semantic association network can be provided with cultural information by refining and classifying information based on the application of the corpus,Babel Net,Word Net.Lastly,it should be noted that the elements of dictionary compilation,including word definition,illustrative examples,pictorial illustration,etymology,and usage,etc.,are needed to be comprehensively coordinated and complemented so that more adequate cultural information of words can be examined.For presenting the cultural information of words,this study holds that it is necessary to systematically use a unified format to highlight the cultural information of words.In addition to the utilization of the common markers in some mainstream English learners' dictionaries,including region,register,and style,etc.,this study also attempts to make use of more markers,such as the use of heart-shaped graphics for emotional meaning and the application of special etymological icons.In particular,the cultural primes of words are highlighted with the italics;the collocations of words are emphasized in boldface.Apart from the above common practices,more practices are provided in detail.For word definition,the phrase or full-sentence definition can be adopted flexibly.With regard to illustrative examples,the combination of phrase and sentence examples can be applied.The main point is to better present different kinds of cultural information as soon as possible.For pictorial illustration,more attention should be received to the integration of single,multiple,and comparative illustrations for showing the classification of words,idiomatic information,and cultural difference,etc.Besides,the sources of illustrative examples and illustrations are marked in a concise way.For etymology,the utilization of textual design with sentence examples can better reveal the etymological information.For usage,the first is the focus on the combination of words and pictures.The second is that the presentation of logic should be stressed.To sum up,the cultural information of words can be more fully identified and revealed through dictionaries,especially electronic dictionaries.This study hopes that the present study can provide some new ideas for the compilation of dictionaries as well as some help for the cultivation of high school students' cultural awareness.