USING LSP DICTIONARIES IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES: COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

Collaborative learning is rooted in social development theory by L. Vygotsky and social learning theories elaborated by N.E. Miller , A. Bandura, and other researchers and is effectively used in teaching LSP (Language for Specific Purposes).

Collaborative learning is defined as learning aimed at achieving common educational goals by working together, in which the role of teachers consists in facilitating this process. Collaboration can take various forms, but a teacher directs collaboration and provides instructions during the process.

The use of LSP dictionary in learning foreign languages for specific purposes is an important part of students’ work with specialized texts in a particular subject field. The dictionaries are useful tools in getting various kinds of information. Students can learn a lot from compiling their own glossaries or dictionaries to follow their individual goals and needs.

Dictionaries have a long history and their role in education has been tremendous.
From their rich history of dictionaries development it is known that the first bilingual dictionaries appeared in the Middle Ages in the form of glosses to Latin manuscripts. The educational dictionaries appeared later. In XVIII – XIX centuries they were compiled to educate people of so called middle class who lacked education and wanted to improve their social status. The dictionaries provided an easy way to get necessary information. Monoligual dictionaries intended for non-native speakers has pedagogical purpose and provide explanation of word usage rather than definitions.

Dictionaries for a particular subject-field should meet the needs of the target community.
The modern theory of dictionary functions specifies a communication –oriented functions such as assisting a learner in text reception, production and translation, and cognitive - oriented functions such as providing linguistic, cultural and subject-field information.

The use of various dictionaries could be organized in a collaborative way for students to learn effectively from dictionaries, to make them an effective tool in learning LSP, to develop information retrieving and other skills. Besides, students are encouraged to compile their own terminological dictionaries for various domains of their field of study.

References:
[1] Macaro E. (1997) Target Language, Collaborative Learning and Autonomy. Clevedon, Philadelphia, Toronto: Multilingual Matters LTD
[2] Temmerman R. (2000). Towards New Ways Of Terminology Description. The Sociocognitive Approach. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Amsterdam, Philadelphia
[3] L' Homme, Marie-Claude The Processing Of Terms In Dictionaries: New Models And Techniques: A State Of The Art. Terminology Volume12, Number 2, 2006, pp. 181-188
[4] Nielsen Sandro (1994), Principles and Practice for Legal Language, Tubingen: Narr.