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| Date: From: Subject: | 11/10/2010 10:38:11 AM Home School Legal Defense Association HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter--November 2010 |
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---------------------------------------------------------------- HSLDA's Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner Newsletter November 2010 -- The Thesaurus: A Dictionary Cousin ---------------------------------------------------------------------- by Betty Statnick, M. Ed. HSLDA Special Needs Coordinator "One of the most important skills students can learn in school is the ability to use language in an effective way.... The single most important tool in the educational process of acquiring language skills is a dictionary that meets the needs of the student." Award yourself an "A" in long-term memory skills if you recall reading that quote from the introduction to my "Primer on Using the Dictionary" newsletter. http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9400 The thesaurus is another book that belongs in the toolbox to help students acquire language skills. I call the thesaurus "a dictionary cousin," because the two resources are in the same family. The word thesaurus from Latin signifies "treasure, collection, storehouse," and from the Greek: "a book of words and their synonyms." (Note: A thesaurus may also contain antonyms). A thesaurus can be especially valuable for parents who are concerned about their child's language skills. If you are such a parent, you can further assess your child's language skills with specific tests. One of these is the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a test of receptive language. In this evaluation students must answer the examiner's questions (such as "Which is 'car'?") by pointing to or giving the number of one of four pictures on the page. This provides a measure of understanding what is said to the student. The Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test, on the other hand, is a test of expressive language used to assess vocabulary production. In this evaluation the person being tested is required to state what a particular picture is. It requires precise naming, so the person being tested cannot name the category. (For example, he cannot call a bear "an animal" or a banana "a fruit.") (Note: The aforementioned tests are just two of many formal tests uses to assess receptive and expressive language.) Whether or not your child has been formally tested, many of you have called me and have expressed concerns about these issues: Your child employs imprecise words, both in his speaking and in his writing. He consistently uses vague words and phrases like "stuff, good, nice, whatchamacallit, that thing over there, or you know what I mean." When you ask him what he ate for lunch, he may respond, "I ate some food." You probe and he murmurs, "I ate a hamburger and an apple." Or, he might have stated it this way: "I ate a good hamburger and a good apple." You would be elated if he were to describe "the delicious hamburger" and "the juicy apple." You try to refrain from speaking vaguely yourself, and you also read to your child to further enlarge his store of vocabulary words. Now you want resources designed specifically for helping students enlarge both their speaking and written vocabularies. (Someone has said that "writing is just talk written down.") I own and can recommend these resources: 1. "Webster's New World Children's Dictionary--Second Edition," Revised 2006 (for children ages 8 and up) http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9401 On pages 884-906 you will find an "Introduction to the Thesaurus" by Modern Curriculum Press. The preface to that thesaurus states: "It is useful to be able to express ideas and thoughts in more than one way. Your writing will be interesting and colorful if you don't use the same words all the time. One way to give variety to your writing is to substitute a synonym--a word that has the same or almost the same meaning as another word--for a word you have already used." This thesaurus includes the meaning for each entry word and a sample sentence for each synonym. 2. "The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus" (2010) by Paul Hellweg, ISBN 978-0-547-21599-0 is especially for children grades 3-7, ages 8-12. http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9402 The entries are in alphabetical order and are easily located through use of the guide words at the top of each page. In the front of the book there is the easy-to-understand section: "How to Use This Thesaurus." I especially like its answer to the question: "Why Use a Thesaurus? Another way to think of a thesaurus is a book of word choices. Sometimes, especially when you are writing, you might feel that the word you were about to use isn't quite right.... For example, maybe you were about to describe a book as funny, but that word seemed too ordinary. You could look up the entry for funny in this thesaurus and choose a more interesting word such as 'amusing, comical, hilarious, or humorous.' Or perhaps your teacher has told you that you use the word 'weird' too often in your writing. Looking up 'weird' would provide you with 'bizarre, eerie, odd, peculiar, strange, and unnatural' as words you could use instead." 3. "Scholastic Student Thesaurus" (2007) by John K. Bollard, ISBN 100-0-439-02588-5 is for ages 10 and up. http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=9403 The introduction to this book talks about The Web of Words: "Imagine a large, beautiful spiderweb. Its strands run from point to point creating...fascinating patterns wherever you look. The English language is...a web of words. Many words are connected to other similar words called synonyms...How can you find your way around this web of words? How can you find just the right word when you need it?...The Scholastic Student Thesaurus is designed to move you around in the web of words. If you start with a word you know, your thesaurus will help you find synonyms to choose from." The introduction also raises the question "Why Use a Thesaurus?" Its answers (with discussions about each point) are: To avoid repetition, To make your meaning clear and precise, To avoid overused terms, and To achieve the proper tone (For example: "chicken" and "yellow" are informal synonyms of cowardly.) Some of the main entries will direct you to other main entries. For instance, the main entry "alert" (adj.) lists other adjectives: "attentive, wide-awake, watchful, vigilant, aware, conscious." It also directs you to the adjectives "awake, smart" and to the verb "warn." The description has accurately stated that this thesaurus "gives you a choice and helps you choose." The three main features of this thesaurus--main entries, cross-references, and the on-the-page index--are explained in the easy to understand How to Use This Book section in the front of the book. An Important Reminder is found on page 14 in the front of the book: "Teachers have one common complaint about the way thesauruses are used. They complain that often students will pick an unfamiliar synonym without realizing that is does not fit properly into the sentence where they put it...Anytime you are not certain whether a synonym is just the one you want, or if you are not sure what it means, look it up in a dictionary..." (I told you they were cousins!) My next newsletter will delve into using a concordance and also include some tips for using the thesaurus and dictionary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> What do you look like when you get out of bed? It's hard to look our best all the time. HSLDA works to present homeschooling in an engaging, dynamic, and informative light to the public news media. 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