After many years correcting my students’ writing tasks, I came up with the idea of creating and online reference tool that I could use to point them to information about the nature of their mistakes. It has been a long time since I originally conceived the project but good things take time, and I hope this will turn out to be a good thing.
This dictionary has been conceived for students of all levels. If other teachers want to use it for their corrections, feel free! Needless to say that if you find it useful and you want to contribute with some entries of your own, you will be more than welcome. Just click on “contribute” and send me your entry. I will take care of the editing.
How to use the dictionary
Just write the word or words you want to look up in the search box and click on the word that will appear in the search results. You can either look for specific words, such as always, or dinner, or you can search for concepts or grammar items, such as dates, or present perfect. Alternatively, you might want to browse through the different entries. If you want to do that, just click on a letter on the top menu and a list of words beginning with that letter will display. You can also click on “all entries” and see the list of all the entries in alphabetical order. As you will see, the dictionary is still on its early stages, but bear up, it will get better.
For teachers!
How to improve the feedback you give on your students’ writing by using the Track Changes tool on Microsoft Word and the Learnglish Dictionary of Errors.
In the video below, I want to show you how to correct your students’ writing tasks by using the Track Changes tool of Microsoft Word and the Learnglish Dictionary of Errors. Many teachers are a bit reluctant to correct compositions using a word editor. “I don’t like to spend a lot of time in front of a screen,” they usually say. The older the teacher, the more unwilling they are to scrap compositions on paper to favour their digital counterpart. However, even though it is true that a backlit screen lacks the scent and touch of a sheet of paper, at least for the teachers who started teaching in the paper era, the advantages of the digital feedback simply outclass the corrections written in long hand.
The first and most important argument that I would like to put forward to try to win this debate is that students learn more and faster from their mistakes when they get digital feedback. Is this reason enough? I guess if you are a teacher and you are reading this is because you care, and you put your students’ learning process before your own convenience. Nevertheless, and this is the second argument I would like to present, after a while using Track Changes and the Learnglish Dictionary of Errors, you will be able to provide more information and spend less time correcting, so in the medium term not even your own convenience will be at stake any more. Convinced now? I hope you are at least convinced enough to give it a try. If you do, you will not regret it. Watch the video to learn how to do it. To watch this video in high definition, change the resolution options (on the bottom left menu of the player).
Finally, I would like to remind you that this dictionary is on its early stages. What I do is, when I am correcting my students’ compositions, I keep adding entries so that I can share the link with them. I have started adding those mistakes that my students are more prone to make, so that I can take the maximum advantage from the minimum entries. Completing the entries is a bit of work, but it soon pays off. This is why I would like other teachers who want to use this dictionary to send me their entries. The more the contributors, the faster this tool is going to grow, and the less the time we will all have to spend correcting. If you want to contribute, just click the tab called ‘Contribute’ above. For those who want to become regular contributors, I can make you subscribers so that you can directly write and edit your own entries.