5 words your students won't find in the dictionary.

Do your students think the dictionary is the end all be all when it comes to language resourses? Have you seen students that are linguistically paralyzed if you say no doctionaries allowed?


These are the words your students won't find in the dictionary:


Slang: Slang is always a big red flag for English as a second language students. Because language is always changing, because it is a living and fluid thing, there are always new words being born into English. After a piece of slang becomes more commonly used and is used by a larger portion of the population, it may gain status by being added to the dictionary. For example, in recent years the expression “ginormous” (a combination of giant and enormous) gained some popular usage. Most English speakers would say it is obviously slang, but it now appears in the dictionary, labeled as informal language.


New Technology: Slang is not the only place language changes. With scientific advances moving forward every day, language moves right along with it. Words are added to English with many scientific discoveries or technological advancements. Because of this, the dictionary will not reflect these recent additions to the language, even if they seem like legitimate words. For example, if someone were to ask you what a netsurfer is, you could probably tell him or her it issomeone who browses the internet for entertainment. You will not, however, find this word in the dictionary.


Loanwords
What do you think of when you hear the word fahrvergnugen? How about joie de vivre? In fact, both speak of the joy of life, of living the good life, and neither of these expressions is English, not in the traditional sense, anyway. When two languages have natural contact with one another, whether through business or social relationships or another means, the speakers of these languages at times will use words from the language not their own. With continued use by those original speakers and then the adoption of the foreign word by other native speakers, what was once a foreign word becomes a part of (in this case) the English language. These words borrowed from one language into another are called loanwords. 


Acronyms
In this age of text messages, perhaps the most necessary “words” your students will need to enable communication with native speakers are acronyms. An acronym is a word that is composed of the initial letters of the words or the important words that make up a larger phrase. Some acronyms become commonly used words over time and make their way into the dictionary in their own right, radar and FBI for example.


Finally, as anyone who has ever had a lesson on the dictionary knows, the valuable reference books do not include proper nouns and names among their entries. Most students will expect this to be the case, and they will not depend upon dictionaries to understand these words.


See ya guys o/