The Word Watchers

Children's Dictionaries

A History

Children's Dictionaries rarely get the kudos they deserve. In 1596 Edmund Coote, master of Freeschool at Bury St. Edmunds produced a text book called The English Schoole-Maister. It consisted of graded passages of text at progressive levels of complexity and a supplement of about 20 pages at the back. This supplement consisted of "slightly hard words in alphabetical order with meanings". This is the first attempt at producing a reading scheme and the first ever monolingual English dictionary together. The aim of The English Schoole-Maister was to teach children (and illiterate adults) to read and give them first reference skills. The modern dictionary also owes its existence to the efforts of another schoolmaster to teach his pupils the meanings of "hard words". In 1604 Robert Cawdrey compiled "A Table Alphabetical". This was an alphabetical list of hard words aimed at schoolboys.

In this sense school dictionaries are as old as lexicography. But dictionaries for children, as we know them today, with carefully selected headword lists and graded vocabularies were unknown before the twentieth century.

It was not until the 1930s that the first general school dictionary arrived, when Edward L. Thorndike, an educational psychologist, first put forward the notion of a controlled and graded defining vocabulary for children, and produced his Century-Thorndike Dictionaries, which were aimed at three levels of school-age children.

These first attempts at school dictionaries were a far cry from the children's dictionaries of today, with their rigid definitions and painfully formal English. As recently as 1970 definitions like the following could be found in school dictionaries aimed at 8 – 14 year olds:

dog, n.
carnivorous quadruped, domesticated in great variety of breeds, also found wild; male of this or fox or wolf.

prejudice, n.
preconceived opinion, favourable or unfavourable bias. v.t. damage validity or prospects of; inspire with prejudice.

irony, n.
expression of meaning by use of words normally conveying opposite meaning: apparent perversity of fate or circumstance.

NEW DICTIONARY ENTRIES (The Oxford English Dictionary for Schools)

dog noun (plural dogs)
a four-legged animal that barks, often kept as a pet.

prejudice noun (plural prejudices)
a fixed opinion formed without examining the facts fairly.

Part of the problem in the early days of children's dictionary publishing was that children's dictionaries were produced – almost as an aside – by the same editors and lexicographers who produced adult dictionaries with little school trialling and teacher and child input.
It is only in recent years that publishers have begun to realize how important it is to target language level, word choice and design at different age levels, and how necessary it is to use editors and lexicographers who are children's specialists - in conjunction with educational advisers and teachers and extensive classroom trialling.

Oxford's Specialist Children's Dictionary Unit

Oxford University Press has its own specialist Children's Dictionary Publishing Unit. This unit produces dictionaries that are conceived and put together, often from scratch, and specially targeted at specific age levels. The unit is staffed by editors and lexicographers who are specialists in children's publishing, they in turn are supported by expert educational advisers and practising teachers.

All Oxford's children's dictionaries are trialled and tested in schools. In the younger dictionaries headword entries are drawn from word frequency tables which are based on material from primary school reading lists and children's written class work, so that it includes words young children frequently come across and use on a regular basis.

Our editors construct detailed dictionary questionnaires that are sent out to schools; they commission teachers to trial dictionaries in class using exercises designed to check that children find the dictionary easy to use, that it contains all the information they need, and that it is aimed at the appropriate level.

The teachers then make comments and recommendations and send in children’s written work. In addition, linguistically interested teachers are asked to comment not only on the whole headword list which can be as large as 40,000 headwords, but also on all the definitions and the appropriateness of the examples!

How are words chosen?

Headwords are selected by frequency of occurrence in reading and writing at a particular age group. Familiar words are entered (not only "hard words") as it has been found that young children develop dictionary skills more quickly and more easily when searching for information they are already familiar with. The definitions may well be written as ordinary sentences, as if they are replies to a child's questions rather than in the usual dictionary telegraphese. What is a ruby?

Definitions in a Children’s Dictionary:

ruby
A ruby is a red jewel.

Definitions for very young children concentrate on the main features of a word describing what children will identify with. In a sense, it is seeing through the eyes of a child. What do you think of when you hear the word owl?

Entry for owl from My First Oxford Dictionary

owl (owls)

An owl is a bird with large eyes. Owls hunt small animals at night.

Entry for mushroom from My First Oxford Dictionary

mushroom (mushrooms)

A mushroom is a living thing that grows in the earth and looks like a little umbrella.

Obviously the vocabulary used in the definitions will be at a level appropriate to the age-group, but also the information content will be pitched at what a young child can identify with, not loaded down with detail that is not useful to them at that stage.

What Makes a Good Children's Dictionary?

To answer this question you have to ask, what do children need from a dictionary? Eventually, they need the same as a sophisticated adult dictionary-user needs: they want to check spelling, or to find out what an unfamiliar word means or how it is used. But also, while they're doing all these things, they need to be learning to be dictionary-users. These are the twin aims that the compilers of a dictionary for children have to bear in mind (1.use a dictionary to look up information and 2.acquire dictionary skills).

Age and learning stage of a child are crucial in the compilation of children’s dictionaries. Children who are beginning readers need dictionaries which focus on a few early dictionary skills, like learning the alphabet and finding the way round the alphabet. Older readers can progress to acquiring more complex dictionary skills, like learning how to look up a word for spelling and context. It is only a very confident dictionary user who will use a dictionary to look up words because they need general information on usage, grammar, pronunciation, origin of that particular word and will refer to appendices, introductions, and use complicated cross-referencing systems.

A child of five has different needs from a child of thirteen. For five-year-olds, the dictionary is a new experience, and they need to be led into its mysteries as sympathetically as possible. As they grow, the dictionaries need to grow with them, and a publisher must provide dictionaries which progress in complexity and which are also clearly demarcated so a child at any age and any particular learning stage can find a dictionary which is most suitable for their needs.

Another feature which make a good children’s dictionary is good adequate coverage suitable for a particular age group and stage of learning. We do not aim toward comprehensive coverage and no children’s dictionary is suitable for extensive adult use. It is important to know that any omissions of words do not necessarily have any bearing on the quality and usefulness of a children’s dictionary. The average adult uses only about 3000 words, and understands about 5000 to 10000 words. Our large Primary School Dictionary has 25000 entries and our large Secondary School Dictionary has about 40000 entries - so our coverage is by no means small!

Getting the dictionary habit should be fun, not boring or difficult.

So it's important to use plenty of colour, the page design must be spacious, with none of the small print and compressed text of a conventional adult dictionary. The binding and package are also important; books must be sturdy to withstand the wear and tear they receive from children’s hands.

Using dictionaries and acquiring early dictionary skills is extremely important. It equips us adults with the general reference skills we need in later life, and enables us to find our way around big books - regardless of whether they are large encyclopedias, cookery books, telephone directories, or even shopping catalogues and television guides!

Visit Oxford's dedicated Children's Dictionaries website

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