Understanding English Dictionaries

Over the six weeks of the course, learners explore the key areas of the curriculum below through readings, articles, videos and multimedia resources, quizzes, social engagement with fellow learners and active learning resources: Most FutureLearn courses run multiple times. Every run of a course has a set start date but you can join it and work through it after it starts. Find out more This course is for anyone with a general interest in the English language. It might also be useful for those studying or teaching English, languages or lexicography. Please note that the individuals listed below under the title “Who will you learn with?” may be subject to change. You can use the hashtag #FLdictionaries to talk about this course on social media.

• The reasons why we use dictionaries.
• The differences between ‘landmark’ dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary and less conventional products such as collaborative and crowdsourced dictionaries.
• What goes into a dictionary – who decides, and how?
• Dictionaries and dictionary information for different users.
• The stages in corpus-based lexicography.
• How meanings are created, why some words have more than one meaning, how lexicographers identify meanings and how meanings are explained in a dictionary.