 As-Salam-Alaikum. Welcome to virtual university. I am Surya Yash of Imir, your tutor for English. This course has been designed to improve your proficiency in English. A reading package with exercises and activities accompanies this course. You will be assessed from time to time and you will be assessed through a variety of means. You will be assessed through quizzes, assignments, a term exam and a final exam. The weightage is 15 percent for quizzes, assignments 15 percent, midterm exam will carry 30 percent and your final exam will carry 40 percent. Today's lesson is in two parts. In the first part, we will talk about the dictionary. The dictionary, its uses and how to use a dictionary. And in the second part, you will hear a very interesting story and we will ask you questions based on that story. Now you have all seen a dictionary and you would like to know what is a dictionary. Well, a dictionary as we all know is a book, a book that lists the words of the language. It lists them and records the words of a language. It is not only a record, it is also, it also spells, tells you how to pronounce words, it defines words, it explains words and it also tells you the uses of words. Now, there are many dictionaries. You will find a dictionary of scientific terms. You will find a dictionary which is, which will tell you about music. You will find a dictionary about art. You as students of English, your concern is with a language dictionary. There are many dictionaries. There is the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary and there is the Webster's Dictionary, two very famous dictionaries. And in this lesson, we will be telling you about how to use these dictionaries. There are many things that a dictionary will tell you. I shall just count nine of those things that a dictionary will tell you. Number one, if you want to consult the spellings, you should, the dictionary will tell you. The next thing is the pronunciation, how words are pronounced. The third is the grammar part. If you want to know what part of speech a word belongs to, the dictionary is the book that you must consult. Then a dictionary will tell you the origin of a word, the history of the word. Then it will tell you the meanings, the explanations, the definitions and it will also tell you how the word is used by the speakers of that language. You will also find synonyms, words with similar meanings, words which have opposite meanings, all these you will find in the dictionary. You will also find foreign words and expressions and if you want some general information, it will also be in your dictionary. The first thing that I will tell you about in detail are spellings. Now many students of English find English spelling very confusing. So what do we do about it? The simplest thing is consult your dictionary, but it will only help you if you know how to consult your dictionary. You will find that most dictionaries carry either at the beginning of the dictionary or at the end a page where the rules of spelling are given. All you have to do is at least once in a lifetime. You can open that page and look at the rules. There are not very many rules, not more than six or seven rules. If you go through those rules, you will find that you may not require consulting the dictionary again and again if you go through the rules. Now you will find that there are different spellings. Americans spell certain words in a different way. British spelling is different. Well let me tell you both spellings are correct. You as a student should stick to one spelling. If you prefer the American spelling then be consistent. Whenever you use that word use that spelling. If you prefer the British spelling then you use the British spelling. All you have to do is be consistent. I would like you to open your dictionaries and look at the word theatre and the word catalogue. On the screen you will find these words given and just see how they are spelled. Your dictionary will clarify for you. It will have the word AAM for American, BR for British. It will tell you which is the British spelling and which is the American spelling. Now that is the first use of your dictionary. Second use of a dictionary is that it will tell you, help you in pronouncing the words of English. English pronunciations are very confusing. But if you know how to use the dictionary you will find that it will no longer be a problem for you. Now that is only if you know how to use the dictionary. All dictionaries, language dictionaries carry a table of pronunciation either at the beginning or at the end. You must go through this. I shall not talk about it in detail today. But in our next lesson we will be talking about pronunciation. So you just wait for the next lesson. The third use of the dictionary is that it clarifies for learners what part of speech the word you are looking up belongs to. Whether the word is commonly used as a noun or a pronoun or a verb. The dictionary will even tell you if it is a transitive verb or an intransitive verb. Whether it is an adjective, an adverb, conjunction or preposition. Now the third thing that a dictionary will tell you is the part of speech. The word that you are looking up what part of speech it belongs to. All dictionaries indicate what part of speech a word belongs to. Whether the word is a noun or a verb it will even tell you whether it is a transitive verb or an intransitive verb. Whether it is an adjective or an adverb, conjunction, article or preposition. Now I forgot to tell you one thing. Your dictionary when you consult a dictionary you must look at there is a page where it mentions all the abbreviations that are used in that dictionary. So if you go through that page where the abbreviations are listed you will have no problem looking at looking up the part of speech. You will find they are always in italics. Now the fourth thing that you will find your dictionary tells you is the origin of words. Now this is a very interesting area. Fascinating those of you who want to know how words have developed. Now there is a very large body of words in English that have come from other languages. Well not all dictionaries list the origin of words. The technical word for this is etymology. Modern dictionaries, language dictionaries usually do not. But if you have got an old dictionary in the house you will notice that it will give you the origin of the word whether it is from French or German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek, it is all given over there. It is only for those who are interested in finding out the origin and development of words. The fourth thing that you will find in a dictionary and this is the most important of all is the meaning. All dictionaries, language dictionaries give you the meaning of the word. Now there are some words for which meanings are given. For others you will find definitions are given and for some explanations are given and this is the most important information about a word. Now when you look up a dictionary for its meaning, be careful that you do not run away after looking at one meaning. Some words have more than one meaning and the dictionary lists all those meanings. They are numbered. Most words have more than one meaning. In fact we would say shades of meaning. You look up the word bank in your dictionary and you will find that it is listed in three or four numbers. Now you as a learner you must look up, look at all the other words so that you get an idea which word, which meaning is the one that you require. Maybe you just look at the first meaning and you close your dictionary. Maybe that is not the meaning that you require. Go down the numbered list. Look for the meaning that best suits the context in which the word that you are looking up is used. You will find many many words in English. They have more than one meaning. I will just give you one example. Take the word spring. Now if you look at the dictionary you will find that spring is used as a noun. The word spring can mean season, the season of spring when the flowers are out. The word spring is also used for water that comes out of the ground. That again is a noun. And you will find that the word spring is again used as a noun for that steel wire that is usually you will find in beds and in cushions and sofas. It is a spring. All three are nouns. All three different meanings. And yet there is another word. There is another meaning of the word spring and that is spring as a verb when you jump on something. For instance the cat springs at you. So what I am trying to point out to you is that do not close the dictionary after looking at one meaning. Go down the list and you will learn to find that words they might have the same form, the same spelling. But they function, they have different meanings. They function in different ways in a sentence. Now the fifth use of a dictionary on your screens you will find exercises dealing with meanings. But I shall move on to the another use, another very important use of the dictionary. The dictionary as I said earlier tells you how the speakers of the language use words. Now you are sitting here miles away from England and America. How would you know that the speakers use a word? The dictionary is the place to go to. You will find that your dictionary it will tell you the usage of words and phrases, idioms, proverbs of the language they are all listed in your dictionary. Your dictionary will also tell you the limitations of the use of the word. For instance take the word look. The word look is used in so many different ways. It is used as look up. These are two word verbs look up, look into, look at, look down. These are the idioms of the language. How would you know that the way they are used? So look at the dictionary and you will notice that it is all given there. Some dictionaries illustrate the meaning by using them in sentences. Now you will find that special labels have been designed to tell you the usage of the word. If a word is no longer in current use, it is a word that belongs to let us say Shakespeare's time. The dictionary will tell you the abbreviation is archaic. The word is archaic and it will the word will carry A R C H in brackets and it will tell you that this use of the word is no longer current. It is no longer in current use. It is an archaic use of the word or you will find there are other labels which tell you the use of the word. For instance you will find a word that is used only in poetry. The dictionary will tell you in where the word is listed. It will tell you in brackets that it is poetic or if a word is used in a derogatory in a bad way. The dictionary will tell you that it is not a polite word. If it is a slang word, the dictionary will tell you. So that is why earlier on I told you that you must read the list of abbreviations. If you look at the abbreviations they will tell you all these labels will be listed over there. The dictionary will also tell you whether a word is formal or informal. All these uses you will find in a dictionary. Now on your screen you will see a few exercises. I shall just read out one or two sentences for you. You will see three sentences and they tell you how those words are used. For instance it says Professor Widdowson held forth for over an hour about the need of communication language teaching, communicative language teaching. Now the word held forth there is a special label for this word, for this use of the words. Number two, I don't get how you found the answer. Now the use of the word get, this is a special use. It is colloquial. That is it is used in spoken English. Another example, my roommate is pretty hard up these days. Now the word hard up that is an idiom. How would you know the meaning? So your dictionary gives all these things. All you have to do is consult your dictionary whenever you are in trouble. Whenever you want to find out a word go to your dictionary. Another example, you have heard the word guys, the word cool. Now they are used in different ways. Your dictionary will tell you that cool means not hot, not warm. It will also tell you that cool is an informal word. It can also mean, it can also be used in a slang way. The word ok. Will it be ok if I met you at the library about 8? Now what does ok mean over here? The dictionary will tell you that it is colloquial. That is it is used in spoken language and it means alright. Now the 6th use of the dictionary is that a dictionary will tell you the synonyms and antonyms of words. Synonyms are words that are similar in meaning and antonyms are words that are opposite in meaning. Now not all dictionaries list these. In the good old days dictionaries carried this information as well. But now frequently you do not find this in most dictionaries. The next thing that you will find in your dictionary is foreign words. Most language dictionaries carry foreign words and phrases. Either they are listed in the main entries or you will find them listed in a separate section at the end of the dictionary. Words like kudeta etc. vice versa. These are all words, foreign words and your dictionary is sure to have them. If a priori yes that is a difficult word one does not come across every day. But if you do all you have to do is look up your dictionary and you will find the meaning given over there. And the last thing that your dictionary will tell you is some general information. Now in the past most dictionaries carried general information. This was information about people important personages, names of rivers, towns, cities or big events. But language dictionaries nowadays do not carry such information. They may have tables of conversion tables, weights and measures, names of prominent English names. You will find all these listed in a separate section not in the main entries of the dictionary. Now these were, I talked about nine uses of the dictionary. I just told you about the nine uses of a dictionary. Some of the things that you can do with a dictionary. Now I shall tell you how to use a dictionary. Now the time that you spend on learning what a dictionary contains and how it should be used will save up time later, will save up much of your time later. If you know how to use a dictionary it will save you a lot of time later on. Now the first thing is that you must know your alphabet, the order of the English alphabet. Because all entries in the dictionary are arranged in alphabetical order. Now and the words are arranged according to the first letter. When words begin with the same letter they are arranged according to the second letter. And if both the first and the second letter are the same, are the same words. If both the first and the second letters are the same words, the same words are arranged according to the third letter. Now I will just show you a dictionary. You must learn to use the dictionary in such a way that you do not spend time looking, turning over the pages because a lot of people do not know how to use the dictionary. And they spend time flipping through the pages going back and forth and not finding the word that they want to. Now when you are looking for a word, first thing just thumb through, thumb through the pages quickly, just go through them like this. Look only at the guide words. Now what are guide words? Guide words are those words that you will find at the top of the page. Pick up any dictionary and you will find that the word that is given, the words that are given at the top of the page on your left hand side here and you will find a word given on the right hand side. There you will always find them in bold letters. They are called the guide words. They are meant to guide you to the word that you are looking for. You will notice that the word on the top, on the left hand side is the first word, is the first entry on this side, on the left side of the page. And the word on the right hand side, when you are looking for a word in the dictionary, you should look only at the guide words. The guide words are the words on the top of the page. These are words given right at the top, on the left hand side and one on the right hand side. And you will notice that they are always in bold letters. The word that is given on the left hand side is the first entry on that page. The word given on the right hand side is the last entry on that page. And this will help you find the word that you are looking for. If it is not on that page, turn the page and go ahead look down on the next page. Now in today's lesson, you learnt two things. The first was the different uses of the dictionary. What are the things that you can learn from a dictionary? And the other thing that you learnt about a dictionary was how to use the dictionary, how you can find words quickly. Now, let me just recap for you. Go over what we have done today. As students of English, you need to know how to use a dictionary. You should think of your dictionary as a tool. It is a tool that you can use. It is something that will make you an independent learner. You do not have to wait for your teacher or for someone else to come and tell you. All you have to do is consult your dictionary and you can learn a lot about the English language. It will tell you, if you know how to use it correctly, you will discover the full potential of the language. And it will make you an independent learner. And I would say that you should treat it like a friend and you will find that it is a friend. It will help you in learning English. Now, with that we come to the end of the first part of our lesson. Now we are moving to the second part of the lesson and I hope you will enjoy this part. I shall read a story to you and you sit back and just relax and listen to the story. You will listen to a folk tale from North America. The story is about a natural event, raven and the coming of daylight by Gail Robinson and Douglas Hill. When the earth was very young, it was dark and cold like a winter's night through all the years' seasons. Gull was the custodian of daylight and he kept it locked tight in a cedar box beneath his wing. Now being custodian, Gull felt very important and he was not going to lose his position by letting daylight out of the box. He is too vain, screeched owl at a meeting of the people upon meeting hill. We can never travel in this darkness to our homes in the south, cried Robin. Her breast was bleached of color for lack of light. They decided to have a meeting and Gull agreed to come to the meeting. But it was clear when he came that he was not going to change his mind or listen to what raven said. He had come only because it made him feel even more important to have raven pleading with him. I was made custodian of daylight in the beginning of things said Gull. I am to keep daylight safe and I will keep it safe. And he curved his wing tighter around the cedar box. Raven had run out of words to make Gull see the people's need for light. He thought angrily to himself, I wish this Gull would step on a large thorn. No sooner had he shaped his thought then Gull cried out, Scream my foot. A thorn cousin asked raven innocently, let me see, I will take it out for you. But of course it was so dark that he could not see the thorn to remove it. I must have light to take out the thorn said raven. Light never said Gull. Then the thorn will remain said Gull. Gull complained and hopped on one foot and wept. And he finally opened his cedar box a crack. A crack so tiny, so narrow that out glanced a shaft of light, no brighter than a single star. Raven put his hand to Gull's foot. Then pretended not to see the thorn. Instead he pushed it in deeper. Scream cried Gull my foot. More light, more light shouted raven. And the lid of the box rose a further crack so that light gleamed forth like a winter moon. Then raven reached again for the thorn and pushed it even further into the soft flesh of Gull's foot. More light roared raven. Scree, scree, scree screamed Gull. And in his pain he flung off the lid of the cedar box. Like a molten fish the sun slithered out from the box and light and warmth blazed out over the world. Nor was it ever to be recaptured. No matter how loudly or how sadly, Gull called to it to return to its safe hiding place beneath his wing. You have heard the story, now you answer the questions on the story. I shall read them out, I shall read them out twice. Let the one which you think is the most, the one that expresses the main idea of the story. What is the story about? Is the story about A, the removal of the thorn from Ravensfoot, B, the meeting of birds and animals upon meeting hill, C, the release of daylight over the earth, D, the capture of daylight in the Cedar box. Now out of these four, which statement expresses the main idea of the story? Well it is statement C, the release of daylight over the earth. The next question is, I shall read out eight statements, eight statements and you on a piece of paper just write true, if you think the statement is true or F write T, if you think the statement is exactly as the story, as it was in the story or F if it is false, not as given in the story. A, Raven and Gull are birds, B, Gull and Raven are related, C, Raven felt important being custodian of daylight, D, daylight was kept under a wing, E, Raven pushed a thorn into Gull's foot, F, Gull at once opened the box for Raven to see the thorn, G, the sun slipped out of the box, H, Gail Robinson is the author of the story. Now which ones are true statements and which ones are false? Well statement A, Raven and Gull are birds, did you know that Raven is a bird that belongs to the crow family, it is a black bird and Gull is also a bird, you must have seen C Gulls, you must have read about C Gulls and Gulls, they are birds, so Raven and Gull are birds that is a true statement. The other one was Gull and Raven are related, in the story it says that Gull and Raven were cousins, so this statement is also true, statement C, Raven felt important being custodian of daylight, this is false, because it was Gull who was custodian of daylight, statement D daylight was kept under a wing, false, because daylight was kept in a Cedar box which Gull kept under its wing, so it was in a box not in a wing, the next statement Raven pushed a thorn into Gull's foot, no Raven didn't push it, he just thought that if only Gull had a thorn in his foot, he thought of it and it so happened that Gull got a thorn in its foot, the next statement Gull at once opened the box, no Gull did not, he did not open it at once and the next sentence the sun slipped out of the box, that is a true statement, because the sun do you remember I said the sun slithered out like molten fish, so statement A, B and G are true, the last statement Gail Robinson is the author of the tale, no that is not true either, because it is Gail Robinson and Douglas Hill, there are two authors of this tale, now that is the end of lesson one, hope you enjoyed the story, it is an interesting story, because what does the story tell you, the story is an attempt at explaining a natural phenomena, it explains to you how daylight came to the earth, this is a folk tale, a folk myth, people in the villages always create little stories to explain natural events, natural phenomena and as I said earlier, it is an ancient myth, an ancient myth which contains a magical or religious ideas, it is an attempt by mankind to understand their surroundings and give meaning to life, thank you, Allah Hafiz, see you next time.