University of Tartu
The Macmillan School Dictionary (henceforth the MSD) is a new dictionary. Gwyneth Fox, associate editor of this dictionary and of the Macmillan Essential Dictionary for Learners of English (Essential), is known to those Estonian teachers of English who attended her two excellent and informative presentations on corpus-based monolingual learners’ dictionaries at our 2004 summer seminar in Pärnu. An innovative feature of this new dictionary is its focus on 6,000 specialized terms that occur in English-language secondary-school textbooks. The Macmillan School Dictionary is primarily intended for those students who learn various school subjects in English, attend an English-medium school, or plan to take exams in English. As is known, some of our secondary schools also teach various subjects in English (e.g. geography).
The dictionary covers about twenty subject fields, and the specialized terms are labelled accordingly: agriculture, anatomy, art, chemistry, computing, economics, education, environment, geography, geology, language, health, literature, maths, music, physics, religion, science, and social studies. A word may have multiple senses each belonging to a different subject field and carrying a different label e.g.
fertility noun [U] 1 AGRICULTURE the ability of the soil to produce a lot of good crops or other plants 2 BIOLOGY the ability of a woman or female animal to produce young: fertility treatment 3 SOCIAL STUDIES the number of children born into a family, a group, or into society generally.The treatment of specialized terms is based on a 20-million-word Macmillan Curriculum Corpus, which covers school textbooks and exam syllabuses. A brief look at the list of entries labelled as biology shows that a layperson may easily not be familiar with more complicated textbook terminology. You could ask yourself if you know the meaning of, for example, axil, cilium, corolla, monocotyledon, organelle, pistil, or spinneret. The list includes also a considerable number of multi-word terms that are not listed in usual school dictionaries, e.g. amniotic fluid, binocular vision, denitrifying bacteria, gaseous exchange, cloven hoof, compound leaf, false leg.
Michael Rundell, editor-in-chief, points out that the Macmillan Curriculum Corpus also “shows us how concepts are explained in the textbooks that students actually use in the classroom, and this gives us a model for our definitions” (MSD, vi). Thus, we are told that the definitions of the labelled specialized terms are much more than ‘regular’ definitions in monolingual learners’ dictionaries (such as the Essential). Let us put next to each other the definitions of insect in the Essential and in the MSD.
EssentialFirst, we can see that the definining style of the MSD for subject-labelled senses is much more scientific than that used in the Essential. Second, the entry in the MSD includes a number of references to other scientific concepts covered by the dictionary (arthropod, thorax, abdomen). Third, the example sentence provided in the MSD is likely to come from the Macmillan Curriculum Corpus and and could be an authentic textbook example. Fourth, in the MSD there is a reference to a whole-page picture on p.385 that lists twenty-two insects and arachnids plus another illustration showing compound eye, antenna, thorax, simple eye, mandible, egg-laying organ, spiracle.
Although the MSD is a monolingual dictionary, it made me think about the bilingual perspective of curriculum vocabulary. Estonian philologists generally do not approve of the idea of teaching school subjects in foreign languages. They claim that in that case our students do not master the mother-tongue terminology and their language will reveal domain loss. They also claim that such students are at a disadvantage when they have to take their exams in Estonian. I believe they are right, but we cannot ignore the fact that in real life we have to function in an multilingual environment. Thus, it would be a great idea to improve future bilingual dictionaries along these lines. Unfortunately, there is no Estonian corpus of curriculum vocabulary as yet. For the time being one can think of temporary solutions only. Recent years have seen the publication of a number of Estonian-language subject-field glossaries for secondary school students. The subjects covered include, for example, biology (Toom, 2003), geography (Pihlak, 2002), and literature (Hennoste, 2003). These monolingual glossaries can be bilingualized, and this type of vocabulary can be incorporated into new bilingual dictionaries.
The MSD is a dictionary with a difference and as such is a welcome addition to our reference shelf.
References
Hennoste, Märt. Väike kirjanduse leksikon. Õpilase abimees. Tallinn: Argo, 2003. 67 p.
Essential = Macmillan Essential Dictionary for Learners of English. Oxford, 2003. 861 p.
MSD = Macmillan School Dictionary. Oxford, 2004. 871 p.
Pihlak, Liisa-Kai. Õpilase geograafiasõnastik. Tallinn: koolibri, 2002. 40 p.
Toom, Maie. Väike bioloogiamõistete sõnastik põhikoolile. Tallinn: Avita, 2003. 98 p