Improving the Compilation of English–Chinese Children's Dictionaries: A Children's Cognitive Perspective

IF 0.9 2区文学 N/A LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS Lexikos Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI:10.5788/32-1-1681

Dan Zhao, Hai Xu

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Abstract

hildren's dictionaries have existed for more than one thousand years in China, and play an important role in children's learning. However, many of those produced in China are deficient in the selection of the wordlist, in exemplification, and in definition. This paper aims at improving the compilation of English–Chinese children's dictionaries (ECCDs) from a children's cognitive perspective. Children's dictionaries should not only be an abridgement or simplification of dictionaries for adults, because their target user group is immature, uninformed and untrained children. Informed by some innovations in current English learner's dictionaries, this paper proposes that the making of ECCDs needs to be improved in the following aspects. Firstly, instead of lexicographers' intuition, the selection of headwords should be based on an English corpus for Chinese children. Secondly, the words used in examples should be congruent with children's limited cognitive and learning abilities. Thirdly, a multifaceted method of explanation should be provided in order to assist children in understanding the meaning of headwords. Keywords: English–Chinese children's dictionaries, user focus, children's corpus, headwords, children's cognitive ability, illustrations, examples

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从儿童认知的角度改进英汉儿童词典的编写

儿童词典在中国已有一千多年的历史，在儿童的学习中起着重要的作用。然而，中国的许多词典在词表的选择、例证和定义上都存在不足。本文旨在从儿童认知的角度对英汉儿童词典的编写进行改进。儿童词典不应该仅仅是成人词典的删节或简化，因为他们的目标用户群体是不成熟的、不知情的和未受过训练的儿童。根据当前英语学习词典的一些创新，本文提出了英语学习词典的制作需要在以下几个方面进行改进。首先，词头词的选择应基于中国儿童英语语料库，而不是词典编纂者的直觉。其次，例句中使用的词语应符合儿童有限的认知和学习能力。第三，应提供多方面的解释方法，以帮助儿童理解标题词的含义。关键词:英汉儿童词典，用户焦点，儿童语料库，头词，儿童认知能力，插图，例句

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来源期刊

Lexikos Multiple-

CiteScore

1.00

自引率

25.00%

发文量

审稿时长

7 weeks

期刊介绍： Lexikos (Greek for "of or for words") is a journal for the lexicographical specialist. It is the only journal in Africa which is exclusively devoted to lexicography. Articles dealing with all aspects of lexicography and terminology or the implications that research in related disciplines such as linguistics, computer and information science, etc. has for lexicography will be considered for publication. Articles may be written in Afrikaans, English, Dutch, German and French.