The teaching of dictionary use aims to bridge the gap between existing dictionary content and users' reference skills. Thus, instruction should be customized to the users' specific needs. Therefore, I propose providing the kind of teaching that compensates for deficiencies of present dictionary presentation to link the disparity between current dictionary content and the teacher's idealized content. I suggest including the following five points.
1 End-focus/end-weight
Users may be puzzled by the choice between the following sentences: His death set in motion a train of events that led to the outbreak of war (OALD Online) and His death set a train of events that led to the outbreak of war in motion. Instructors would teach the former as preferred because of the end-weight principle. They could also refer to end-focus and show how both principles affect sentence structures.
2 Mandative subjunctive/putative should
With reference to the following example, instructors should teach that this usage is characteristic of American English and that British English tends to use putative should: It is crucial that we get this right. (OALD Online)
3 Prepositional adverb
OALD Online indicates a pattern of join in (something) in the entry for join in, without giving any examples of "join in something." Point out that "in" here is a prepositional adverb, the teacher could provide an example (e.g., He stared at them without joining in the conversation [LDOCE Online]).
4 Identification of the meaning of an element in a phrase
Informed by corpora, EFL dictionaries include large numbers of set phrases. However, there are cases where the meaning of an element in a phrase is unclear. A case in point is "sights" in "set one's sights on." CALD, COBUILD, LDOCE, and OALD only provide the phrase without dealing with the sense of "sights." Instructors should teach that "sights" means 'a goal.' They can also refer to MED and MWALED, which treat the 'aim' sense of "sights."
5 DV-induced unnatural English
All major EFL dictionaries have adopted defining vocabulary, for its advantages, but there are sporadic unnatural English definitions: E.g., A warthog is a wild pig with two large teeth that curve upwards at the sides of its mouth (COBUILD). Teachers should correct "teeth" as "tusk" for the students' proper vocabulary development.
These instructional practices should be shared among teachers. Furthermore, the teaching points and examples should be reported to publishers, to improve their dictionary content, akin to bottom-up lexicography.
References
Yamada, Shigeru. 2010. "EFL dictionary revolution: Innovations and drawbacks." Eds. Kernerman, Ilan J. and Paul Bogaards. English Learners' Dictionaries at the DSNA 2009. Tel Aviv: K Dictionaries. 147-168.
Yamada, Shigeru. 2017. "EFL Dictionaries Should Treat Meaning More Properly." The 11th International Conference of the Asian Association for Lexicography. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. June 10-12, 2017.
Yamada, Shigeru. 2019. "Utility of EFL Dictionaries for Reading a Political Text: The Case of Obama's Farewell Address." Joint Conference of the Dictionary Society of North America and Studies in the History of the English Language. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. May 8-11, 2019.
