Last week I had an opportunity to listen to and meet Joanna Turnbull, managing editor of Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (OALD) 8th edition. She spoke on the topic, ‘Overcoming the challenge of writing: what is the role of a dictionary?’ at the seventh international and 43rd annual ELT@I conference held in Chennai. She discussed the psycholinguistic processes involved in producing a piece of writing and the challenges associated. During her presentation she explained how the new OALD differs from many other dictionaries?
The new OALD comes with the iWriter, an interactive tutor to help students plan, write, and review their written work. The new OALD defines words in a language that students understand, gives useful example sentences, and includes the help learners need to expand their vocabulary. It can help students develop their knowledge of text structure and keep their writing focused. The software offers two options: students who have ideas can write on their own or see a model as a guide to get ideas. While using the software students come across a range of text styles an advanced learner might need to write for academic or general purposes.
Users can get advice on the structure of a sentence or the notes they made during the planning session. The notes and content sections are interactive so the students can type their plan or write their essay directly into iWriter. The learners can save their work and the software tells them how to check and edit their essay. Once editing is over the written work can be exported into a document and it is ready to be marked.
Writing is a process which has three stages: pre-writing, writing and post-writing. In the pre-writing students plan and prepare an outline and they translate their thoughts into words in the writing stage. During the post-writing stage they edit the written text and give it a proper shape. iWriter helps learners improve their process of writing and get a good end product. Writing is a difficult task but with the help of Oxford iWriter, a learner can learn the art of writing and even master it with regular practice n
— rayanal@yahoo.co.uk