Developing Reference

Skills

What is a reference?

A reference is anything you use

to help you find information.

Six Common Types of Reference

Materials
Dictionaries
Thesaurus
Encyclopaedia
Atlas
Almanac
Periodicals

Developing Reference
Skills using Dictionary and
Thesaurus

Dictionaries are books that list all the

words in a language.

With a dictionary you can learn:

How to spell a word

What a word means
How to say a word
What part of speech a word is
How many syllables are in a word
Whether or not to capitalize a word
How to abbreviate a word (Example- USA)
Meanings of prefixes and suffixes of a word

Your first key to remember when using

dictionaries

To make
dictionaries easier
to use, the words
are arranged in
alphabetical order.

Your second key to remember when

using dictionaries
Since there are so
many words in a
dictionary, guide
words are used to
help you locate a
word quickly.

 Guide words are

found at the top
of each page.
They tell you the
first and last
word that is
found on that
page.

Your third key to remember when using

dictionaries:

Be careful
what definition
you choose.

Vocabulary
Headwordthe word you are looking
up. It is always in bold type.
Entry- the information on the word
you are looking up.
Pronunciation- tells you how to say
the word.
Part of speech- tells you how the
word is used in a sentence
(n=noun, v=verb, adj=adjective,
adv=adverb).

Definition- all possible meanings

for the word. Many words have
more than one meaning.
Examples- Shows you how the
word is used in a sentence.
Usually found in italics.
Etymology- this tells you the
history of the word, and what
language it came from.

Thesaurus
A thesaurus is used to find words
that mean the same or opposite as
another word.
These are called synonyms and
antonyms.
They are simple to use- just look up
your word and a thesaurus will give
you the list of synonyms and
antonyms for that word.

 A thesaurus, however, DOES NOT usually

provide you with a definition (you need a
dictionary for that).

Retrieving Information
Information
retrieval
(IR) is the activity
of
obtaininginformati
on
resources relevant
to an information
need from a
collection of
information

 Students are now

able to obtain
information from a
variety of sources.
The World Wide
Web provides
access to, for
example academic
libraries, multimedia databases
and discussion
groups from which
individuals can
obtain a range of
up to date

Some ideas to encourage students to

make use of computer based
information retrieval systems might be:
Students can be directed to the World
Wide
Web as a source of information.
Ask the students
to recommend
useful URLs and use these to build up a
departmental Resource base for future
students reference.

 However, instruction in methods of

carrying out effective information
searches is important.
Setting a collaborate project where a
group has to give a presentation to
the rest of the class about a topical
subject but each group member
researches only one specified part of
the topic. The group work is then
dependant on each of the students
contributions.

 Ask first year student groups to

retrieve information from the library
about a topic and to present their
finding on a poster which could then
be assessed by the rest of the class.
Students could be asked to prepare
an assignment which uses only the
World Wide Web as a source of
information and has to cite the URLs
used in their reference list.