Pick the right side
Remember there are two halves to the dictionary. If you want to know what a French word means, look in the French-English half. It comes first.
If you want to translate an English word into French, look in the second half, which is English-French. It comes after the supplement in the middle of the dictionary.
1 Which of these words would you look up in the French-English half? demain brother horse bonbon
2 Look at page 51 of the dictionary. Is this the French side or the English side? How can you tell?
3 Look at page 411 of the dictionary. What is shown at the top of the page, above the row of dots?
4 Is fish the first or the last word on page 411?
Remember that you do not read across the whole page in a dictionary – you have to read down the columns.
5 Which word comes immediately after fireworks on page 411?
Step two:
Find the right word
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Words are in alphabetical order in the dictionary – like names in the phone book, and in a school register. The alphabet is shown down the edge of each page of the dictionary. You can sort words into alphabetical order by looking at the first letter of each word.
6 Can you put these names in alphabetical order? Chantal, Luc, Sophie, Pierre, Jean-Marie, Hélène When two words start with the same letter, look at their second letters.
7 In alphabetical order which comes first – Hermione or Harry? This is the order of the days of the week on a calendar: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
8 Which day comes first in a dictionary? Which comes last?
9 Thursday comes before Tuesday in a dictionary. Why?
10 Put the seven days of the week into alphabetical order. If the first letters are the same, and the second letters are the same, look at the third letters.
11 June, July, August: which comes last in the dictionary?
Step three:
Pick the right translation
The translations are easy to spot in this dictionary because they are in red on the French-English side and blue on the English-French side.
Some French words can be masculine or feminine, or even plural. In the dictionary MASC, FEM, and PL are the abbreviations used for these. The dictionary also shows you the French word for ‘the’ (this can be le, la, l’ or les).
doll NOUN
la poupée fem
When you look up doll you can see that the word for doll in French is poupée.
You can tell that the French word for doll is feminine because it is given with la and the dictionary says that it is fem (feminine).
So the doll is la poupée and a doll would be une poupée.
penfriend NOUN
le correspondant masc
la correspondante fem
I’m Emma, your English penfriend. Je suis Emma, ta correspondante anglaise.
Here there are two translations, one masculine, one feminine. If your penfriend is a boy, you need the French word which is masculine (masc) – le correspondant. If your penfriend is a girl, you need the French word which is feminine (fem) – la correspondante.
12 If you were talking about your penfriend, which would go in the gap, correspondant or correspondante?
J’ai un __________. Il s’appelle Hugo.
animal NOUN
l’ animal masc (pl les animaux)
Here there are two translations. The second one is plural (PL).
13 If you want to say that you love animals, which translation would go in the gap?
J’adore les __________.
Sometimes there is more than one translation, and each one has a number. If there is more than one translation, don’t just pick the first one! Check to see which is the right one.
ball NOUN
1 la balle fem (for tennis, golf, cricket) Hit the ball! Frappe la balle!
2 le ballon masc (for football, rugby) Pass the ball! Passe le ballon!
14 Which is the French word for a ball that you kick – une balle or un ballon? Look for the clue.
Step four:
Parts of speech
Sometimes, to pick the right translation, you need to know the part of speech of a word, for example whether a word is a noun, an adjective, an adverb or a verb. Other parts of speech are conjunction, exclamation, number, preposition and pronoun.
NOUNS
Nouns are naming words for things or people. You often use the words ‘a’ or ‘the’ with a noun – eg a girl, a boy, the school, the windows.
Nouns can be singular, eg an accident, the canteen, my dad, football
