Quiz 1

Why is a portfolio important?

• helps to get familiar with use of media
• form of Applied Text Linguistics
• collecting material + tasks in chronological/alphabetical order makes preparations for the final test easier

What should a portfolio contain, and how are these components defined?

• material + tasks/homeworks
• should be easy to use --> structure
• professional formatting

Why should the portfolio be on a website?

• easy access
• Applied Text Linguistics
• no e-Mail chaos

How do you make a website?

• using a web log
• running an own server + uploading files
• use a different web service provider + uploading files
• using the university website

Quiz 2

What is a website? What is a hypertext?
-> see the answers here

What is a text and what are its main properties?
-> klick

How do these properties relate to the mind/to the world?
The properties of semantics/pragmatics and media belong to the shared world, everyone can see them. The text structure belongs to the world of mind, because you cannot see the structure immediately, first you have to analyze it.

Quiz 3

What is a dictionary?
-> klick

What is the difference between a semasiological dictionary and a onomasiological one?
A semasiological dictionary gives a list of words and their meaning, pronunciation, etc., while an onomasiological dictionary (e.g. a thesaurus) offers synonyms for a particular word -> gives a word field

What other kinds of dictionaries are there?

• encyclopedias
• specialist dictionaries (law, medicine, etc.)
• dictionaries of idioms
• dictionaries of dialects
• ...
• ...

What is Text Linguistics/Applied Text Linguistics?
-> klick

Tasks for 2006/10/24

Prepare reports for discussion:

• What are dictionaries, lexicons, encyclopedias,... "language"?
• What kinds of dictionaries are there?
• How would you find the "best" English dictionary?

Set up a questionnaire of questions about dictionaries, and ask 3 people to respond to it before next week.

Answers:

To "How would you find the 'best' English dictionary?":

• search for an up-to-date-dictionary (--> look at the date when it was published)
• first clear up what type of dictionary I need (thesaurus, dictionary of idioms,...)
• vocabulary amount

My questionnaire:

1. What kinds of dictionaries do you have?

only bilingual (PONS + electronic dictionaries);. mono -and bilingual + specialist dictionaries (especially on the topics of Law)
2. How often do you use them?

often (e.g. at work); from time to time
3. Do you prefer to use mono- or bilingual dictionaries?Why?

bilingual dictionaries because they are easier to use; monolingual specialists dictionaries (helps to prevent translation mistakes) + bilingual dictionaries for private use

This session was the first one of the term, which means that at the beginning we had to get to know about all the organisatorial things, like information about the tutorial, methods and media going to be used.

Since one of the requirements to pass the test is a web portfolio, we also got some hints on how to create a website. This led to the question "What is a website, actually?", which in turn led to questions "What is a hypertext?", "What is a text and what are its properties?" and so step-by-step we came to one of the most important text theory's application - at least for our class, namely to the dictionary.