AN ANALYSIS OF THE DESIGN FEATURES OF URDU - ENGLISH DICTIONARY FOR ADVANCED LEARNERS OF ENGLISH IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The present study is an empirical study into the design features of Urdu - English dictionary for advanced learners of English in Pakistan. It takes into account the language needs as well as the reference skills of advanced Pakistani learners of English. The introductory chapter is a brief introduction to the origins of Urdu and tries to answer questions like: Why some Urdu lexicographers included Sanskrit and Persian words in their dictionaries? Has Urdu changed much over time? Is there a dominant variety of Urdu? What is the relationship between Urdu and indigenous languages? Situations where the users of an Urdu-English dictionary may not be the native speakers of Urdu? It also spells out the aims of the study. Chapter II contains the Dictionary Research Test (DRT) which was conducted at the Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan. The purpose of the DRT was to evaluate the effectiveness of a trial dictionary, Power Advanced Learners Urdu-English Dictionary (PALUED) which had been specially prepared for the test. The dictionary was, in fact, an improved version of the existing learner’s dictionary, namely, Caravan Advanced Learners Urdu-English Dictionary (CALUED). The results showed that the participants found the trial dictionary to be more useful than the existing dictionary. Chapter III deals with the reference skills of the participants of the study. It seeks to point out the weaknesses in their ability to locate and retrieve the required information and suggests some practicable measures to improve the skills of the dictionary users. Chapter IV examines various criteria, such as pedagogic, linguistic and sociolinguistic, for determining the macro-structure of the advanced learner’s Urdu-English dictionaries with special focus on the language needs and reference skills of the target users. Chapter V is concerned with the various kinds of the information – semantic, syntactic, phonological, and stylistic – to be included in the 3dictionaries under discussion. Chapter VII is on reference works other than L1-L2 dictionaries which are aimed to help users in encoding activities. Such awareness is an integral part of the reference skills of the users who should know which kind of reference works can fulfill which language needs. The final chapter contains recognition of the shortcomings of the thesis along with recommendations, and suggestions for future research.