Ayuko has been contributing to our introduction to the Open Access to Languages project on creating materials to facilitate learning a language. She, Luke and Michelle, have been contributing as part of PLanT in creating materials to explain and guide  students in the use of bilingual dictionaries and translation tools. She has created a presentation with Prezzi giving some tips and examples on use and missuse of the dictionary and of online translation.  Her experience working for the project in her own words: ” My work was creating an activity to practise using online dictionaries and translation tools from Spanish to English. The main objective of the activity is to become aware of using or quoting carefully the meanings found in dictionaries and translations. My experience of learning languages motivated me to join the project. I had a dilemma; I could not explain what I wanted to say even though I used the dictionary, because I did not consider whether the meanings I found in the dictionary were suitable for the contexts. Through
participating in the project, I learned again how to utilise dictionaries and use translations in a proper way. I hope that the activities we created help students with their use of dictionaries (as a tool to learn a language rather than just to look up meanings) and enjoy learning languages with dictionaries.”

Pilar Gray Carlos