How a dictionary is born

"Cómo nace un diccionario"
Spanish B1 writing exercise

A team of lexicographers reveals how a dictionary is put together.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "lexicographer (a person who writes dictionaries)", "overnight", "to collect (words or data)", "corpus (a large collection of texts)", "meaning (a specific sense of a word)" and "entry (a word listed in a dictionary)."

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into Spanish

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Dictionaries don't appear overnight. A team of language experts creates them together. These experts are called lexicographers. First, they collect thousands of words from real life. Lexicographers read newspapers, novels and websites every day. Special computer programmes (US: programs) also scan huge collections of texts. These collections are called corpora. The team then selects the most useful words. For each word, someone writes a clear definition. Good definitions demand careful research. Many words have several different meanings. In that case, lexicographers number each meaning separately. Editors later check every entry very carefully. Finally, the publisher releases the finished dictionary.

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