Learning to use the dictionary more easily, being able to study one's native language in an amusing way is possible ... Just by using Addizionario, a multimedia software for the primary school, realized at the Institute for Computational Linguistics, in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science of Turin University. The tool suggests innovative and appealing ways for improving the language and cognitive development of primary school children and novel ways of approaching the dictionary, intended not only as a text to be consulted, but also to be constructed, disassembled and recomposed, according to one's needs and tastes.
Addizionario is formed by two strictly interconnected modules: a Dictionary for children, whose authors are 400 children from different primary schools and an Activity Book, the creative tool by which each pupil can create his/her own personal dictionary provided with definitions, examples, stories, drawings and sounds. The software easily tailors to the user's personal skills. Through exploration and discovery, through the collaboration with teachers and class-mates, even users with special needs are able to perform activities generally considered above their abilities.
Recently, a multilingual version of Addizionario has been implemented which allows each user to easily construct a personal application of the program in any language or dialect, starting from one of the five principal European languages (Italian, English, French, Spanish and German).
Availability of this updated software has opened up new and interesting prospects of use of Addizionario both in Italy and abroad.
In Italy the software is currently used in many schools within multimedia laboratories for language education, in particular for the acquisition of Italian and for inclusion in the school of non-European children. Abroad, using Addizionario, Wales and Asturias have carried out, within the framework of a "Socrates-Comenius" project, a peer-teaching experience with an exchange of linguistic and cultural knowledges between children of the same age belonging to different countries.
At present, Addizionario is used in a project of intercultural education, started in collaboration with the Università Autonoma of Mexico City, which envisages the realization of a first monolingual dictionary of Purépecha, a language spoken by some indigenous communities in the Michoacán area.
This dictionary, unique in its kind, will be a product of the entire indigenous community, since it will be prepared, in different phases, by the primary school children as well as the teachers, parents, grandparents, in order to affirm their identity by recovering and revitalising their native language.
The challenge is particularly stimulating, since one has the privilege of taking part in the new birth of a language, starting from negotiation of the orthography - for which a standard does not exist - to identification of the multiple meanings of the words and their variants.
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