Word-Definition Skills as Part of Communication Competence

The need to define academic and professional terms along with common-use words or idioms leads to the assimilation of certain functional models for definitions, which are applied whenever the communicative context demands it. These models are points of reference on the itinerary of communication skills development. They include: a) the scientific definitions implied by formal education (and, in fact, required by it since the 2019 National Curriculum); b) the dictionary definitions of numerous common-use, newly created, archaic, dialectal etc. words; c) the explanations/definitions provided by encyclopedias. Assimilating these models is a complex and lengthy exercise, extended over the whole school period, which, if successful, results in an ability to easily construct definitions while communicating at any level.