57
Three types of studies could be identified regarding dictionary use while
reading, based on the three phases of dictionary use that were proposed by Scholfield
(1999)
:
choice, look-up, and learning
.
Prior to consulting the dictionary, the learners
have to decide first which words to look up
.
Then, they have to consult the dictionary
to find the information they seek
.
However, the look-up activity would not necessarily
suggest an effective learning of the looked up word, as
this
depends on how well the
learners did in the first two phases
.
The first type of studies examined L2 learners’ strategic choice to use a
dictionary
.
While reading, learners may use any of the three lexical processing
strategies (LPSs) to figure out the meaning of an unknown word
:
Inferring its
meaning, ignoring the word, or simply look it up in the dictionary
.
Language learners
should be careful as to which of these strategies to use when encountering unknown
words as this is a key skill for an effective learning of vocabulary (Fraser, 1999a)
.
Hulstijn’s (1993) study falls in this group
.
Hulstijn examined 44 Dutch EFL
learners for their dictionary look-up behavior while reading a text on computer screen
.
The subjects read the text using an electronic glossary, while the whole activity was
recorded through computer tracking
.
Hulstijn’s study revealed that the learners
managed to use the dictionary in a good way in that they did not look up all the
unknown words they encountered, but rather looked up only the words that they
considered relevant for their reading goals.
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The focus of the second type of studies was on the learners’ look-up strategies
.
Such studies examined the type of information that learners searched for as well as the
strategies they used when they looked up words
.
Neubach and Cohen (1988) studied
six Hebrew-speaking EFL students’ use of MLDs and BLDs while engaged in a
reading activity
.
Think-aloud protocols and interviews were employed in the study
.
The results showed that dictionary use was not an easy task for the students, as
finding what a word means depended on making attempts at guessing from context
before consulting a dictionary for that word
.
In addition, the learners found it difficult
to deal with such mechanics in the dictionaries such as alphabetical order,
abbreviations, and symbols
.
Neubach and Cohen (1988) also found that the high
proficiency students preferred using MLDs, whereas BLDs were more preferred by
the intermediate and low proficiency students
.
Similarly, Laufer and Hill (2000) examined 72 EFL university students in
Hong Kong and the Zionist Entity to explore their look-up patterns
.
The subjects read
a text on computer screen and had access to lexical information of the highlighted
words in the text
.
The subjects’ look-ups were electronically saved in the computers
.
Laufer and Hill found that the learners within each group had different look-up
behavior, and that even the learners from each country behaved differently
.
The
subjects from Hong Kong consulted words almost twice as often as the Zionist
59
subjects did, and they preferred to look up English meanings of unknown words,
whereas the Zionist learners preferred to check L1 translation immediately
.
The last type of studies focused on the effects that dictionary use could have
on learning the looked up words
.
Language learners may retain the meaning of the
looked up word and may also forget it
.
Luppescu and Day (1993) examined 293
Japanese EFL learners to find out how BLDs could affect their vocabulary learning
.
The subjects in the experimental group read a passage with access to a BLD;
however, those in the control group read the same passage except that they did not use
any dictionary
.
Immediately after finishing the reading task, a multiple-choice test
regarding the target words encountered in the passage was given to the subjects
.
Luppescu and Day (1993) found that the experimental group did better than
the control group on the test
.
However, the subjects in the experimental group found it
problematic when it came to dealing with polysemous words, as most of them had
difficulty choosing the right meaning from the group of meanings listed in the
dictionary
.
As a result, the subjects in the experimental group took longer to read the
passage than the control group
.
Likewise, Knight (1994) investigated the effects that dictionary use could have
on the vocabulary retention and reading comprehension of 105 American university
students of Spanish
.
The students were split up into experimental group (dictionary)
60
and control group (no-dictionary), and read articles on computer screen, whereas the
subjects’ look-ups were recorded by the computer
.
Knight (1994) found that the experimental group performed better than the
control group on vocabulary retention tests
.
In addition, the subjects who read with a
dictionary got higher scores in reading comprehension than the subjects who read the
articles without access to the dictionary
.
Moreover, the subjects with limited
vocabulary used the dictionary more often than those with rich vocabulary
.
However,
the latter group seemed to have spent less time on reading
.
Knight’s study was indeed
a significant one, as it proved that learners can also benefit from dictionary use in
enhancing their reading comprehension and not only to acquire vocabulary.
On the other hand, Hulstijn et al
.
(1996) examined 78 Dutch university
freshmen studying French in order to investigate the effects that could occur on their
retention of words as result of using a dictionary and marginal glosses
.
The subjects
were set into groups; each read a short story under one of the conditions
:
Marginal
Glosses, Dictionary, and Control (no-dictionary)
.
The study revealed that the use of
marginal glosses induced better retention of vocabulary, and that the students in the
Dictionary group rarely looked up any words in the dictionary
.
However, when they
did, they had a better chance to remember the word’s meaning than did the Marginal
Glosses group
.
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