70
significantly less time . . . [and] looked up significantly more words than those who
used a paper dictionary”
.
Hence, Laufer and Hill (2000, p.68) made this argument in
support of PEDs use
:
Laufer and Hill (2000) argued that PED use enhances students’ motivation, as
“the ease and speed of using [them] may encourage the learner to look up unfamiliar
words
.
This in turn, will not only contribute to more fluent reading, but will also
increase the chance of acquiring the looked up words” (p. 68).
In addition, Torres and Ramos (2003) highlighted some of the features of CDs
such as interactivity, quick access, multimedia effects, and extra features
.
Similarly,
Hulstijn et al
.
(1996) suggested that because computerized entries are easier to use
than the PD ones, students will be motivated to use them, unlike the time consuming
process of finding information by leafing through PDs
.
Moreover, Chiu and Liu (as cited in Wang, 2014, p. 18) pointed that PEDs
include functions that could be beneficial to L2 learners, like integrated pronunciation
Studies show that L2 readers often decide not to use the dictionary
when meeting unfamiliar words in a text (Bogaards, 1998; Hulstijn,
1993). One of the reasons often reported by students is the time
involved in flicking through the dictionary pages and the
subsequent disruption of the flow of reading. An electronic
dictionary may provide a good solution to this problem.
71
of words, which helps L2 learners develop their pronunciation and speaking. In
addition, and unlike the case with PDs, PEDs’ could be updated to add recent words
to their memory. The PED also allows users to search multimedia information like
pictures to ease their comprehension, and this could lessen their anxiety when
learning vocabulary.
According to Midlane (2005), the learners’ interest in PEDs is partially
because the latter include the pronunciation feature, which allows learners to hear
how words are spoken without having to be acquainted with complex phonetic
symbols, and this is a good reason which makes PEDs more advantageous than PDs
.
However, Stirling (2003) examined some PEDs and found that their pronunciation
feature was of low quality, while Tang (1997) described the sound in the PEDs she
examined as “synthetic … not always clear, and the pronunciation is artificial”
.
However, despite the reported EDs advantages regarding their speed and ease
of lookup, some believe that the ease of use may result in shallow processing of the
looked up words and will therefore be detrimental to retention (Hulstijn, 2001). While
the ease and speed might encourage more dictionary use and reading (Weschler &
Pitts, 2000), the convenience might not be a good thing for vocabulary learning
(Stirling, 2003), as the increased speed of ED lookup may be at the expense of
engagement and deeper processing of the words resulting in less vocabulary learning
(Peters, 2007).
72
Moreover, Hulstijn (2001) claimed that processing lexical information more
elaborately leads to better retention than less elaborately, both incidentally and
intentionally. This deep semantic processing enhances memory by creating memory
traces that are stronger than the traces created when the items are shallowly processed
(Baddeley, 1997). Students should have done some useful linguistic processing when
looking up words. They should trace the inflected form of the word back to its basic
form, and then distinguish and evaluate the different entries for each word (Summers,
1988).
In the same way, this perception is supported by The Depth of Processing
Hypothesis (Al-Hadlaq, 2003), which suggests that memory is a function of the depth
or shallowness of the processing in which people engage in when facing new material
in the input. In addition, Al-Hadlaq claimed that there are different levels of
processing. With regard to the processing of lexical items, he argued that the
phonological and orthographical aspects of a lexical item are processed at a shallower
level while the processing of its meaning takes place at a rather deeper level.
It should be noted that, with the appearance of EDs, a couple of the problems
posed by PDs appear to have been solved, like the time spent looking up a word and
the issue of which dictionary type to better use. Currently, many contemporary EDs
combine monolingual and bilingual dictionaries to give users more freedom to switch
between both types. In addition, these EDs allow users to look up words more
quickly, thereby reducing distractions from their concentration while reading
.
73
3
.
4
.
English Learners’ Dictionaries on CD-ROM
As we have seen earlier, the term ‘electronic dictionary’ comprises a variety of
devices and technology innovations. However, the focus of the present study is only
on the dictionary stored in CD-ROM and installed on a computer
.
Literature on PEDs,
online dictionaries or some other electronic types of dictionaries will be reviewed in
the coming sections just because these dictionaries have a lot of features in common
with CDs, while literature on CD use per se is relatively scarce as a result of the
paucity of related studies
.
CD-ROM Dictionaries are amongst the latest innovations in lexicography, as
they contain far more information than their paper versions, include multimedia
content like sound and video, and allow users to look up words much faster than when
they turn pages in a PD
.
The significant difference between PDs and CDs is in the
way of presenting information
.
Printed dictionaries provide printed information in
sequence from beginning to end, whereas CDs provide audiovisual information in the
form of text, sounds, or graphics, all accessed through diverse search routes (Nesi,
1996). Nesi (p
.
537) mentioned four advantages which make CDs superior to their PD
versions
:
They can cross-reference within and between sources published separately in
book form;
They can provide direct links to other computer applications;
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