A Study of Dictionary Use by International Students at a British University

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation into the dictionary-using habits of international students studying in the medium of English at a British University. Over a period of three years, six groups of students were set assignments requiring them to report on the way they had consulted dictionaries to find the meanings of unknown words in texts of their choice. Eighty-nine assignments were analysed, to reveal subjects' choices of reading material, look-up words and dictionaries. The data also showed that whilst the majority of words were looked up successfully, more than half the subjects were unsuccessful in at least one out of five dictionary consultations.Subjects were found to have particular difficulty in selecting appropriate entries and sub-entries in their dictionaries. Some consultation problems resulted in serious errors of interpretation, which subjects were largely unaware of.

Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2009

“…Although Nesi and Haill's (2002) classification of errors differed from that of Al-Ajmi's (2002), similar look-up difficulties were found in both studies. For example, the students had difficulty in selecting an appropriate meaning in a polysemous entry or they might select meanings from a wrong word entry due to their misidentification of the grammatical class of the looked-up word.…”

“…(b) Word division at line endings in English texts. Nesi and Haill (2002) analyzed 89 EFL/ESL students' look-up errors in their use of several paper dictionaries to do reading assignments in a natural setting. They categorized students' errors into five types (Nesi & Haill, 2002, p. 282):…”

“…dictionary and the definitions provided by the participants, the look-up errors were identified. Finally, the identified errors were categorized into four types based on Al-Ajmi (2002) and Nesi and Haill (2002) for further interpretation.…”

“…Studies on EFL learners' dictionary use often center on issues such as their preferences of dictionary types (Diab & Hamdan, 1999;Liang, 2006), their purposes of consulting dictionaries (Atkins & Varantola, 1997;Liang, 2006;Su, 2003), and the piece(s) of information they had extracted from their dictionary consultations (Fan, 2000). In spite of the rare research in exploring the process of how EFL students consult dictionaries, there exist two such studies (Al-Ajmi, 2002;Nesi & Haill, 2002), both of which examined students' use of paper dictionaries by analyzing their look-up errors.…”

Foreword

“…Jun Ding's ''A study of English majors in a Chinese university as dictionary users'' reveals the popularity of bilingualized dictionaries and the weakness of L1 translational equivalents for sense discrimination, and recommends the use of multiple dictionaries, based on a near replication of the study by Nesi and Haill (2002). Toshiko Koyama's ''The impact of E-dictionary strategy training on EFL class'' reports that the explicit training in the strategies and reference skills to use handheld electronic dictionaries (involving metacognitive tasks, collaborative learning with peer review, and in-class presentation of dictionary strategies and skills) led to the retention of the strategies and skills and to the Japanese EFL students' improved attitudes toward studying English.…”