As mentioned in the above section, dictionary has facilitating effects on English learning, including vocabulary learning, writing, and reading comprehension. However, can every English learner achieve these effects by using dictionaries? In the process of dictionary consultation, are dictionary skills making a difference?
In Okayama, Japan, the Okayama Prefecture Senior High School Circle of English Education developed a “Dictionary Using Skills Test” and administered it to high school students in Okayama in order to see how effectively the students of English could use English-Japanese dictionaries. Notohara, “a chief member of this project, conducted further research on the relationship between the dictionary using skills and language proficiency. The results showed that there was a positive correlation between the results of the dictionary using skills tests and the results of the English proficiency tests” (qtd. in Tono, 1989).
What are dictionary skills. How many dictionary skills are there? Stark, M.P. (1990) reviewed 40 dictionary workbooks and proposed a checklist of dictionary skills:
1. Establishing which lexical item in the reading text poses a problem 2. Finding a lexical item in the dictionary macrostructure
(1) Mastering the alphabetical ordering of headwords: compounds, fixed
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expressions, short forms, phrasal and prepositional verbs
(2) Finding a lexical item in an entry with a different headword:
cross-references, reasons for non-immediate location
(3) Finding a multi-word lexical item: idioms and fixed expressions
(4) Choosing among homonyms, using grammatical or semantic information (5) Choosing among different senses in a polysemous entry
(6) Using more than one list in the macrostructure of a dictionary: front matter and appendices relating to abbreviations, proper names, countries and nationalities, numerals, kinship terms, animal terms, affixes, addendum, and verb conjugation tables
(7) Understanding the principles of lemmatization used in the dictionary: why certain items are assigned headword status
3. Finding a piece of information in the microstructure
(1) Finding information about the spelling of words: spelling patterns and inflected forms, spelling of abbreviations, acronyms and abbreviations, spelling of multi-element items, and capitalization and punctuation
(2) Finding information about usage: style and register, collocation, usage notes, occupational and regional varieties
(3) Finding information about the grammar of words: parts of speech, verb forms and inflection, noun plurals, prepositions, and nouns occurring in singular or plural form only
(4) Finding information about the meaning of words: synonyms, using entries and definitions for semantic purposes, meaning and use of verbs, choosing the correct definition, collocations, choosing the correct headword, polysemous words, and idiomatic and other fixed expressions
(5) Finding related words: the location of derivatives, synonyms, paronyms,
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and antonyms
(6) Using the equivalents proposed by the bilingual dictionary (7) Finding information about the history of words
(8) Finding information about the pronunciation of words: syllabification, stress, distinction between American and British English, pronunciation of homographs, alternative pronunciations, and homophones
4. Choosing the appropriate dictionary according to the type of lexical item and to the type of information needed
5. Knowing what to expect and what not to expect form dictionaries in general and from each dictionary in particular
Since the purpose of the current study is to investigate students’ reading comprehension, our main concern here would be focused on item 2, that is, finding a lexical item in the dictionary macrostructure and item 3(4), that is, finding information about the meaning of words. We do not look into the other parts of item 3, item4, and item 5 in the present study because they are more relevant to students’ vocabulary learning, extending knowledge of the targeted words, and production purposes.
For the purpose of comprehension, Scholfield (1982) suggested that looking a word up in a dictionary requires certain skills applied in a systematic way. He discussed in detail the steps or procedures that EFL students ought to take for proficient dictionary use to help English reading comprehension. We can examine the procedures with reference to the above mentioned checklist proposed by Stark, M.P. (1990). Scholfield’s (1982) procedures of using the dictionary for comprehension were:
(1) locate the word or phrase you do not understand (the unknown) in the reading text;
(Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 1).
(2) if the unknown is inflected, remove the inflections to recover the form to look up;
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(Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(2)).
(3) search for the unknown in the alphabetical list; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2)
(4) if you cannot find at least one main entry for the unknown, try the bellowing steps;
(Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(2)).
(a) if the unknown appears to be a set phrase, idiom, or compound word, try looking up each main element; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(1) and 2(3)).
(b) if the unknown appears to have a suffix, try the entry for the stem; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(2) and 2(6)).
(c) if the unknown seems to be an irregularly inflected form or a spelling variant, scan nearby entries; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(2) and 2(6)).
(d) if there is an addendum, seek there; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist 2(6)).
(5) if there are multiple senses or homographic entries, reduce them by elimination;
(Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 2(4) and 2(5)).
(6) understand the definition and integrate it into the context in which the unknown was confronted; (Stark, M.P.’s checklist item 3(7)).
(7) if none of the senses seems to fit, attempt to infer one fitting from the sense you have.
Provided upwards of one that fits, look for further contextual clues in the source text to disambiguate.
Strictly speaking, steps 1 to 4 in Scholfield’s study basically enclose dictionary skills in that learners have to understand certain rules of English and certain dictionary conventions so as to follow the steps. However, steps 5 to 7 entail more learners’ dictionary strategies (e.g.
cognitive strategies), because in order to get the most appropriate meaning, learners have to analyze, manage the dictionary information, test hypotheses, and infer the context with an eye.
One thing to be noticed is that Scholfield (1982) emphasized that a strategy for using the
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dictionary for production purposes would be distinct from the one supplied above. For example, one might not be sure of the word’s pronunciation, or of something grammatical, or whether its style is too informal, or whether it can collocate with certain words, etc. In this case, much fuller knowledge is required.
Since the purpose of the current study is to investigate students’ reading comprehension, Scholfield’s procedures supplied above were adopted by the researcher as the basic stages to go through when using dictionaries for comprehension.
However, among the seven procedures proposed by Scholfield, the current study would only focus on ten of the numerous skills required in Procedure 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, but not Procedure 1 and 7. This is because the research time is limited and the reading comprehension task types in the current study are of a ‘local’ level.
The ten dictionary skills investigated in the current study were as follows. We can examine the skills with reference to the above mentioned procedures proposed by Scholfield.
(1) Understanding short forms, labels, and grammar codes of the dictionary, (Scholfied’s Procedure 6)
(2) Getting familiarized with the distribution of letters, (Scholfied’s Procedure 3)
(3) Making use of guide words on the right and left tops of the dictionary, (Scholfied’s Procedure 3)
(4) Removing its regular inflection first, (Scholfied’s Procedure 2) (5) Scanning a dictionary page, (Scholfied’s Procedure 4)
(6) Distinguishing a homograph, that is, a word spelled the same as another word but has a different part of speech, and therefore explained in a separate entry, (Scholfied’s Procedure 5)
(7) Trying to scan nearby entries for it may be a spelling variant or to seek in the addendum for it may be a geographical names or a new word, (Scholfied’s Procedure 4)
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(8) Trying to remove its affixes, (Scholfied’s Procedure 4)
(9) Considering its possibility of being compounds or idioms, and try looking up each element (Scholfied’s Procedure 4)
(10) Practicing working with the menus or other short definitions to find the right meaning of long entries when deal with a polysemous. (Scholfied’s Procedure 5)