The dictionary consultation problems of the two groups shown in test A are discussed in
the following subsections one by one.
4.1.1 Understand Short Forms, Labels, and Grammar Codes of the Dictionary
The result shows that students were very unfamiliar with these short form or labels.
Some of them even scored zero, while some only recognize n. and v. They complained the test was too difficult. They couldn’t believe that there are so many labels and codes in a dictionary. (See their comments in Appendix H)
In this study, we observed an alienating effect of the dictionary layout devices and
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symbols, as acknowledged by Lewis and Pugmire (1980).
‘Many readers are put off using a dictionary because it looks so confusing and so unlike most other printed matter met in everyday life. In fact, it is set out in a particular way for good reasons, and the time taken in getting used to the layout is time well spent.’
4.1.2 Get Familiarized with the Distribution of Letters (Alphabetical Order)
Although these students are junior high school students, some of them still can not memorize the alphabetical order in their mind. They wrote A to Z on the margin of the test paper. E18 even asked the teacher to write down the alphabetical order on the blackboard for him so that he could judge which word appears first in the dictionary. For these students, the researcher also found that longer words are more difficult to locate.
4.1.3 Make Use of Guide Words on the Right and Left Tops of the Dictionary
The result shows that most students do not understand the function of these two guide words on the dictionary page. One student even said it’s for decoration purpose. The researcher also found that one student considered guide words as headwords. He thought guide words are also an entry.
4.1.4 Scan a Dictionary Page
The researcher found that some students did not have the concept of “headwords.” They considered all the English words on the dictionary target words, even the definitions or example phrase and sentences. They didn't know that they should search for the blue boldface words first. For them, all the English words are possible targets to search and thus spent too much time searching. They sometimes ended up choosing the definitions as the headwords. When asked to scan page 565 of the dictionary to find the headword which means ‘一打,’ their answer was ‘a group of twelve,’ while they were supposed to answer
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‘dozen.’ This kind of error reflected that they lacked the knowledge of dictionary compiling convention.
When they scan a dictionary page, some of them chose the wrong headword of similar spellings. Some of them chose the wrong headword of similar meaning and spelling but of incorrect word class. Once they located the target words correctly, they wrote down the word on the test paper, including the syllabic dots in the target words as well, not knowing the functions.
4.1.5 Distinguish a Homograph
The researcher found that when the target words had homographs, most students adopted the headword which appeared first. They considered the word ‘phone’ a noun in the sentence, we’ll try to phone you when we get there, because what they found in the dictionary were like this:
phone 1 n [C] 電話
phone 2 v [I, T] 給…打電話
They adopted whatever appeared first in the dictionary. They did not identify the word class of the target word from the sentence structure first.
Another student interpreted the word ‘phone’ as ‘到目前為止’ because there was an example sentence in the dictionary like this:
How many salespeople have phoned in their figures so far? 到目前為止，有多少推銷 員已打電話回來匯報他們的銷售額？
The student took any passage of the Chinese explanations or the Chinese translations of example sentences to be their possible interpretations. The reason for this kind of errors is indeed another type of “Kidrule strategy” mentioned by A. P. Cowie (1999) in which subjects take out a short familiar segment of the dictionary definition (here, any familiar segment
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‘near the target words’) of the context as an equivalent for the unknown headword and interpreted the target words freely as their wish.
4.1.6 Remove Its Regular Inflection First
Even though the students have learned noun plurals and present and past inflections of verbs, some of them did not apply their knowledge when using dictionary. Their attitude toward the task played an important role on the result of this part of the test. Most students with patience and positive attitude can finish this test quite easily with a few errors. The most common mistakes here was that many students could not distinguish an adjective with –ed or –ing from a verb with past tense inflection or present participle. In the sentence,
‘She decided to live in London, not Paris.’ Many students interpreted the underlined word as an adjective, which is another headword, ‘清楚的、明確的,’ not the past tense of the verb, decide. The students believed what they found in the dictionary without analyzing the sentence structure first.
4.1.7 Try to Remove Its Affixes (Derivatives)
When a word can not be found immediately in the dictionary, many students substitute the target word with other words of similar spellings on the dictionary page. For the word
‘wetness,’ some students consider ‘wet nurse’ the answer and write down its translation ‘溺 愛.’ Even though they can leave it blank to show their nonlocation, they still consider
‘wet-nurse’ can be ‘wetness.’ (Appendix J)
Even when a derivative words can be found in the dictionary, some students can not figure out it’s derivative meaning. Some students interpreted the word ‘cruelly’ as ‘adv,’
without specifying what the word ‘cruelly’ means. For the word ‘wetness,’ some students interpreted it as ‘沒經驗’ because ‘wetness’ is located after the example phrase (wet behind the ears) of ‘wet’ (Appendix J) Similarly, many of them interpreted ‘grumbler’ as ‘還不錯’
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because ‘grumbler’ is located after the example sentence (How are you today? Mustn’t grumble. 你今天好嗎? 還不錯) of ‘grumble’ (Appendix J). This kind of error is also a result of “Kidrule strategy.”
4.1.8 Try to Scan Nearby Entries or to Seek in the Addendum
Just like dealing with derivative words, when a word can not be found immediately in the dictionary, many students substitute the target word with other words of similar spellings on the dictionary page.
For the word ‘center,’ some students consider ‘centi’ the answer and write down parts of its example phrases ‘公尺.’ Even though they can leave it blank to show their nonlocation, they still consider ‘centi’ can be ‘center’ (Appendix J) and then used ‘Kidrule strategy’ again.
For some students, even though they could locate the target words, they still could not understand the meanings. They interpreted the spelling variants as ‘另見、參見、美式拼法,’
not knowing to do further lookups.
4.1.9 Consider Its Possibility of Being Compounds or Idioms
Most students could not recognize compound words or idioms. They translated the English sentence word by word into Chinese and felt confused by the strange results. Some of them giggled when doing the translation.
4.1.10 Practice Working with the Menus or Other Short Definitions
For some students, even when they found the target entries, they still can not understand its meanings. For them, all the Chinese explanations or translations are possible meanings.
They applied “Kidrule strategy” in most of their lookups. Any passage of the Chinese explanations or the Chinese translations of example sentences could be their possible interpretations. For the word ‘branch,’ some students interpreted it as ‘在當地,’ which is in
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fact used as a signpost to classify the many meanings of a polysemous word. (Appendix K) The researcher was surprised to find that Kidrule strategies were used so frequently even among bilingulized dictionary users. Was that due to the participants’ Chinese reading comprehension problems? The real reason for this could not yet be identified in the current study.
As Scholfield (1982) pointed out, sense selection is one of the most challenging tasks of dictionary consultation. Moreover, this study also showed that students did not distribute their attentions equally to all the information in a dictionary entry. When there are many definitions of a word listed, the ones put in the first place are more likely to be adopted by the students. Most of them interpreted the word ‘line’ in ‘There was a line of people waiting for the bus’ as ‘線條.’
4.2 Can the Above Dictionary Consultation Problems or Errors be Avoided or Reduced