字典使用技巧教學對台灣國中生閱讀理解之影響

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(1)國立中山大學外國語文研究所碩士論文 Master Thesis Graduate Institute of Foreign Language and Literature National Sun Yat-sen University 字典使用技巧教學對台灣國中生閱讀理解之影響 The Effects of Dictionary Skills Instruction on Reading Comprehension of Junior High EFL Students in Taiwan. 研究生：汪美華撰 Graduate Student: Mei-hua Wang 指導教授：徐淑瑛博士 Advisor: Dr. Shu-ing Shyu. 中華民國九十六年六月 June, 2007.

(2) 謹以此文紀念我的父親汪周必先生.

(3) Acknowledgements. I would first like to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Shu-ing Shyu for her kindness, patience, and constant encouragement. guidance made this thesis possible.. Her support and. Also, sincere appreciation must go to Dr. Ching-yuan. Tsai and Dr. Dr. Yu-feng Yang, members of my oral defense committee, for giving valuable suggestions and comments to refine my thesis. Second, sincere gratitude goes to the 40 students from Tainan Municipal Cheng-gong Junior High School.. Their participation contributed greatly to the completion of the study.. Third, profound thanks go to a very important person in my life, Frank Lin.. Because of. his support and constant reminding me of the deadline, I could keep on doing this study and use my limited time efficiently. Most important of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dearest father, for his love, care, and everything he did for me.. i.

(4) Abstract Dictionary use has played an important role in English learning. Researches showed that dictionary has facilitating effects on vocabulary learning, writing and reading comprehension.. However, not all dictionary users can benefit from the use of dictionaries.. In fact, dictionary use is not as easy as what we thought, but dictionary skills instruction does not receive much attention in spite of the prevalence of dictionaries. The purpose of this study is to carry out dictionary skills instruction in English classrooms and to assess the effects of dictionary skills instruction on reading comprehension of junior high EFL students in Taiwan. The subjects in the study were 40 second-year junior high students of two classes from Tainan Municipal Cheng-gong Junior High School. the experiment group or the control group.. Each class was randomly assigned to. The experiment group received dictionary skills. instruction in English classes, and the control group did not.. First, the 40 subjects were. asked to fill out a questionnaire about their dictionary use backgrounds.. Then, they were. asked to take a pre-test on their dictionary skills and local reading comprehension. After the pre-test, the experimental group received dictionary skills instructions during each class time for about 20 minutes. semester.. The instruction lasted about 3 weeks in the beginning of the second. Finally, the 40 subjects were asked to take a post-test on their dictionary skills. and local reading comprehension. The major findings of the current study were summarized as follws: 1. Generally speaking, among the ten dictionary skills investigated in the current study, junior high EFL students in Taiwan encounter problems more or less.. The problems. include understanding short forms, labels, and grammar codes of the dictionary, getting familiar with the alphabetical orders, making use of guide words, scanning a dictionary page, distinguishing a homograph, removing regular inflections, removing affixes of derivatives, scanning nearby entries or seeking in the addendum, recognizing compounds ii.

(5) or idioms, and finding the right meaning of a polysemous. 2. In addition to these problems, the frequent application of ‘Kidrule strategy’ made the situation worse.. The participants were very likely to pick any Chinese fragments ‘near’. the target words (or other words with similar spellings.) and misinterpret the fragments as the meanings of the target words. 3. Most of the above mentioned problems could be reduced after receiving dictionary skills instruction from their English teacher in a short time.. Only the ability to distinguish a. homograph can not be improved merely through the teacher’s instruction in a short time. It seems that, to distinguish homographs, the participants’ grammatical knowledge played a more important role than the dictionary skills instruction. As for the using of guide words and the removing of inflections, these two skills can be improved without the teacher’s instruction. 4. According to the study, the use of dictionaries with proper dictionary skills instruction and enough practice could make a significant difference in the performance of local reading comprehension tasks.. iii.

(6) 摘. 要. 字典的使用在英語學習上，一直扮演重要的角色，文獻指出字典使用有助於學習者字彙的學習、閱讀理解、及寫作。然而並非所有的字典使用者都能得到相同的成效。事實上，字典的使用並不如想像中簡單，而這些字典使用技巧的教學並未因英文字典的普及而受到重視。因此本研究的主旨在進行字典使用技巧的教學於學校的正式英語課程中，並探討字典使用技巧教學對台灣國中生閱讀理解之影響。本研究的對象是四十個國中二年級的學生，分別來自台南市立成功國民中學的兩個班級，此兩班各二十人被任意分派為實驗組與對照組：實驗組於英語課程中接受字典使用技巧的教學，而對照組則無。首先，此 40 個受試者先填寫一份關於字典使用概況的問卷，並接受字典使用技巧與閱讀理解之前測。其後實驗組於每節英文課中接受二十分鐘的英語字典使用技巧教學，此教學共為期三週。最後，此 40 個受試者接受字典使用技巧與閱讀理解之後測。本研究結果摘要如下： 1. 本研究所探討的十個與閱讀理解相關的字典技巧中，國中生普遍遇到困難，包括認識字典代號、瞭解單字與詞語在字典裡出現的先後順序、利用左右上角的指引字、快速瀏覽頁面、辨認同形異義字、去除規則變化的字尾、查閱衍生字、查閱英美式對照與地名及新字、辨認複合字、以及查閱多義字。 2. 本研究顯示，國中生使用字典時，另一個常犯的錯誤就是將詞目中出現的任何文字，如例句或用法說明，任意取用片段作為該詞目的意思。 3. 除了同形異義字的辨認受學生原本的文法知識影響之外，其他的技巧在接受字典使用的教學之後，大部分都能夠顯著改善。其中利用左右上角的指引字與去除規則變化的字尾，兩組的學生都有顯著進步，不論是否接受字典技巧的教學。 4. 本研究顯示，字典使用技巧教學對國中生英文字句的閱讀理解有顯著的影響。. iv.

(7) TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1. 1.1.. THE IMPORTANCE OF DICTIONARY USE ...................................................................1. 1.1.1. The Prevalence of Dictionaries ..................................................................................................... 1. 1.1.2. The Curriculum and MOE Competence Indicators ..................................................................... 2. 1.1.3. The Popularity of Dictionary Look-up Contests ........................................................................... 2. 1.1.4. The English Proficiency Requirements......................................................................................... 3. 1.2. RESEARCHES ON DICTIONARY USE ..........................................................................5. 1.2.1. The Pros of Dictionary Use ........................................................................................................... 6. 1.2.2. The Cons of Dictionary Use .......................................................................................................... 6. 1.2.3. Moderate Use of Dictionary Use ................................................................................................... 6. 1.2.4 The Difficulty of Dictionary Use......................................................................................................... 7. 1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ......................................................................................9 1.3.1. Lack of Independent Learning Attitude........................................................................................... 9. 1.3.2. Lack of Dictionary Use Study on Junior High EFL Students ...................................................... 10. 1.3.3. Lack of Formal Dictionary Skills Instruction and Assessment .................................................... 10. 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7. PURPOSES OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................ 11 MAJOR RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................................. 11 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .....................................................................................12 DEFINITION OF TERMS ................................................................................................12. CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 15. 2.1 THE EFFECTS OF DICTIONARY USE ........................................................................15 2.2. DICTIONARY SKILLS...................................................................................................19 2.3 COMMON LOOK-UP ERRORS AND PROBLEMS IN ENGLISH READING ........................24 2.3.1 Problems in Establishing Which Lexical Item in the Reading Text Poses a Problem ................... 25 2.3.2 Problems in Finding a Lexical Item in the Dictionary Macrostructure.......................................... 26 2.3.3 Problems in Finding a Piece of Information in the Microstructure................................................ 26. 2.4 VARIABLES IN THE USE OF L2 DICTIONARIES ............................................................27 2.5 THE APPROACH AND PRACTICE OF DICTIONARY SKILLS INSTRUCTION ..................28 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................... 30. 3.1 PARTICIPANTS ..............................................................................................................30 3.2 PROCEDURE .................................................................................................................33 3.3 INSTRUMENT ............................................................................................................34 3.3.1 The Questionnaire .............................................................................................................................. 34 3.3.2. The Dictionary................................................................................................................................ 35 v.

(8) 3.3.3 Dictionary Skills and Local Reading Comprehension Test A and B............................................. 36 3.3.4. The Dictionary Skills Instruction on the Experimental Group .......................................................... 44 3.3.4.1 Understand Short Forms, Labels, and Grammar Codes of the Dictionary...........................................45 3.3.4.2 Get Familiarized with the Distribution of Letters (Alphabetical Order) ..............................................46 3.3.4.3 Make Use of Guide Words on the Right and Left Tops of the Dictionary.............................................47 3.3.4.4. Scan a Dictionary Page ...........................................................................................................................47. 3.3.4.5 Distinguish a Homograph..........................................................................................................................48 3.3.4.6 Remove Its Regular Inflection First .........................................................................................................48 3.3.4.7 Try to Remove Its Affixes (Derivatives) ...................................................................................................49 3.3.4.8. Try to Scan Nearby Entries or to Seek in the Addendum......................................................................49 3.3.4.9. Consider Its Possibility of Being Compounds or Idioms........................................................................50 3.3.4.10. Working with the Menus or Other Short Definitions...........................................................................50. 3.3.5 Supplementary Methods .................................................................................................................. 51 3.3.5.1. The Researcher’s Direct Observations of the Participants’ Look-up Process ...................................51. 3.3.5.2 Feedback from Students .........................................................................................................................52 3.3.5.3. Information from the Dictionary ...........................................................................................................52. 3.4. DATA ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................52 CHAPTER FOUR. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS ................................................................................ 54. 4.1 COMMON DICTIONARY CONSULTATION PROBLEMS OR ERRORS OF JUNIOR HIGH EFL STUDENTS IN TAIWAN ..........................................................................................................55 4.1.2 Get Familiarized with the Distribution of Letters (Alphabetical Order) ......................................... 56 4.1.3 Make Use of Guide Words on the Right and Left Tops of the Dictionary....................................... 56 4.1.4. Scan a Dictionary Page.................................................................................................................. 56. 4.1.5 Distinguish a Homograph.............................................................................................................. 57 4.1.6 Remove Its Regular Inflection First .............................................................................................. 58 4.1.7. Try to Remove Its Affixes (Derivatives)......................................................................................... 58. 4.1.8. Try to Scan Nearby Entries or to Seek in the Addendum ............................................................. 59. 4.1.9. Consider Its Possibility of Being Compounds or Idioms .............................................................. 59. 4.1.10 Practice Working with the Menus or Other Short Definitions ................................................... 59. 4.2 CAN THE ABOVE DICTIONARY CONSULTATION PROBLEMS OR ERRORS BE AVOIDED OR REDUCED BY RECEIVING DICTIONARY SKILLS INSTRUCTION? ...........................................60 4.2.1 Understand Short Forms, Labels, and Grammar Codes of the Dictionary..................................... 60 4.2.2 Get Familiarized with the Distribution of Letters (Alphabetical Order) ......................................... 64 4.2.3 Make Use of Guide Words on the Right and Left Tops of the Dictionary....................................... 64 4.2.4 Scan a Dictionary Page..................................................................................................................... 64 4.2.5 Distinguish a Homograph................................................................................................................. 65 4.2.6 Remove Its Regular Inflection First ................................................................................................. 65 4.2.7 Try to Remove Its Affixes (Derivatives)............................................................................................ 65 vi.

(9) 4.2.8 Try to Scan Nearby Entries or to Seek in the Addendum ................................................................ 66 4.2.9 Consider Its Possibility of Being Compounds or Idioms ................................................................. 66 4.2.10 Practice Working with the Menus or Other Short Definitions ...................................................... 66. 4.3 WILL THE READING COMPREHENSION OF JUNIOR HIGH EFL STUDENTS IMPROVE AS A RESULT OF THE DICTIONARY SKILLS INSTRUCTION? .......................................................67 CHAPTER FIVE. CONCLUSIONS.............................................................................................................. 70. 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS .......................................................................................70 5.2 PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS ....................................................................................71 5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY .........................................................................................72 5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH .....................................................................73 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................... 75 APPENDIX A...................................................................................................................................................... 81 APPENDIX B...................................................................................................................................................... 82 APPENDIX C ..................................................................................................................................................... 83 APPENDIX D ..................................................................................................................................................... 86 APPENDIX E...................................................................................................................................................... 88 APPENDIX F...................................................................................................................................................... 89 APPENDIX G ..................................................................................................................................................... 94 APPENDIX H ................................................................................................................................................... 100 APPENDIX I..................................................................................................................................................... 101 APPENDIX J .................................................................................................................................................... 106 APPENDIX K ................................................................................................................................................... 109 APPENDIX L.................................................................................................................................................... 118 APPENDIX M .................................................................................................................................................. 124. vii.

(10) LIST OF TABLES PAGE Table 3-1. The Profile of the Participants............................................................................32. Table 4-1. Paired-Samples T-test Results of the Experiment Group on Dictionary Skill 1 to 10 and local reading comprehension……………………………………………61. Table 4-2 Paired-Samples T-test Results of the Control Group on Dictionary Skill 1 to 10 and local reading comprehension……………………………………………….62 Table 4-3 Independent-Samples T-test Results of Both Groups on Local Reading comprehension in the Pretest and Posttest……………………………………...68. viii.

(11) LIST OF FIGURES PAGE Figure 3-1. The procedure of the study…………………………………………………….34 Figure 4-1 Comparisons of the Dictionary Skill 1 to 10 and Local Reading Comprehension of the Experiment Group……………………………………………………….62 Figure 4-2 Comparisons of the Dictionary Skill 1 to 10 and Local Reading Comprehension of the Control Group……………………………………………………………63 Figure 4-3 Comparisons of Local Reading Comprehensions of Both Groups……………..68. ix.

(12) CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION. 1.1. The Importance of Dictionary Use Among many kinds of aids language learners can make use of, dictionary use is one of the strategic options for language learners to deal with the unknown words.. Dictionaries. provide syntactical and lexical information. Through dictionaries, learners can get not only deductive information about language rules but also inductive information from the example sentences or illustrations. language learners.. Many researches have revealed the importance of dictionaries for. A dictionary is amongst the first things a foreign language student. purchases (Baxter, 1980; Luppescu & Day, 1993), and learners carry their dictionaries around, not grammar books (Krashen, 1989).. Graves (1987) referred to dictionaries as “the second. most popular book in the English language” (p.175).. Thorndike (1991) shared a similar. opinion and said that the dictionary “is one of the most important instruments of instruction” (p.15).. When it comes to the current English teaching context of Taiwan, the important role. of dictionary use is shown through at least four aspects: (1) the prevalence of dictionaries; (2) the curriculum and MOE competence indicators; (3) the popularity of dictionary look-up contests, and (4) the English proficiency requirements for junior high EFL Students in Taiwan nowadays.. 1.1.1. The Prevalence of Dictionaries Although learning English has become a nationwide trend in Taiwan, English is still a. foreign language for Taiwan citizens.. Unlike Singapore or Hong Kong’s language. environment due to their historical background, students in Taiwan have less exposure to the English language.. Due to the relatively insufficient input, junior high school students, as. EFL learners, need to resort to many kinds of tools or instruments to facilitate the learning 1.

(13) process.. As shown by the outcome of the questionnaire conducted by the researcher in this. study, every junior high school student owns at least two dictionary on average.. 1.1.2. The Curriculum and MOE Competence Indicators According to the Ministry of Education’s Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines, one of the. Ten Core Competences, include students’ competence to explore and investigate on their own initiative.. Using dictionaries or other reference books to look up information is one. example (Ministry of Education, 2003).. In the learning areas of language arts of English,. dictionary use is considered as competence indicators in the Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines in the following three parts.. An elementary school student should be able to. look up picture dictionaries actively (Indicator 6-1-15), and a junior high school student should be able to use dictionaries to look up the pronunciations and meanings of English words and phrases (Indicator 3-2-2) and to use dictionaries to understand the content of the English materials they encounter (Indicator 6-2-6) (MOE, 2003). As the formal English education in Taiwan now starts in elementary years, there are even more young dictionary learners than ever. elementary English curriculum.. Dictionary consultation is included in. For instances, the Enjoy Series for elementary school. students published by the Bureau of Education, Tainan City (2004), assigns dictionary consultation exercises for fifth and higher graders in spite of not presenting instructions in the textbook. As for Junior high school English textbooks, Kang Hsuan Series, for example, includes dictionary look-up exercises in the textbooks and the workbooks.. 1.1.3. The Popularity of Dictionary Look-up Contests In addition, Many elementary, junior and senior high schools, even colleges, and. well-known bookstores as well, such as Cave Bookstore, hold dictionary lookup contests from time to time to highlight the important role of dictionary in English learning. 2.

(14) 1.1.4. The English Proficiency Requirements The current EFL situation in Taiwan is different.. With rapid economic development,. Taiwan now has a strong need for promoting English proficiency of its citizens. This is shown by the fact that English is now taught in elementary schools from the 5th grade, two years earlier than before.. The English proficiency requirements for junior high EFL. students in Taiwan nowadays are also different. There are at least three requirements for junior high students. First, as a convention, junior high school students have two mid-terms and one final exam during each semester.. Theoretically speaking, the questions in these exams should be. based on the textbooks only.. However, some questions still demand students to know more. about the usage of the words.. For example, the word “price” appears in Junior High School. Textbook (Lesson1, Book 5, p.11) only in the sentence, “In a bookfair, books are usually sold at lower price.” But students are asked to answer such typical questions in their mid-term exam as this: “_____ is the price of the pencil? (1) How much (4) How”. (2) What. (3) How many. Most students choose (1) How much, because it has something to do with money,. but it’s a wrong answer.. In fact, in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. (English-Chinese, the third edition)(2004), one can find the following information under the entry of “price”: Can you tell me what the price of a new window would be? 你能告訴我一個新窗戶. 要多少錢嗎? Also in Wen Shin’s Multiuse English-Chinese Dictionary (文馨活用英漢辭典)(1994), one can find the following information under the entry of “price”:. What is the ~ of. this? 這個價錢多少? (★ How much is the ~ of this? 是錯誤的說法) The information in this dictionary clearly reminds students of the commonest errors, so they can avoid mistakes of this kind.. Therefore, we can assume that if students can make 3.

(15) advantage of their dictionaries, many errors like this can be avoided. Second, in addition to the above-mentioned mid-term and final exams during school semesters, junior high school students have to take other important exams. One is, of course, the Basic Competence Test, for senior high schools entrance.. It’s commonly believed that. junior high school students don’t need to use English dictionaries at all because the English taught in junior high schools is very simple and easy.. On January 21, 2003, the Ministry of. Education declared the “1000 English basic words” for elementary and junior high school as a foundation for the compiling and choosing of textbooks. The senior high school entrance exam will also be based on these “1000 words.” Any word beyond these 1000 words will be glossed in Chinese on the test paper.. That is to say, as long as a student is familiar with. these 1000 words, he or she won’t have much problem understanding the questions on the test paper. Because of this, some people may argue that junior high school students don’t need to spend extra time learning other English words at all.. However, the MOE. emphasized that the purpose of declaring these 1000 basic words is to make students from different regions and using different textbooks have a common reference.. But the content of. English teaching in elementary and junior high schools is not confined to these 1000 words only.. According to Professor Yu-hwei Shih, who is responsible for the editing of these 1000. words, the improvement of English should be approached from many different aspects and in many different ways.. The 1000 words is just a threshold, a basic qualification. To meet. the needs in the real world, these 1000 words are definitely not enough (The Liberty Times, 2003).. In other words, although the senior high school entrance is said to be confined to the. basic 1000 words, students who want to score high still need to learn a lot about the usages of these 1000 words, not only their spellings and meanings. Third, another challenge for junior high students is the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT), which is optional but highly promoted and emphasized in Taiwan now.. A. junior high school graduate is supposed to be able to pass the elementary level of GEPT.. As. 4.

(16) a result, many junior high school students now even take classes in cram schools, aiming to pass the elementary level of GEPT! The school exams, the Basic Competence Test, and the GEPT as well all demand students to know more about the word usages, not only the meanings and spellings of words. That is to say, compared with older generations, junior high school students nowadays are indeed facing a much more fast-changing world, and they need to be equipped with the ability to use various tools to facilitate their life-long learning, including using dictionaries to facilitate their English learning. As these prior studies implied, EFL learners, such as those in Taiwan, are reasonably expected to have many dictionary use experience and many different interactions with dictionaries.. For these reasons, we can assume that moderate. dictionary use should be of help for junior high school students in better coping with these challenges they are facing.. It is therefore worthwhile to find out whether junior high EFL. students can benefit from instructions on dictionary use provided by English teachers in the classrooms.. Although, it is not our purpose here to evaluate the appropriate timing for. dictionary instructions, the current English teaching context in Taiwan has revealed the urgency of researches on dictionary use and dictionary skills instruction for the benefit of English learners in Taiwan of this age.. 1.2 Researches on Dictionary Use Language teachers repeatedly get perplexed about the role of dictionaries in English teaching and learning. The reason may be that dictionaries are viewed either as a tool to enhance students’ tendency to learn individual words when acquiring a second language (Summers, 1988) or an obstacle to hinder reading fluency and vocabulary learning.. The. debate of whether dictionaries should be used in the foreign language classroom, and what dictionaries, if at all, should be used has always been a lively one amongst language teachers and lexicographers.. Amongst all the questions that can be asked of dictionaries, one has 5.

(17) received the most attention: Which is better, using a dictionary or simply guessing from context?. 1.2.1. Or to put it another way: Do dictionaries make a difference?. The Pros of Dictionary Use Researches showed that dictionary use can benefit language learners in their vocabulary. learning, writing, and reading comprehension. The positive effects of dictionary use will be discussed in detailed in the following chapter.. 1.2.2. The Cons of Dictionary Use Many language teachers have often regarded dictionary use negatively, taking the view. that it encourages laziness (the learner should make the effort to guess unknown words) or that it distracts students’ attention from the teacher or, bilingual dictionaries would lead to unwanted 'thinking in the first language'.. Because of their negative views towards. dictionary use, they seldom have students use dictionaries.. Consequently students'. dictionary skills are often poor. As far as reading fluency is concerned, students’ excessive consultation with dictionaries may interrupt the flow of their concentration on information and make reading a process of word-by-word decoding, in which the whole meaning is often missed (Summers, 1988; Scholfield, 1982).. Teachers’ worries over vocabulary learning may be resulted from. students’ using bilingual dictionaries too blindly, or from students expecting a one-to-one correlation between their own language and English.. As Hosenfeld (1977) observed,. looking up words might interrupt the fluency of the reading.. 1.2.3. Moderate Use of Dictionary Use Hosenfeld mentioned: “It is not that successful readers never look up words… but only. after efficient strategies have failed” (p.121). Nation and Coady also included looking up 6.

(18) words in a dictionary as the last means of checking a guess, and the guess was only made if the use of the wider context did not provide the meaning (1988, p. 107).. Researcher such as. Jones (1995) contended that dictionary use is an effective strategy for learners of English. Such a claim does not mean that dictionaries are the sole or the best source of linguistic knowledge, but that dictionaries are one of the skills that learners make use of to figure out the meaning of words (e.g., deducing the meanings of the unknown words from the clues in a text).. In the reading process, dictionary use competes with various kinds of guessing, or just. ignoring unknown words that come up.. There is strong evidence that expert readers make. good choices about when to use each of these. They do not use the dictionary exclusively, and often do so after making attempts at guessing.. They often use more than one dictionary,. and they progress from reliance on bilingual to monolingual target language dictionaries. Before any agreements on the use of dictionaries have been reached, it is interesting to notice that, with the appearance of electronic dictionaries, a couple of the above-mentioned problems with conventional dictionaries (e.g. the time spent) appear to have been rectified. A number of contemporary electronic dictionaries contain both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and allow readers to look up words more quickly, thereby contributing to much shorter distractions from their concentration on reading.. Therefore, it is still meaningful to. emphasize moderate dictionary use among junior high EFL students, considering the benefits dictionaries can bring (e.g. vocabulary learning, reading, and writing).. 1.2.4 The Difficulty of Dictionary Use As far as successful dictionary look-up is concerned, adept dictionary skills and inferring ability are necessary for learners to avoid misinterpreting word meanings. Generally speaking, dictionary skills are the skills to save users’ time and improve their English. It includes having the skills on how to use dictionaries faster and how to improve users’ vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and writing by correct use of their dictionaries, 7.

(19) comprising skills of macrostructure lookups and microstructure lookups.. If examined more. closely, various essential sub skills have been recognized in dictionary lookups, such as quick alphabetical order search, readiness to check in more than one place for an apparently absent word, ability to scan and select from a polysemous entry (Nesi 1999).. Dictionary use,. where adept skills are required, is not as easy as what we thought. Scholfield (1982) mentioned that if we think that learners open the dictionary and are provided with words to fit the context, we are mistaken because it is not so simple. Nesi and Haill (2002) conducted a study by requiring 89 international students at a British university to report on the way they had consulted dictionaries in texts of their choice over a period of three years.. Their data showed that whilst the majority of words were. looked up successfully, more than half of the subjects were unsuccessful in at least one out of five dictionary consultations. Dictionaries are widely used, but dictionary use is not an easy task (Hartmann, 1999; Nation, 1990; Scholfield, 1982; Wright, 1998).. As Hartmann (1999, p. 5) noticed,. “Throughout and beyond the English-speaking world, dictionaries (especially EFL learners’ dictionaries) are ‘big business’, but the skills required of their users are still underdeveloped.” As McKeown (1993) highlighted in her study, the successful learning of a word by means of dictionary consultation required the lexical sophistication on the part of students. That is, the learners need to process a wide range of semantic categories and crosscheck the definitions of the unfamiliar words to ensure that translations match the meaning required by the context. Similarly, Wright (1998) pointed out that “dictionaries are among the most readily available, widely used, and cheapest learning resources in the classroom.. They are also. among the most difficult to use. We teachers often overlook the fact that we need a whole different set of reading skills to be efficient dictionary-users. ” (p.5). The successful. dictionary use entails students’ inferring ability and dictionary reference skills. 8. Dictionary.

(20) use skills are not what students will master by themselves.. Because of the importance and. the difficulty of dictionary use, Wright (1998) suggested explicit dictionary instruction be given in English class. She believed that students benefit enormously from having the confidence and ability to use dictionaries properly.. 1.3. Statement of the Problem Chern (1987) concluded from studying on her university students in Taiwan, most. learners “feel insecure reading without a dictionary” (p.296).. At the same time, other. researchers (Chern, 1987; Huang, 1997) commented that the outcome of local students’ dictionary use was not satisfying in terms of its assistance in English reading.. As for junior. high students, in spite of the fact that almost every student owned at least one dictionary on average, as shown by the outcome of the questionnaire conducted in the current study, junior high students in Taiwan did not become better English learners. proficiency does not improve.. Their general English. Many people are eager to know the reason, wondering what’s. wrong with our young generation and what happened to our English education.. 1.3.1. Lack of Independent Learning Attitude It seems that most junior high EFL students in Taiwan don’t make a good use of their. printed or electronic dictionaries. As a junior high school English teacher myself, I think our students depend too much on teachers in their learning.. They often take a passage of. their homework or reading materials to their English teacher and ask what a certain word means.. When asked why they don’t look up the word in the dictionary themselves, they. simply put on a smile and say it’s too much trouble for them.. What’s more, they tend to. think even if they check the dictionaries, very often they can’t get a satisfying answer.. 9.

(21) 1.3.2. Lack of Dictionary Use Study on Junior High EFL Students So far, we can only find local studies on dictionary use of college, senior high, and. elementary school students.. 1.3.3. Dictionary use of junior high students still remains untouched.. Lack of Formal Dictionary Skills Instruction and Assessment A.P. Cowie (1999) mentioned that widespread possession of dictionaries does not. automatically indicate the frequent use of such reference works.. Kühn argued, “insufficient. use of the dictionary may be attributable to inadequate instruction by teachers, not to mention deficiencies of the dictionaries themselves.. A faulty introduction to dictionary use will not. lead to continued use of this reference work later” (qtd. in Cowie 1999) Training in the use of dictionaries, though ostensibly an important aspect of study skills training, is not universally accepted or widely practiced. (Phil Scholfield, 1982). Della Summers’ study also revealed that although dictionaries can ‘put the student in charge’, teachers often do not train their students in how to use the dictionary to best advantage (1988). English teachers in Taiwan have been dissuading students from using dictionaries in most English classrooms and have not been giving instructions on how to use dictionaries, though it is an undeniable fact that many students use dictionaries on a frequent and indiscriminate basis. Chen B. J. [on line], a senior high school English teacher in Taiwan, mentioning three approaches to teach vocabulary, points out the techniques to use the clues in the context to guess the meanings of the words and the consultation of dictionaries. According to Chen, the curriculum regarding dictionary use, though not emphasized in most school courses, is indeed very important in the training of learner’s independent strategy development.. 10.

(22) 1.4. Purposes of the Study Our students now take it for granted to resort to teachers whenever they encounter. problems in their learning process. However, in the real world, it’s impossible for teachers to be with their students every time and every where. Therefore, it is crucial to equip students with the basic abilities or the core competences they need. Training students to become independent learners by making them responsible for their own learning and guiding them how to learn without teachers standing by should be of the ultimate goals of Education. Thus, this study aims to probe into junior high EFL school students’ dictionary skills in reading and to assess the effects of dictionary skills instruction on their reading comprehension.. In addition to indirect observations such as questionnaire, the researcher. also makes direct observations throughout the whole study.. The aims of this project are to. examine junior high EFL school students’ dictionary skills in reading, to assess the effects of dictionary skills instruction on their reading comprehension, and to identify implications concerning dictionaries use for junior high English teachers and curriculum designers as well.. 1.5. Major Research Questions Based on the above rational, this study intends to explore the following four research. questions in the EFL environment in Taiwan: 1. How do junior high EFL students in Taiwan use dictionaries and what are their commonest dictionary consultation problems or errors in reading English? 2. Can the above dictionary consultation problems or errors be avoided or reduced by receiving dictionary skills instruction? 3. Will the reading comprehension of junior high EFL students improve as a result of the dictionary skills instruction?. 11.

(23) 1.6 Significance of the Study People in Taiwan conducted some researches related to dictionary use and mentioned the importance of dictionary skills instruction in their studies.. Lin (2001) investigated. Taiwanese children’s EFL vocabulary learning strategies, including using dictionary as one of the resources.. Su (2003) looked into the effects of electronic dictionaries on reading. comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition of senior high EFL students in Taiwan. Lai (2005) investigated the role of English dictionary use in technology university students’ reading tasks.. Chang Jian (2004) investigated technology university students’ English. dictionary use in EFL writing tasks.. However, these studies did not carry out actual. dictionary skills instruction in classrooms.. Dictionary use in the reading of junior high EFL. students in Taiwan still remains untouched by local researchers, let alone the implementation of dictionary skills instruction and the assessment of its effects. The present study is dedicated to examining junior high EFL school students’ dictionary skills in reading and to assessing the effects of dictionary skills instruction on their reading comprehension.. With a thorough investigation, we can better understand EFL junior high. school students’ dictionary skills in reading, properly assess the effectiveness of dictionary skills instruction, and come up with teaching implications concerning dictionaries use for junior high English teachers and curriculum designers as well.. 1.7. Definition of Terms. The following terms will be used in this study; their definitions in this study are given as below: 1. Dictionary: The term ‘dictionary’ loosely denotes a wide range of reference sources useful to students across all disciplines. It is often felt, and is also my definition of ‘dictionary’ in the current study, to apply mainly to works giving linguistic information about words, such as their spelling, pronunciation, grammatical class, meanings, phrasal 12.

(24) and collocational combinations, related words, and varietal restrictions. By contrast, 'encyclopedias' contain detailed factual, cultural and other non-linguistic information. However, in practice, many works named dictionaries contain the latter information in considerable quantities - general encyclopedic dictionaries, and specialist subject area dictionaries such as dictionaries of biography, architecture, civilization, literature, politics and indeed of languages and linguistics (Phil Scholfield)(Landau 1993). 2. Dictionary Skills Instruction: In the present study, dictionary skills instruction refers to the instruction given by school English teachers in the classroom as a part of the formal English course.. Many essential skills have been recognized in dictionary lookup, such. as quick alphabetical order search, readiness to check in more than one place for an apparently absent word, ability to scan and select from a polysemous entry (Nesi 1999). 3. Reading Comprehension:. Swaffar, Arens, and Byrnes (1991) define reading as an. interaction between the message and the reader’s perceptions.. They contend that factors. involved in this process are the reader’s background and perspective, text schema, text structure, episodic sequence and illustrative details, and the surface language features. Omaggio Hadley (1993) explains that the reader’s background knowledge posit two possibilities for information processing: bottom-up processing, where the reader pays attention to specific details, and top-down processing, where the reader makes predictions based on his or her background knowledge.. Bottom-up processing requires. sentence-level grammar for accurate retrieval of propositions and speaker’s modality; top-down processing requires knowledge of cues to text-organizational patterns. Carrell (1989) found that readers of more advanced proficiency levels tended to be more global or top-down in their perceptions. On the other hand, readers at lower-proficiency levels tended to be more “local” or bottom-up in their perceptions. In the present study, because of the lower English proficiency of the subjects, the reading comprehension explored here was local reading comprehension, which refers to the student's ability to 13.

(25) understand a text on a literal level – the ability to understand the sentences of a passage by drawing on local context.. 14.

(26) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW. This chapter begins with a review of some of the most significant advances made in the field of dictionary use. The relationship between a language learner and dictionaries may be illustrated with the example of making a self-help tour by an individual tourist.. From time. to time, a tourist resorts to maps in order to find a road or a certain destination. Maps are their guides to the unknown places. Before that, a tourist has to know how to use a map, including concepts of. proportional scales, contours, geographic symbols, and so on.. Similarly, dictionaries for a foreign language learner, are just like maps in a tourist’s hand. A language learner has to know how to use a dictionary.. While map-reading can be taught. by geography teachers or a person with sufficient knowledge of maps, use of dictionaries can be instructed by English teachers in the classroom. importance of map knowledge in a geography class.. It’s hardly possible to neglect the. Similarly, the importance of dictionary. skills in an English class can not be overlooked, either.. In the following subsections,. literatures related to dictionary use in L2 language learning are reviewed.. 2.1 The Effects of Dictionary Use Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in dictionary research in L2 contexts. Tomaszczyk (1979) and Béjoint (1981) found learners of English claiming to use dictionaries (mono- and bilingual) for all the four skills, but far more for reading and writing than speaking and listening.. As a matter of fact, dictionary use either in reading, writing,. speaking, or listening may lead on to vocabulary learning, and may additionally be used along with more decontextualized vocabulary learning strategies.. For example, a learner. memorizing wordlists in a foreign language may resource from the dictionary to check information on a word, or to browse the entry for further meanings and information to master. 15.

(27) Empirical researches on the effects of dictionary use mainly focused on the following three aspects of English learning: (1) vocabulary learning, (2) writing, and (3) reading comprehension. First of all, when investigating the use of dictionary, its relation with vocabulary can not be neglected because dictionary is the product of lexicography, which is based on lexicology. By definition, lexicology is the study of the vocabulary items (lexemes) of a language, including their meanings and relations. (Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics ) Many researches show that using dictionaries is one of the strategies that EFL students use to learn words.. Schmitt (1997) developed a vocabulary learning strategies taxonomy,. and used it for a large-scale survey of 600 Japanese EFL learners, who were set up in four groups: junior high school students, high school students, university students, and adult learners. In Taiwan, Chen (1998) replicated Schmitt’s study, using the same taxonomy to investigate the vocabulary learning strategies of Taiwanese EFL learners, consisting of 81 senior-high school students and 174 university students.. The survey results in both. Schmitt’s and Chen’s studies were similar in that, from the respondents’ points of view, the most used and most helpful vocabulary learning strategies were (1) using the dictionary, (2) written and verbal repetition, and (3) continuing study over time. Gu and Johnson (1996) found that “learners’ vocabulary sizes seem very much related to the learners’ self-initiation in learning, their skillful use of a dictionary, their willingness to spend extracurricular time to practice newly learned items, and their remembering words in semantically meaningful groups” (p.659). Knight (1994) reported that dictionary use has a facilitating effect on one’s vocabulary learning.. She discovered that while incidental vocabulary learning through contextual. guessing did take place, those who used a dictionary as well as guessed through context not only learned more words immediately after reading but also remembered more after two 16.

(28) weeks.. She also found that low verbal ability participants benefited more from the. dictionary than high verbal ability participants who, in turn, benefited more from contextual guessing.. Another interesting thing Knight found was that high verbal ability students. would look up a word even if they had successfully guessed its meaning, a finding in line with Hulstijn (1993). Hulstijn, J., Hollander, M. & Greidanus, T. (1996) proved that dictionary use resulted in longer retention of new words.. They investigated students’ L2 incidental vocabulary. learning in three text reading conditions: Marginal Glosses, Dictionary, or Control. Their study revealed that the provision of marginal glosses resulted in much better retention scores than the provision of dictionaries, and students in the Dictionary group seldom used their dictionary. However, interestingly, when students in the dictionary group did look up a word, their chance of remembering its meaning was greater than the average retention in the Marginal Glosses group. Luppescu and Day (1993) also reported the identical findings in learning vocabulary. The advantage of a dictionary was corroborated in their study of 293 Japanese EFL university students.. They validated, EFL students could disambiguate the meaning of unfamiliar. words and remember them with the help of bilingual dictionaries.. Participants were. randomly assigned to a treatment (dictionary) group and a control (no dictionary) group and were asked to read a short story in class.. The treatment group used a bilingual. English-Japanese dictionary of their own choice, and the control group were not allowed to use any dictionaries. Neither group were told of the multiple-choice vocabulary test that was administered immediately after reading. Results suggested a clear advantage for the dictionary group in vocabulary learning through reading, but the dictionary group took almost twice as long to read the passage as the control group did. McCreary, D. & Dolezal, F. (1999) indicated that dictionary use that supplements the use of contextual cues is beneficial in vocabulary learning but dictionary use without a supporting 17.

(29) discourse context provides no measurable advantage over inferring or guessing the meaning of a word within a written discourse. These particular benefits of dictionary use were also empirically substantiated in Grabe and Stoller’s (1997) case study of L2 vocabulary learning. Nevertheless, they added that participants in the dictionary group spent approximately twice the time on reading the given passage which the control group had spent. According to Della Summers’ (1988) report on the results of his experiments done on the effectiveness of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English in vocabulary learning, dictionaries can help students learn words because: (1) dictionaries present a powerful analytic tool in organizing language, (2) dictionaries provide differentiation from other similar words, which are necessary for accurate comprehension, and (3) dictionaries help fix new vocabulary in the memory by drawing the user’s attention to opposite or words with close meaning. Secondly, in writing, the dictionary may be called upon for a wide range of types of information besides word meaning.. Often a writer retrieves a word for what they want to. express, but needs to check some aspect other than its meaning (e.g. irregular verb tense form, or what a typical object might be), or choose between two words they have retrieved. Della Summers’ (1998) experiment asked participants to produce nine of the tested words in sentences.. Results suggested that the mix of definition plus example in the. dictionary entry was the most successful, and that the use of the dictionary in all conditions tested was more conducive to the successful production of new words in sentences. Examples in dictionaries help extend the user’s comprehension, and to provide models for students to remember and perhaps eventually produce, by putting individual words into a range of typical contexts and appropriate phrases.. It is obvious that dictionary is an. important basis for gaining further understanding of the range of use of new words.. 18.

(30) Thirdly, in addition to vocabulary learning and writing, most other researches investigated the usefulness of dictionaries in reading comprehension.. Knight (1994). reported that dictionary use has a facilitating effect on one’s reading comprehension. Della. Summers (1988) also indicated that dictionary is a useful aid to reading comprehension in his report of the results of his experiments done on the effectiveness of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.. He found that comprehension was significantly improved by the. use of the dictionary. Henri Bejoint(1987) concluded that "frequent and careful consultation of the dictionary can lead to a better command of the language" (p.104). 2.2. Dictionary Skills 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 19.

(31) 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, 20.

(32) 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; 21.

(33) (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 22.

(34) 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) 23.

(35) (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). 2.3. Common Look-up Errors and Problems in English reading Dictionary use has only relatively recently become a topic of research interest. (Scholfield 1998).. Studies are divided into (a) questionnaire surveys concerning what. dictionaries people (say they) use, how often, what they look up in them, and the like, and (b) researches on the detailed skills or strategies that users possess, or need to possess, when actually consulting dictionaries for various specific purposes, often using diary, interview or think aloud research methods.. Some common look-up errors and problems in English. reading were revealed by the previous dictionary studies as shown below.. Among these. common dictionary lookup problems, problematic location and wrong choice of definition will be the focus of the current study. Common look-up errors and problems in English reading include: (1) Problematic choices of target vocabulary items, that is, having problems in establishing which lexical item in the reading text poses a problem (Stark, M.P. (1990)’s dictionary skills checklist item (1)). (2) Problematic location, that is, having problems in finding a lexical item in the dictionary macrostructure (Stark, M.P. (1990)’s dictionary skills checklist item (2)). (3) Wrong choice of definition, misinterpretation of the information, and main focus on L2 equivalents only, due to the problems in finding a piece of information in the microstructure (Stark, M.P. (1990)’s dictionary skills checklist item (3)).. 24.

(36) 2.3.1 Problems in Establishing Which Lexical Item in the Reading Text Poses a Problem As students read, they may meet an unknown word without taking any follow-up action. One possibility is that the reader does not recognize it as an unfamiliar word.. For example,. they may interpret “thanks to” as “thank” so they did not look it up although the phrase is unfamiliar to them.. Another possibility is that they choose not to deal with it because it is. not important or because of time limitation. If students choose dictionaries to solve their vocabulary problems, the number of vocabulary items to look up is usually large. Besides the unknown words in the reading text, the number of target vocabulary increases because of the following four reasons.. First,. students may verify their contextual guessing of word meanings by dictionary consultation. Second, learners may meet unfamiliar words in the monolingual dictionary as they look up a word, they may end up looking up words if they intend to understand the English entry fully (Lai, 2005).. Tono (2001) discovered that learners with no tolerance of ambiguity tend to. look up every unknown word; learners who are tolerant of ambiguity might skip a few unknown words and try to use contextual cues or to make a better decision as to which word to consult first.. The participant’s frequent dictionary use goes along with Chern’s (1987). that Chinese students have less tolerance of making mistakes in academic tasks.. However,. in this way, they fail to activate their metacognition to adjust their dictionary use to cope with the relatively limited time and large amount of reading tasks. Often the students are hasty in dictionary use before making good use of the information in the context which may save the trouble of redundant dictionary consultation. Another problem the reader has with dictionary consultation is that he cannot or do not distinguish main ideas from minor ones in a text when reading.. Consequently, he may not. be able to tell the important unknown words from those less-important ones. Unnecessary dictionary consultation also results from the lack of morphological knowledge.. For example, if the users know the prefix “un-” implies the opposite, after 25.

(37) looking up “aware,” they don’t need to look up “unaware” any more.. It implies that. instructions on morphology, such as word roots and affixes, may be more efficient than dictionary use to enlarge learners’ knowledge.. English teachers may help learners to lower. their frequency of redundant dictionary use by providing with knowledge of morphology.. 2.3.2 Problems in Finding a Lexical Item in the Dictionary Macrostructure Nesi and Haill (2002) conducted a study by requiring 89 international students at a British university to report on the way they had consulted dictionaries in texts of their choice over a period of three years.. Participants in their study were found to have difficulty in their. dictionary consultation more or less. Some consultation problems resulted in serious errors of interpretation, which participants were largely unaware of. most common ones.. Location problems are the. The subject chose the wrong dictionary entry or sub-entry because they. chose the entry or subentry for the wrong word class or they failed to recognize some lexical items are multi-word units.. 2.3.3 Problems in Finding a Piece of Information in the Microstructure Nesi and Haill’s (2002) study also shows that subjects often make mistakes of choosing the wrong definition for a polysemous word.. Neubach and Cohen (1988) used oral. think-aloud reports and post-task interviews to inquire into the search strategies and problems running into.. Their study showed that the students were prone to read only the first. definition and were unable to read beyond the first definition or even further in a long entry. In addition, misinterpretation of the information is also a common dictionary look-up problem.. Subjects choose the correct dictionary entry or sub-entry but misinterpreted the. information it contained.. One situation is that the subjects misinterpreted the definition’s. ‘folk’ style, and another situation is the use of “Kidrule strategy,” in which subjects take out a short familiar segment of the dictionary definition of the context as an equivalent for the 26.

(38) unknown headword. As early as 1999, A. P. Cowie asserted that kidrule strategy is the commonest source of error found to be the application of a look-up technique. Kidrule strategy involved (a) reading the definition, (b) selecting a short familiar segment of the definition, (c) composing a sentence using the segment, and (d) substituting the target word for the segment (1999). Another dictionary consultation problem is the users’ main focus on L2 equivalents only. May Y. Fan (2000) investigated the look-up behavior of bilingualized dictionaries of 1000 Hong Kong students with the instrument of a questionnaire and the Word Levels Test. Comparison was made between students more proficient in English vocabulary and those less proficient.. Her findings indicated that students in general, focusing on the Chinese. equivalents of English words, make very limited use of the bilingualized dictionary, especially the information related to the speech habit and the social and cultural life of the L2 speakers.. The more proficient students, however, make fuller use of the bilingualized. dictionary.. 2.4. Variables in the Use of L2 Dictionaries There are some variables we have to take into consideration when investigating the use. of L2 dictionaries, according to Hulstijn & Atkins (1998). The following may serve as a start-up list of variables in the dictionary use scenario.. In the design of the present study,. the variables 3 and 4 are examined to see whether they had any influence or effects on students’ reading comprehension.. Other variables are controlled for the both groups.. 1. The user’s “sophistication” (general education level, reading, writing and inferring skills.) 2. The user’s proficiency in the foreign language. 3. The user’s understating of dictionary metalanguage. 4. If actual dictionaries are involved, the user’s familiarity with the dictionaries being 27.

(39) used in the task. 5. The user’s knowledge of the subject matter of the text being understood, translated, read, written about etc. 6. The format and type of the specific task (written or spoken; translating or comprehending, etc. ), including any time limits imposed. 7. The level of difficulty of the task for the subjects carrying it out. 8. The language (L1 or L2) in which the information is sought or provided. 9. The type of linguistic unit involved (e.g. content or function word), the linguistic information (semantic, grammatical, orthographic, encyclopedic etc.) sought about that unit, and the linguistic and cultural distance between L1 and L2. 10. The medium in which the dictionary information is presented (print or electronic). 11. The type of dictionary or dictionary entry used (monolingual, bilingual, “hybrid”, etc.) 12. The way in which the information is presented in the dictionary or dictionaries being used: classification, layout, metalanguage, abbreviations, typeface conventions, etc. 13. The source of dictionary information available to individuals participating in the investigation: actual dictionaries or “cited” entries; moreover, the latter may either be extracted from a published dictionary or composed for the purposes of the test 14. The adequacy of coverage of a dictionary vis-à-vis the actual tasks involved (i.e. whether or not the information sought actually is to be found in the dictionary or dictionaries used).. 2.5. The Approach and Practice of Dictionary Skills Instruction Dictionary strategies, if at all encouraged, have normally been proposed in a prescriptive. manner (Scholfield, 1982; Thompson, 1987).. From the viewpoint of Phil Scholfield (1982), 28.

(40) where dictionary training in some form is adopted, the weakest form is perhaps simply for the instructor to explicitly allow the use of dictionaries in classroom and homework tasks, rather than forbidding it and driving their use underground, leading possibly to a reliance upon poor dictionaries. Slightly stronger is for the teacher to evaluate what is available, recommend suitable dictionaries, and require their use in certain tasks. When it comes to formal implementation of dictionary training, according to Phil Scholfield (1982), the more traditional approach assumes comprehensive analysis of the relevant specific skills so as to create a syllabus. The skills are then taught by the teacher modeling its use, requiring the students to perform a task using the targeted skill. On the other hand, the more learner-centered approach shares much with humanistic pedagogy, and adopts a reflective approach to training. It is used in wider strategy training but rarely for dictionary use specifically. The instructor's role is to elicit from the trainees their own ideas about what they do and promote sharing and self-discovery by requiring students to keep a diary of their lookups, eliciting and sharing among a class their memories of their habits or experiences of dictionary use, and having them do think aloud tasks in pairs where they perform lookups. In the present study, the researcher adopted the more traditional approach mainly for the reason of limited research time.. 29.