A study in the use of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries by Polish learners of English: A preliminary report

Abstract

The paper presents a selection of results from a study investigating dictionary use by 712 Polish learners of English representing a variety of FL competence levels and backgrounds. Data from Learner Survey, experiment, and Teacher Survey are brought in to test hypotheses relating to a variety of aspects of dictionary use. Here two aspects have been selected for presentation. First, frequency with which learners seek different types of information in their dictionaries is analyzed. It is found that the need for meaning and equivalents dominates over non-semantic information at all levels but the highest. At the advanced level, interest in non-semantic information surges. Second, the relative usefulness of six dictionary types for lexical decoding is tested experimentally. Analysis reveals the influence of level, dictionary type, and interaction of level by type on test scores. Monolingual dictionary produces lowest scores, but its disadvantage is relatively smallest for advanced learners.