Why do learners prefer bilingualized dictionaries to monolingual dictionaries, or vice versa?

Conference item

It has been found in the literature that only very few ESL/EFL students ever consult a monlingual dictionary, so bilingual/bilingualized dictionaries seem to have been learners' first choice. Bilingual/Bilingualized dictionaries are easier to use, but when using bilingualized dictionaries, many learners, university students inclusive, rely on both languages or predominantly the native language. Mother tongue influence, which has been argued in many Second Language Acquisition studies as one major cause of learner errors, may be aggravated by the presence of native language translations in these dictionaries. Monolingual dictionaries are often seen as more difficult to use, but the range of lexical and grammatical information included in monolingual dictionaries, which is rarely even approached by the bilingual or bilingualized dictionary, is an invaluable resource at all stages in a productive task. Whether learners will benefit more from the use of a monolingual or bilingual/bilingualized dictionary is still yet to determine. The present paper investigates the choice of dictionaries by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. About 80 university English majors were invited to participate in a questionnaire survey aiming to uncover learners' dictionary habits, their preference for using dictionaries of a certain kind, the reasons for their preference, the information they sought from their preferred dictionaries, the occasion when they preferred a dictionary type to another, and so on. The results of the study will furnish the SLA and lexicography fields of ESL learners' dictionary needs and the cognitive processes involved in their dictionary consultation.

Authors: Chan, A

• Alternative title: Presented at Chinese/Japanese Lexicography session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Language: English
• Subjects: Lexicography