Lexicology and Lexicography Reading Group, April 25th, 5 pm, 101A

One of the current discussions in metalexicography is whether the use of dictionaries enhances students’ performance in writing. Previous studies on dictionary use in language production have yielded contradictory results. According to Tall and Hurman (2002), students who consult dictionaries in writing tasks achieve higher scores than the students without dictionaries. Nevertheless, East (2008) suggests that there is no difference in the performance of users regardless of the level of proficiency, task type, or dictionary type. So far, however, there has been little discussion on the usefulness of bilingual dictionaries in text writing for Polish learners of English. Accordingly, the main aim of my study was to investigate the effect of paper and electronic version of a bilingual dictionary, here Longman Słownik Współczesny, on students’ performance in language production. Participants were 48 upper secondary school students who had to perform two tasks, i.e. composition writing and partial translation task. For the purpose of the study, the subjects were divided into three groups of 16 students each. The first one completed their task booklets without the possibility to consult a dictionary, whereas two other groups used paper or electronic versions of Longman Słownik Współczesny. Additionally, the participants filled in the questionnaires which provided information on their habits, preferences and experience with dictionaries. Apart from addressing the question whether Polish learners of English benefit from the assistance of a dictionary, this paper aims at presenting the students’ perspective on dictionary use in text production.

References:
East, Martin. 2008. Dictionary use in foreign language writing exams: Impact and implications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Tall, Graham and John Hurman. 2002. “Using dictionaries in modern language GCSE examinations”, Educational Review 54, 3: 205–217.

The presentation is devoted to the study of the dictionary look-up process with an emphasis on sense discrimination. The study was conducted with the use of an eye-tracker, which enables a thorough and advanced investigation of the dictionary look-up process. Similar research has recently been done by Yukio Tono (2011), and serves as a basis for this study.
Two groups of university students took part in this study, both of which included five participants. There were advanced learners of English in the first group and students of other fields of study in the second group. The participants were asked to look up twenty six Polish words in specially designed dictionary samples from two bilingual dictionaries, while looking at a monitor of an eye-tracker which recorded their eye movements and created scan paths for further analysis.
The aim of this study is to analyse the process of looking up a word in polysemous entries and see if there are any differences in this process between high and low proficiency users of English. Also, two bilingual dictionaries are compared and their user-friendliness is tested.