LEXICOLOGY & LEXICOGRAPHY READING GROUP May 26 at 5 pm

While looking up single words in a dictionary requires a knowledge of the alphabet, finding multi-word units (MWEs) is more of a challenge. This presentation reports on the findings of a study into how Polish learners of English look up MWEs. Subjects’ preferences, as exhibited in a Headword Choice Test, were compared with their declarations to check how aware they are of the pattern they use in choosing the headwords for the look-up. The study involved two groups of subjects at different levels of English proficiency (intermediate and advanced) to check if that difference is reflected in the look-up behavior. The data were collected from the Headword Choice Test and the Questionnaire, which apart from the declared preferences, also provided additional information about subjects’ general dictionary behavior. The findings on subjects’ look-up preferences were compared with the actual dictionary practice found in five major English monolingual learner’s dictionaries: LDOCE5, MED2, MWALD, CALD3, OALD7. The results show that not all of the analyzed dictionaries anticipate users’ preferences equally well.