xi
4.4. Research Procedures ....................................................................................... 110
4.4.1. Research Site ............................................................................................ 110
4.4.2. Instructions and Training ......................................................................... 110
4.4.3. Procedure in Reading Comprehension ..................................................... 111
4.4.4. Procedure to Test Vocabulary Retention ................................................. 114
4.5. Method of Data Analysis ................................................................................ 115
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 118
Chapter Five: Data Analysis and Discussion ........................................................ 120
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 121
5.1. Reading Times ................................................................................................ 125
5.2. Reading Scores ............................................................................................... 132
5.3. Lookup Frequency .......................................................................................... 138
5.4. Lookup Frequencies-Reading Scores’ Correlations ....................................... 143
5.5. Vocabulary Retention ..................................................................................... 148
5.6. Findings from Windows Title Operations Log Files ...................................... 153
5.7. Findings from the CD Lookup History-List ................................................... 159
5.8. Pedagogical Implications ................................................................................ 161
Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 167
General Conclusion ................................................................................................. 169
Limitations of the Study ........................................................................................ 173
Suggestions for Further Research .......................................................................... 175
List of References .................................................................................................... 183
Appendices
1
General Introduction
1. Background and motivation ................................................................................... 2
2. Statement of the Problem ....................................................................................... 5
3. Purpose of the Study .............................................................................................. 6
4. Research Questions ................................................................................................ 7
5. Research Hypotheses ............................................................................................. 7
6. Method of Investigation ......................................................................................... 8
7. Significance of the Study ..................................................................................... 10
8. Definitions of Terms ............................................................................................ 11
9. Structure of the Study........................................................................................... 13
2
General Introduction
1
.
Background and Motivation
Vocabulary is central to second language (L2) acquisition
.
As McCarthy
(1990, p
.
140) asserts, “without words to express a wider range of meanings,
communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way”
.
The dictionary
is widely recognized as one of the most important tools that help L2 learners
understand or learn vocabulary
.
Dictionaries are often considered as an essential tool in the process of foreign
language learning, and are recognized as the first sources of information L2 learners
refer to when they are faced with words they do not know
.
According to Songhao
(1997), while there is a wide range of ways to deal with vocabulary, the use of
dictionaries seems to be the conventional method of instruction
.
Thorndike (1991, p
.
15) shared a similar opinion and said that the dictionary “is one of the most important
instruments of … [L2] instruction”
.
Indeed, dictionaries provide foreign language learners with pertinent
information about vocabulary such as the definition of a word, its spelling,
pronunciation, contextual usage, etc
.
Chan (2005, p
.
1), for example, comments
:
3
One of the major advances in lexicography in recent years has been the focus
on the “user perspective” (Hartmann & James, 1998, p
.
152); a growing interest in the
dictionary user can clearly be seen in research literature of the last two decades (Lew,
2011; Garcia, 2011; Chen, 2011)
.
The literature on lexicography now has a new trend
as it has started to focus particularly on dictionary users and seeks to know who uses
which dictionary, and for what purpose (Hartmann, 1999a)
.
This focus on the user perspective and the need for empirical studies of what
dictionary users do in real look-up situations are important concerns of applied
linguistics (Hartmann, 2001)
.
The significance of the user perspective was highlighted
by Stein (1984, p
.
4) in her lecture at the inauguration of the Dictionary Research
Centre in Exeter in the following words
:
“Dictionaries are obviously written for their
users
.
We therefore need much more research on the dictionary user, his needs, his
expectations, and his prejudices”
.
A learner’s dictionary is an indispensable self-learning tool, providing
learners with invaluable banks of information about the language being
learned, such as the meanings of a word, its pronunciations, synonyms,
antonyms, collocations, and syntactic behavior. The correct usage of a
word, often exemplified in example sentences or definitions, is also an
important source of information.
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