The impact of dictionary use in four different conditions on incidental vocabulary learning

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The impact of dictionary use in four different conditions on incidental vocabulary learning

Iu, Kam-man, Violet.; 姚錦雯. Iu, K. V. [姚錦雯]. (2003). The impact of dictionary use in four different conditions on incidental vocabulary learning. (Thesis). University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5353/th_b2705694 2003

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/31029

The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

In the field of second language learning and teaching, vocabulary has played a crucial role and attracted considerable attention from linguists.

In recent years particularly, the

teaching of vocabulary has gained important status as a fundamental perspective of language development (Nunan, 1999).

Linguists and language teachers have been keen on searching

for the most effective approaches and strategies for helping students develop vocabulary acquisition. It is generally accepted that reading, both in the aspects of first language and second language, contributes to vocabulary growth (Brown, 1994; Sternberg, 1987).

In

order to enhance the effect of vocabulary learning while reading, some teachers suggest students should look up the meanings of unknown words when they have difficulties in understanding them, whereas other teachers prefer them to work out the meanings from the given context. Looking up the unknown vocabulary items in dictionaries seems to be a more straightforward way to remove barriers in the reading process. However, compared with exploring the word meaning from context, it seems that using a dictionary and putting the meaning into the reading passage involves relatively less active participation of the learner.

Questions are raised and studies are conducted to investigate the issue of whether

working out meaning from context or looking it up in the dictionary is more effective in vocabulary acquisition.

There are suggestions (Fischer, 1990; MeKeown, 1991) that

contextual guessing working in co-operation with dictionary use provides the best effect in vocabulary development.

The major concern of this study focuses on the contribution that dictionary use in different conditions might make in second language vocabulary learning in the context of Hong Kong secondary schools. Before 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony.

Regarding

the local education system, English language has been taught and learnt as a second language

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since the period of colonization. After the return of sovereignty to China, the status of Putonghua, the official spoken language of China, was highly promoted, but English language retained its role as one of the official languages in the territory.

Despite its

long-lasting important role in the education system of Hong Kong, the English language standard achieved by local Chinese students has been criticized as declining, as noted in the newspapers frequently.

Teachers are blamed for not having high enough language

proficiency standards and are then forced to take language proficiency tests or attend relevant courses.

Syllabuses are amended to cater for the language needs of the new generation.

School heads and language teachers, bearing great pressure, are trying very hard to seek the best remedial strategies to rescue students' ability on using English language.

Education

reform proposed in 1999 placed much emphasis on reading, through which, hopefully, students are able to acquire more knowledge and improve their own language proficiency level.

In recent years, it has been found that the purchase of a dictionary has become a must for secondary students in Hong Kong.

It is common to find that an English dictionary, either

bilingual or monolingual, is included in the textbook lists of almost all secondary students in Hong Kong.

For the purpose of this study, a telephone survey with all secondary schools in

one of the districts in Hong Kong revealed that all schools in the survey require their students to buy English dictionaries, commonly a bilingual dictionary for lower forms and a monolingual one for senior forms.

The survey was conducted in 2002 and the findings are

shown in Appendix I. A teacher in one of the target schools responded that her principal once gathered all secondary one students in the hall to inspect if they had bought the dictionary assigned on the school’s textbook list.

Although the schools involved did not

mention whether they were sure if their students had actually used the dictionaries, the findings of the survey indicate that school authorities and language teachers in the territory

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generally believe that a dictionary is a basic tool for language learning. It would appear that most schools in Hong Kong look upon the effectiveness of dictionaries on language acquisition, however, its value has not yet been confirmed.

Nevertheless, did the students

really purchase the dictionary as instructed by their schools?

Even if they have bought it,

have they actually used it for the purpose of language acquisition? enhance students' vocabulary growth?

Does dictionary use help

There is no point in schools and teachers forcing

students to spend money on buying a dictionary if they do not spare a minute to use it. Whether the huge sum of money spent on purchasing dictionaries annually is cost-effective is still a question since the effectiveness of dictionary use in second language acquisition has not yet been examined, especially in the context of Hong Kong.

It is essential for language

teachers in Hong Kong to explore the effectiveness of dictionary use in second language acquisition of their students who are forced to adopt a dictionary as one of the basic language learning tools.

Besides, most language learners consider dictionaries dumb teachers in their learning process but the quantity of 'words' or 'entries' provided by dictionaries, the quality of usage illustrations and the way this information is organized vary a lot.

These variations directly

affect the degree of usefulness and feasibility to their users in terms of helping them learn new vocabulary. Finding out the impact of dictionary use in the commonly used conditions appearing in the Hong Kong context on language development is significant so that proper selection or advice on language learning tools as well as better teaching effects can be assured in local language education.

With an intense interest in exploring ways to facilitate

second language vocabulary acquisition in the context of Hong Kong, this study attempts to investigate the relationship between vocabulary learning and the use of dictionaries in four different conditions so as to find out which condition contributes most to local students' language development.

This study also tries to find out the effect of these different

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conditions on the long-term retention of looked up words.

Broadly speaking, helping students to obtain the most successful language learning strategies and promoting their English language proficiency are the major aims of the present study.

Of course, language learners' own strategies, experience and frequency of using a

dictionary should be taken into account as well.

Besides collecting statistical data on the

impact of using a dictionary in different conditions on the amount of vocabulary learnt by secondary students, the present study also collects qualitative data through interviewing individual subjects about their individual habits of dictionary use, and checks the retention of words looked up by the students. This data certainly assists local teachers to choose the best pedagogy to cater for the needs of their own students in language development.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary is an important part of language learning and teaching. While vocabulary learning did not receive much attention from most teachers, textbook writers and even students in the early years of applied linguistics' history, now a large number of studies can easily be found about it (Nunan, 1999). Recently, vocabulary teaching has become the interest of linguists, syllabus designers, textbook writers and language teachers. Maiguashca (1993:85) states that vocabulary is 'perhaps the fastest growing area of second language education in terms of research output and publication'.

In Nunan's (1999:3) book,

he describes the increased interest gained by vocabulary that 'the teaching of vocabulary has assumed its rightful place as a fundamentally important aspect of language development'. Vocabulary teaching has been given plenty of attention in the last decade, and its status within language teaching is firmly reasserted.

However, what is vocabulary learning, how much vocabulary or what degree of vocabulary knowledge do language learners need to use? the answers to these questions.

There are different opinions on

Coady (1993) suggests that for vocabulary learning to take

place, learners need to focus their attention on the meaning of the target word and its connection with the word form, so that they will be able to understand the meaning contained in the context.

Nation (2001:4) gives us an inclusive answer that 'knowing a word is taken

to include not only knowing the formal aspects of the word and knowing its meaning, but also being able to use the word'.

He further explains that 'words are not isolated units of

language', in other words, each single word is learned with the support of other relevant knowledge and in different levels of knowing (2001:23).

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It is true that English native speakers acquire (English) vocabulary at a relatively higher rate and know a great deal about each word since English is their mother tongue.

Not

surprisingly, most nonnative English-speaking students, even university students, find vocabulary a major linguistic obstacle in the learning process.

In a survey with L2

university students, Leki & Carson (1994) found that vocabulary was identified as a serious barrier to the completion of their academic writing tasks. Finding the most effective and efficient way to teach and help students to learn vocabulary is the challenge of language teachers as well as the major concern of the present study.

2.2 Vocabulary Growth through Reading

According to Nation's (2001) classification, vocabulary knowledge can be divided into two scales: receptive and productive.

The former refers to the perception of a word form

and meaning through listening or reading whereas the latter involves the expression of word meaning and production of written or spoken word form through writing or speaking. It appears that reading and listening are the input of vocabulary acquisition which is expressed and demonstrated through output in the form of speaking and writing. Of interest for the present study is vocabulary learning while reading, and the focus is directed to receptive scale of vocabulary knowledge.

Through investigating a systematic and efficient way to acquire new words, Schouten-van Parreren (1985) argues that the learning of words could best be done by reading. Her theory is based on a view that the process of inferring word meaning from the context directly contributes a positive effect to retention. Other researchers (Jenkins, Stein & Wysocki, 1984; Nagy, Anderson & Herman, 1987) also found that small but significant

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growth of word knowledge took place after reading.

Indeed, reading is a crucial factor in

enhancing vocabulary development for both native speaking and non-native speaking learners. The development of vocabulary growth in comprehension has now firmly been established.

In addition, extensive reading is considered a good contributor of vocabulary acquisition for both first language learners (Sternberg, 1987; Nagy, Anderson & Herman, 1987) and second language learners (Nation, 1990; Hazenberg & Hulstijn, 1996).

It was estimated that

school children of first language gained an average of 2000 words per year and that the size of first language vocabulary doubled between the third and seventh grades (Nagy, Anderson & Herman, 1987). However, such rate of word growth cannot be sought in a second or foreign language.

Laufer (2000) found that in most cases, tertiary students learning English

as a second language averagely possess a range of 1500 to 4000 word families.

Although

the average vocabulary learning rates vary among first, second and foreign language learners, and vocabulary growth through reading is a long process, it is likely that reading extensively would enlarge readers' vocabulary size in the long run.

2.3 Incidental Vocabulary Learning

While it is known that reading directly contributes to first and second language vocabulary growth, learning through reading is neither constrained by classroom setting nor formal instruction.

Vocabulary learning can take place at any time or any place, through

academic or authentic materials from textbooks, newspapers, magazines, song lyrics and even advertisements.

In regard to the main focus of the learners' attention, vocabulary acquisition

can be divided into two scales: intentional learning and incidental learning.

Huckin and

Coady (1999:182) define incidental learning as 'a by-product, not the target, of the main cognitive activity, reading.' Nation (2001) explains that as learners' attention is focused on

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the message of the text, they learn vocabulary incidentally, but when learners' attention is focused on the form and language, they learn vocabulary intentionally. In other words, the attention of learner is a significant variable determining the nature of vocabulary learning.

In fact, some researchers tend to support the notion that all vocabulary is acquired incidentally from context (Nagy, Herman & Anderson, 1985; Sternberg, 1987; Sternberg & Powell, 1983).

Nagy, Herman, & Anderson (1985) conducted a study on the effect of

incidental learning and found that after a single casual contact with the unknown words within the context of an exposition or a narration, students would be able to learn some knowledge about the word meaning.

Other researchers (for example, Sternberg, 1987)

investigating vocabulary learning also concluded that first language learners acquired a majority of their adult vocabulary incidentally through seeing or hearing the words adopted in different contexts. It is obvious that incidental learning is a major source of vocabulary growth.

Knight (1994) conducted a study with a group of Spanish students at Central Michigan University on incidental vocabulary learning. She found that the subjects, who were all native speakers of English, learned a considerable number of new Spanish words when reading with the purpose of understanding the message of a text. It seems that the trend where students are asked to read texts focusing on language and form is shifted to those on meaning and message.

Vocabulary is no longer a subject taught and assessed academically,

but something that can be learnt incidentally from extensive reading (Knight, 1994). In other words, the focus of vocabulary development has moved from intentional learning to incidental learning.

Yet agreement on the distinction between intentional learning and incidental

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learning cannot always be found.

Some researchers argue that a certain degree of

consciousness is needed for vocabulary learning to take place (Schmitt, 1993; Laufer & Hill, 2000), whilst others suggest that vocabulary acquisition does not only require attention to meaning but also form (Ellis, 1995; Robinson, 1995).

Laufer & Hill (2000:58-59) say that

'effective incidental vocabulary learning is a conscious learning process', and although incidental vocabulary is 'a by-product of another activity' obtained when learners' attention was not concentrated on the vocabulary items of the text, 'it (learning) was not unattended'. Hulstijn (2001) suggests that their differentiation largely relies on how mental processing works when learning takes place. It matters whether learners know that they will be tested on what they read or listen to.

Surely, only if certain effort has been made can new words be

rooted in learners' mind.

Meanwhile, Huckin & Coady (1999) point out the drawbacks of incidental learning, namely guessing is successful only when context clues are good in accordance with readers' good basic vocabulary knowledge, guessing needs careful monitoring and training in reading skills as well as in word recognition, and guessing is not equivalent to acquisition especially in case of acquiring multiword lexical items.

Hill & Laufer (2003) also question if

advanced learners learn the expected amount of vocabulary just by reading, since the rate of incidental word growth through reading is substantially slow.

Studies on vocabulary

learning indicate that about one to five words are gained from reading a text of over 1000 words (Luppescu & Day, 1993; Knight, 1994; Horst, Cobb & Meara, 1998), which imply that only if a second language learner read about 20 novels (which approximately consist of 100,00 words) can he be able to acquire around 100 new words. would be inefficient and too time consuming.

Such a long, slow process

Therefore, it is worthwhile for language

teachers to spend time exploring the skills and strategies that learners need to adopt, even implicitly, in the process of incidental learning so as to help develop vocabulary growth.

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2.4 Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Recently, it has been shown that an increasing number of teachers, who teach English as a second or foreign language particularly, find it necessary to seek better strategies and methods which are helpful in enhancing their students’ vocabulary development (Hatch & Brown, 1995).

Nevertheless, word knowledge itself covers a range of aspects besides

linguistic, such as sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic, as well as a number of skills, such as comprehension, inference and recall. knowledge.

There is no solitary technique of acquiring such

Evidence shows that effective and feasible word learning approaches have to be

multifaceted and rich, in terms of their effectiveness in satisfying learners’ needs as well as transmitting the most details of the target words (McKeown & Curtis, 1987; Nation, 1990; Stoller & Grabe, 1993).

Reviewing the literature on learning strategies, different people have different ideas to categorize the types of strategies, among which Oxford's (1990) classification would probably be the most inclusive one.

She divides learning strategies into six major groups:

memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies.

Apart

from these general learning strategies, there are some directly addressed to vocabulary learning. Mnemonics and key-word methods are the ones that attracted most researchers' attention. The former one refers to the skills that help learners to make use of their past experience or knowledge to retain the newly learnt words in their mind (Schmitt, 1997). The latter one is a method whereby learners have to find a keyword in their own native language which sounds similar to the new word, and then link them together by means of imagination (Gu & Johnson, 1996).

Although mnemonic strategies and keyword method

receive a great deal of attention in vocabulary learning, they put the stress on lexical retention

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and list learning but ignore the complexity of lexicon in the target language.

Besides, it is believed that learners are able to guess the meaning of unknown words through reading the context of the reading passage. Such a reading skill is another kind of vocabulary learning strategy called contextual guessing which has also been widely developed. Mondria & Wit-de Boer (1991) argue that vocabulary learning does not only cover the referential meaning of the new words, but also other information obtained from context, including pragmatic and syntactic data.

Early in 1983, Sternberg & Powell

established a theory on learning from context that three major processes are involved when vocabulary learning takes place: (1) selecting relevant information from irrelevant context to form a definition; (2) combining all relevant information to make up a definition; and (3) linking new information with old information stored in memory.

Guessing meaning from

context is regarded as the most important source for first language learners to learn vocabulary. As Nation (2001) suggests, this should be equally true in the case of second language learners though they do not always face the conditions needed for the occurrence of such learning.

Nevertheless, findings from studies of contextual guessing by first and second language learners have not come to the same result. Some studies showed that learners could guess the meaning of unknown words correctly through reading (Sternberg, 1987; Hutstijn, 1993) whereas others indicated contradictory findings (Bensoussan & Laufer, 1984; Kelly, 1990). The main reason for this contradiction to take place is possibly caused by the variation in the quality and quantity of contextual clues found in the chosen texts, which enormously affects readers' ability to guess the meaning of the unknown words.

The point is that context

explanation may not work in all circumstances, especially with typical academic texts where context clues are weak.

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2.5 Contextual Guessing Versus Dictionary Use

Contextual guessing is often compared with another vocabulary learning strategy, the use of a dictionary. In fact, many studies (for example, Laufer & Hadar, 1997) have been conducted to search for the results of the comparison. Those focused on first language learners found that contextual guessing was superior to dictionary use (Crist, 1981; Stahl, 1985), but many texts used in these studies were shown to provide definitions or examples for the unknown words, which functioned more or less the same as a dictionary definition. Luppescu & Day (1993), however, suggested that dictionary use worked better.

After

conducting a study with a group of Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language, they found that there was a significant difference in the measure of vocabulary learned by students using (bilingual) dictionaries than those not using any dictionaries in the process of reading.

Instead of doing a comparison, Fischer (1990) argues that

comprehension improvement certainly takes place when learners study the definitions of the unknown words and then interpret them with the help of contextual information.

It seems

that contextual guessing working in cooperation with dictionary use produces the best effect, since language learners can learn more new words if they are exposed to the words in context together with the support of the dictionary definitions.

Focusing on dictionary use itself, its usefulness on vocabulary development is supported by a number of studies.

In the study of Jocabs & Dufon (1990), the use of a glossary is

found to be effective in enhancing vocabulary growth while reading.

Hulstijn (1992) further

confirmed that the provision of marginal vocabulary glossaries led to incidental vocabulary learning. A word glossary is a list of words with their meanings as used in the text where the words are found, which can either be printed in the margin or after the ending of the text,

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as demonstrated in Hulstijn, Hollander & Greidanus' (1996) study.

Meanwhile, a dictionary

entry is the explanation of a word meaning which may also include meanings in different instances, examples of usage and grammatical information.

Depending on the design or

purpose of a study, researchers adopt different forms of dictionary use, for example, providing traditional book dictionaries (Luppescu & Day, 1993), making use of on-line dictionaries (Laufer & Hill, 2000), or putting a list of selected dictionary entries on a sheet for the sake of convenience (Laufer & Hadar, 1997).

Since word glossary and dictionary use

perform the same function of giving the meanings of unknown words to readers so as to help them comprehend the text, both of them are considered reliable sources for text comprehension and vocabulary gain.

The effectiveness of dictionary use was consolidated in a study by Nist & Olejnik (1995), which revealed that there was a positive correlation between the quality of the dictionary definition and the depth of word learning. They suggest that the use of dictionaries is a crucial procedure for vocabulary acquisition. In fact, their suggestion was echoed by other researchers (Chun & Plass, 1996; Hulstijn, Hollander & Greidanus, 1996) that dictionaries or word glossary can definitely lead to a slight increase in the amount of vocabulary learnt while reading.

Clearly, dictionary use is a valuable asset to language learning.

Particularly

referring to the use of a bilingual dictionary, it would be helpful for second and foreign language learners to acquire new vocabulary since it provides links as well as references to the learners' mother tongue.

2.6 Different Types of Dictionary Use

Although dictionary use has been suggested as an effective vocabulary learning strategy which would best be used in co-operation with contextual guessing (Fischer, 1990), recent

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practices in second language vocabulary teaching pay limited attention to the use of dictionaries (Shu, Anderson & Zhang, 1995; Jimenez, Garcia & Pearson, 1996).

Indeed,

most language teachers' concern with using a dictionary while reading frequently interferes with the smoothness of reading and detracts students' attention from on-going tasks.

For

instance, Nuttall (1982) believes that looking up meanings in a dictionary interrupts the reading process and slows down the reading speed. Most linguists and language teachers generally do not encourage students to look up words in a dictionary while reading, or some just recommend that dictionaries can only be used as a last resort (Nation, 1990; Haynes, 1993).

Even so, there are studies on exploring the effectiveness of different types of

dictionary use on language acquisition.

Béjoint & Moulin (1987) conducted a study investigating the roles of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries with a group of foreign language learners. They concluded that monolingual dictionaries provide learners with direct access to the lexical system of the target language, but learners find difficulties in using this type of dictionary, whereas bilingual dictionaries are best for giving immediate definition.

Another study (Atkins & Knowles,

1990) involving more than a thousand learners scattered in seven European countries found that three-quarters (about 75%) of the target learners had the habit of consulting bilingual dictionaries. However, the researchers stressed that this did not mean bilingual dictionaries were more helpful in helping students acquire new words. In fact, it was found in their study that monolingual dictionaries comprised richer and clearer information which was comparatively more successful in letting learners obtain relevant and useful data.

While monolingual dictionaries are believed to be more helpful to language learners, some researchers are doubtful if learners have adequate skills to use them.

In Thompson's

(1987:284) study, he argues that monolingual dictionaries are 'simply not cost-effective for

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many learners in terms of rewards (correct choice of word) versus effort'.

Horsfall (1997:7)

also suggests that 'a whole set of separate training skills is required to enable students to encode words properly and to get the most out of a monolingual dictionary', otherwise, students would not be able to learn the words. Though there is detailed and comprehensive information enclosed in the monolingual dictionary entry, second and foreign language learners lack the skills to utilize its functions.

Laufer & Hadar (1997) examined the effectiveness of monolingual, bilingual and bilingualised (semi-bilingual) dictionaries on comprehending and using new words with a group of foreign language learners studying in high schools and universities. After the study, they recommended that learners with different language proficiency should be given different types of dictionary according to their needs. In the same year, Laufer carried out another study (Laufer & Kimmel, 1997) came to the same conclusion that users should be allowed to choose the types of dictionary they prefer to use. It is sensible and natural that people use different types of dictionary when they come across different tasks and are under different situations.

Studying the needs of young English language learners in Asian countries,

Kernerman (1998) even believes that learners of different abilities living in the same area must have their own dictionaries catering for their own specific needs.

There are also studies where dictionary definitions are presented in different conditions. Miller & Gildea (1987) conducted a series of tests on the dictionary definitional aspect of vocabulary learning, in which subjects were put into three groups according to three different conditions of dictionary use: (1) definitions only; (2) definitions with one model sentence; and (3) definitions with three model sentences, and were asked to produce sentences after consulting dictionaries.

They found that subjects in their study performed best on the

sentence-making task when they were given dictionary definitions with one model sentence.

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It would appear that language learners are not able to produce or recognize the correct use of a new word after looking up its dictionary definitions mainly because they just focus on a fragment of the entire definition. In McKeown's (1993) study, she investigated the way language learners acquired word meanings provided in the conditions of the traditional and revised versions of dictionary definitions.

To distinguish from the traditional version,

McKeown revised that version by means of making concrete improvement in four aspects: the use of language, the clearness of differentiation, interpretation, and component. Although she found that students using the revised definitions performed better in the sentence-making and question-response tasks, she felt doubtful whether using dictionary definitions would increase vocabulary knowledge by stating in the discussion that '... this work has implications for using definitions in learning word meaning, (but) it does not affect a long-standing picture of the utility of definitions as the primary word learning vehicle ...' (1993:29).

Despite the contribution dictionary use may give to language learning, it does have its limitations. In order to attract buyers and boost sales figures, dictionary publishers tend to hold as much information and as much detail as possible in a dictionary.

This can be very

risky since users might find it too complicated to use and the over-loaded information might become a barrier to the user (Kernerman, 1998).

Besides, the process of dictionary

consultation would not be sustained if readers were asked to read long texts or texts with too many new words.

Hulstijn (1993) discovered that readers did not look up every new word

in a given text though a dictionary is available in the reading process.

Such a phenomenon

is even obvious when readers are required to read texts which have more than a few hundred words.

Jones (1995) demonstrates in his study that no matter how many words a text carries,

even readers who are keen on reading give up consulting dictionaries for the meanings of new words when they come across a text with new-word overload.

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2.7 Summary

As discussed earlier, researchers have shown that reading allows vocabulary growth to take place, and extensive reading is absolutely contributive to both first and second language learners in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning. Among various language learning strategies, contextual guessing is regarded as an important source for first language learners to acquire vocabulary whereas dictionary use provides valuable links and references to second language learners' mother tongue, that are particularly helpful to second and foreign language vocabulary development.

Studies have been conducted to explore the

effectiveness of various types of dictionary use on language learning. It is demonstrated that different dictionaries suit the needs of different learners, but dictionaries over-loaded with too much information would obviously be too cumbersome to use.

To my knowledge,

controlled studies investigating the impact of dictionary use in conditions of Chinese or English explanations, complete with or without examples of usage, on vocabulary learning particularly in context of Hong Kong secondary schools are nonexistent.

2.8 The Present Study

The aims of the present study are to explore the impact of dictionary use in four different conditions on students' incidental vocabulary learning while reading. This study also aims to find out the affect of these conditions of dictionary use on the retention of word knowledge. The present study addresses the following questions: 1.

Will there be any difference in the number of target words learnt by students in four different conditions of dictionary use: (i)

Chinese translations only,

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(ii) English explanations only, (iii) Chinese translations with examples of word usage in English, and (iv) English explanations with examples of word usage? 2.

Will the different conditions have any affect on the long-term retention of target words in the delayed post-test?

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Chapter 3: Methodology

3.1 Subjects and Setting

The subjects for the present study are 193 secondary six students in three schools located in the North District of Hong Kong.

They are at the age of seventeen to eighteen and are a

combination of arts, commercial and science subject students. They have been studying English as a second language since they were in kindergarten. Their language proficiency is around intermediate-high level.

97% of them obtained Grade D or above in the English

Language paper, Syllabus B, in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) which is a compulsory examination for all secondary school (secondary five) graduates. Most of them are keen on improving their written and spoken English because they need to take the Advanced Level Examination (which is another important local public examination) the following year.

They know very well that they will not have a chance to

enter university unless they pass the Use of English paper in the Advanced Level Examination.

Basically, they are willing to participate in learning activities but they are not

too enthusiastic in spending time doing extra reading.

In the district where their schools are located, there are around seventeen secondary schools which are classified into three categories according to the average academic performance of their students.

The schools that the subjects of the present study belonged to

are actually in the top group, 'Band One'. In other words, academically speaking, these students are the best ones in the entire district. Teachers in their schools adopt English as a medium of instruction in all lessons, except Chinese Language and Chinese History.

It is

found that all three schools require students to buy a dictionary by listing it on the textbook list.

These students were chosen for the study because they are in senior secondary level.

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It is believed that they have the practical experience of using monolingual and bilingual dictionaries as suggested in their textbook lists.

3.1.1

Survey of Dictionary Use

A survey, in the form of a questionnaire, with a group of senior secondary students in Hong Kong was conducted in January 2003 to find out their habit of dictionary use and their impressions of its usefulness.

The findings of this survey appear in Appendix II. 160 out

of 194 (82% of the) students in this study responded that they are in the habit of using a dictionary, 119 (61%) of them state that they often (or very often) consult a dictionary, and 168 (87%) of them think that dictionary use helps them acquire new words. When stating the reasons why they think dictionary use is helpful, the common answers are: clear and detailed explanations are helpful, the provision of word forms and examples of usage helps understand new words clearly, electronic dictionaries are convenient, quick and easy to use, dictionary entries are inclusive and abundant, and word meanings in Chinese helps understand new words directly. Although identical opinion cannot be found, this survey shows that senior secondary students in Hong Kong do have the habit and experience of using bilingual or monolingual dictionaries.

3.2 Materials

The reading material used in this study is an article entitled ‘Who Says Who is Mad?’ taken from Eysenck and Eysenck’s (1983) book called ‘Mindwatching: Why People Behave the Way They Do’.

The passage was selected because it had appeared in one of the old

textbooks (Soars & Soars, 1989) for teaching secondary seven students English language in Hong Kong and its content is considered interesting to the researcher. The text originally

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consisted of 979 words, but was shortened into 820 words due to the limited duration allotted for the reading task.

3.2.1

Identifying Target Words

After choosing the text, four secondary seven students who had Grade C or above in the English Language paper, Syllabus B, in the HKCEE were invited to read the article and identify the words which were unknown to them. Among all the words identified by these subjects, 21 vocabulary items picked by the majority of them (more than two subjects) were used as target words in the pre-test. Since these four graduates are in a higher academic level than the subjects in the present study and their results in the HKCEE are very good, it is assumed that the words which are unknown to them would probably be unknown to the subjects too. The shortened version of ‘Who Says Who is Mad?’ appears in Appendix VII.

3.3 Dictionary glosses

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of dictionary use in four different conditions on incidental vocabulary learning. When tackling the reading task, subjects are provided with glosses in four types of dictionary conditions: bilingual (English-Chinese) dictionary definitions with and without examples of usage in English as well as monolingual (English-English) dictionary definitions with and without examples of usage in English.

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (Hornby, 1999) was selected because it provides definitions in both English and Chinese together with examples of usage in English, and it is one of the most popular dictionaries in Hong Kong, which

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implies that most local students are more familiar with it. Since it is not practical to provide each student with a dictionary in the study, it was decided to offer students the conditions of dictionary use in the form of word lists.

Hence, four sets of word lists directly collected

from the entries in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary were made.

It is worth mentioning that before making up the word lists, the researcher compared the monolingual (Hornby, 1995) and bilingual (Hornby, 1999) dictionaries published by the same publisher, Oxford University Press.

It is found that entries of these two dictionaries

basically consist of the same sort of explanations and usage examples, except that Chinese translation is added in the bilingual one.

In other words, if the Chinese translation is

removed from the entries of Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (the bilingual dictionary mentioned above), the leftovers are just the entries found in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (the monolingual dictionary mentioned above).

The four sets of word lists, which are directly taken from Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, are considered to represent four different conditions of dictionary use.

The four conditions are bilingual dictionary definitions with and without

examples of usage in English as well as monolingual dictionary definitions with and without examples of usage in English.

These four sets of word lists are as follows:

Set One is a list of target words with Chinese translations, Set Two is the same list of target words but with English explanations, Set Three is with Chinese translations and examples of word usage in English, and Set Four is with English explanations and examples of word usage. These four sets of word list are shown in Appendix VIII and an example of a target word from each of the four word lists is demonstrated below:

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Word List

Target Word

Set One (Chinese translations only)

Dictionary Definition Presented in the List (形容詞) 真實的; 真誠的; 合法的

Set Two (English explanations only)

(adjective) genuine; without fraud or 'bona fide' deception; legal (形容詞) 真實的; 真誠的; 合法的 (例:) a Set Three (Chinese translations with bona fide agreement/contract/deal 真誠的協 examples of usage in English) 議 / 合約 / 交易 Set Four (English explanations with examples of usage in English)

(adjective) genuine; without fraud or deception; legal (e.g.) a bona fide agreement/ contract / deal

3.4 Pilot Study

A pilot study with a class of secondary six students in a Chinese-medium school located in another district was conducted a fortnight before the actual study.

Its aims were to ensure

the procedures of the reading task and the immediate post-test worked well on students, and the target words were unknown to the students. lesson to try out the study.

The researcher was given a 40-minute

Instead of giving a pre-test, a special column named 'Did you

know this word before you read the passage?' was added into the vocabulary testing part of the immediate post-test.

After the pilot study, it was found that the procedure for distributing the reading text and word lists was very time-consuming.

Even though the students were arranged to sit in the

order of class numbers, it took time to match the type of dictionary use with the right class number (for the purpose of ensuring the students were randomly grouped).

Consequently,

the rest of the procedures were carried out in a rush. Besides, it was surprising to find that 18 out of 21 target words were claimed by a certain amount of students as known words, ranging from one student (for words like 'bona-fine', 'falsification', 'manic-depressive',

24

'pseudo' and 'schizophrenia') to twenty-three students (for the word 'ward'). However, some irregularities were found.

Among the students who claimed some target words were not

unknown to them, a few stated that they had checked the meanings of these words when reading and particular ones were not able to give the correct meanings to the words.

Words

that claimed by students as ‘already known’ may not be really familiar to them.

To maintain the validity and reliability of the study, it was decided to give a pre-test to the subjects of the study in advance so as to clearly ascertain which target words were unknown to which students.

In addition to putting '9', students who claimed to know the

words were required to write the meanings in the pre-test. It was also decided that all copies of the reading passage were marked with class name and class number in the corner and each copy was clipped with the right set of word list beforehand, so that the procedure for distributing these materials would be smoother.

3.5 Method and Procedure

The present study is an experimental research that contains a pre-test, a reading task, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test. In the initial stage, the pre-test is used to ensure whether the target words chosen from the text are unknown to the students.

In this part,

students were asked to show whether they knew the meaning of the words which appeared in the quiz paper by putting '9' or 'U' next to the words, and then expressing them in either written English or written Chinese. The pre-test was in the form of a word quiz (as shown in Appendix III). There were 40 vocabulary items in the quiz, of which 21 items were target words and the rest were distractors. The target words are 'bona-fide', 'deception', 'err', 'falsification', 'fraud', 'gullible', 'hallucination', 'hierarchical', 'insane', 'manic-depressive', 'paediatrician', 'pseudo', 'psychosis', 'remission', 'sane', 'schizophrenia', 'shabby', 'sought',

25

'thud', 'tremendously' and 'ward'.

To ensure the target words were really unknown to them,

students were required to identify the word items that they already knew by writing the meanings either in Chinese or English.

Focusing on these 21 target words, the researcher of

the study then checked each meaning written by subjects to confirm whether the words that subjects ‘claimed to know’ were really known to them. It was found that the target word tremendously’ was already known to 81 out of 193 (42%) subjects, while another two target words, ‘err’ and ‘pseudo,’ were already known to 50 out of 193 (26%) and 40 out of 193 (21%) subjects respectively. enclosed in Appendix IV.

Records of students’ unknown and ‘already known’ words are

The number of students who already knew the above three target

words was considered relatively large, therefore these three words were taken out from the post-tests. As a result, the net amount of target words being tested in the two post-tests was 18. The pre-test lasted about five minutes and was taken one week before the reading task.

In the next stage, the reading task together with an immediate post-test was the central component of the study, which lasted about 35 minutes.

In the first place, students were

arranged to sit according to their class numbers for the convenience of dividing them into groups of four.

Then, all students were given the same passage to read but different groups

were provided with a different set of dictionary glosses in the form of a word list. Before reading, students were instructed that some comprehension questions would be asked after reading.

This was deliberately done in order to move students' attention away from focusing

on the unknown words, but turn directly towards the message of the text as a whole.

The

time limit for the reading process was 20 minutes. After that, students were required to do an after-reading quiz (the immediate post-test) with the removal of both the text and the word list.

The immediate post-test comprised two parts: comprehension questions and vocabulary

test (as shown in Appendix V).

In the first part, there were three simple comprehension

questions but none of them would be assessed since the focus of this study was vocabulary

26

learning. The second part was a table consisting of three columns: column one listed 18 target word items chosen from the text, column two provided ‘yes’ and ‘no’ choices for students to state if they had checked the word meaning while reading, and column three left plenty of space where students were asked to write the meanings of the target words either in English or in Chinese. The quiz lasted about ten minutes.

When it was completed, the entire

reading task ended too.

Two weeks later, students were given a delayed post-test (as shown in Appendix VI) which was also in the form of a word quiz. Its content was the same as the second part of the immediate post-test (the vocabulary part), except that column two, which was originally provided for students to state if they had checked the word meaning, was omitted. This delayed post-test lasted about five minutes and was the final procedure of the whole study. Both the reading task and the immediate post-test were conducted by the researcher, but the pre-test and delayed post-test were carried out by students' own language teachers. procedures took place in students’ own language classrooms.

All these

The procedures for carrying

out the different stages of the study are simplified in the following flow chart:

Stage 1 • Pre-test

Stage 2



(1 week later) • Reading •Immediate Post-test

Stage 3



(another 2 weeks later) • Delayed Post-test

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Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Results

4.1 Data Analysis

When doing the reading task, the subjects had no idea that their knowledge on the meaning of the vocabulary items in the reading passage would be tested later.

It was then

supposed that students' attention was mainly concentrated on the message of the text while reading.

Hence, the major construct underlying the study is students' second language

incidental vocabulary learning ability that is operationalized by the dependent variable, percentage grades obtained in the post-tests, and the independent variable, the four conditions of dictionary use. Through observing the results of the post-tests, the researcher attempts to identify and compare the effects of these four conditions on students' word gain as well as word retention.

Records of all students’ results in the two post-tests are shown in Appendix

IX.

First and foremost, to re-confirm that the target words students claimed to know in the pre-test were really ‘known to them’, each student’s performance in the pre-test and in the two post-tests was compared.

If a student knew three words in the pre-test and correctly

answered the post-tests on those three words, it was assumed that he/she really knew them. On the other hand, if he/she had errors on the ‘known’ word(s) in either of the post-tests, the word(s) would probably not really be known to them and was just a guess. It/They would then be treated as (an) unknown word(s).

Records of students’ known words identified in

the tests are displayed in Appendix IV.

Besides, in order to ensure that each subject in the study was treated on an equal basis, students who were found already knowing more than three (out of 18) target words were

28

excluded from the study. The rest of the subjects’ performance in the two post-tests was scored by means of percentage grades.

It was found that nine (out of 193) students already

knew more than three target words.

Eight other students were absent from the delayed

post-test and two other students indicated that they did not refer to a dictionary gloss at all in the reading process.

Having deducted these 19 students, the rest of the 174 students’

percentage grades obtained in the posttests were analysed in this study. In the immediate post-test, only the vocabulary part would be taken into account: the comprehension questions would not be used for assessment.

4.1.1

Scoring

The scoring procedure of the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test was as follows: First, words of which students indicated that they did not check their meanings while reading were ignored. Second, words whose meanings were given correctly in English, Chinese or even both by students would be marked. One mark was awarded for each word with correct meaning. The answers had to be either right or wrong, as no half mark would be given.

Third, total scores obtained by each student were converted into percentage.

If a

student scored 15 out 18 words but he/she already knew three words, then he actually gained 12 (12+3=15) words, thus his/her score would be 12/15, not 15/18. 12/15, would be converted into 67%.

Then, his/her total score,

By doing so, all students’ total scores were shown as

percentage grades and, therefore, their performance was assessed equally in the scoring procedure. Fourth, percentage grades of students in the same group were added together to represent the performance of the whole group in the test.

Last but not least, each student's

performance in the delayed post-test was checked with reference to that of his/her immediate post-test. Only words that had been given marks in the immediate post-test would be assessed in the delayed post-test.

In other words, only words considered as learnt by

29

students in the reading process would be accepted for checking the long-term retention.

In both of the post-tests, the principle for assessing students’ vocabulary learning results was based on their ability to express the word meanings in written English or written Chinese. In the design of this study, students were told in advance that they would later be given some comprehension questions after reading.

Students were not expected to know that their

understanding of the meanings of words in the reading passage would be tested. This was deliberately done to create an environment that allowed incidental vocabulary learning to take place, as students’ attention was driven to focus on the message of the text but not on individual unknown words.

In fact, students were asked to answer a few comprehension

questions in the first part of the immediate post-test, though they were not aware that these questions would not be marked.

On the other hand, qualitative data was also collected from the study.

In order to know

if there were other factors affecting students' performance in the post-tests, students who obtained the highest and lowest scores in each group were interviewed. They were asked about their impression of the reading task, their vocabulary learning strategies and their own habit of dictionary use. Moreover, records were made the annotations each student marked on his/her reading passage and glossary set (if any) in an attempt to look for any special or interesting findings.

With the percentage grades that students obtained in the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test, the amount of vocabulary learned by four different groups of students was compared.

Differences in percentage grades among the four different conditions of

dictionary use were examined by the One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure. The ANOVA was used because there were more than two groups in the independent variable

30

(difference conditions of dictionary use), thus the means of these groups on a dependent variable (test scores) could be tested simultaneously to see if significant differences were found.

4.2 Difference between Conditions

The first research question of the present study is: 'Will there be any difference in the number of target words learnt by students in four different conditions of dictionary use: Chinese translations only, English explanations only, Chinese translations with examples of word usage in English, and English explanations with examples of word usage?'

The

answers to this question were obtained from the results of the immediate post-test, based on the students' percentage grades in the test.

Table 1 shows the results summary of the

immediate post-test.

Table 1: Results of the Immediate Post-test

Group

Condition of Dictionary Use

Number of Students

Mean %

Standard Deviation

1

Chinese translations only

44

45.1

19.242

2

English explanations only

44

24.8

14.544

3

Chinese translations with examples of usage in English

42

40.7

18.895

4

English explanations with examples of word usage in English

44

27.7

13.800

In the immediate post-test, Group 1 and Group 3 performed much better than Group 2 and Group 4, which means that dictionary definitions in terms of Chinese translations in the

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reading process helped subjects of this study to learn relatively more words. summary of group comparisons is recorded in Table 2.

Besides, a

ANOVA assumes that if P value is

smaller than 0.05, the difference between the two groups' performance is significant. (Detailed results of the statistical analysis are shown in Appendix X.)

Table 2: ANOVA Comparing Groups’ Performance in the Immediate Post-test Comparison

Mean Difference

P value

Group 1 vs Group 2

20.318

P0.05

Group 1 vs Group 4

17.477

P

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