Introduction
To become lifelong learners is the ultimate goal of many if not most learners irrespective of their target of learning, and being able to self-learn is one major prerequisite of this goal. As far as the learning of a second language is concerned, dictionaries are among the most readily available and easily accessible self-learning tools available on the market, and are regarded as the most systematic and comprehensive lexical descriptions that users have access to (Jackson & Amvela, Reference Jackson and Amvela2000). An increasing number of dictionaries are now available for learners at different levels and for different learning purposes, including general dictionaries, learners' dictionaries, translation dictionaries, pictorial dictionaries, collocation dictionaries, specialized dictionaries and encyclopaedic dictionaries (Jackson & Amvela, Reference Jackson and Amvela2000). Of these, learners' dictionaries are among the most popular for second or foreign language learners, providing a range of information including word meanings, pronunciations, collocations, correct usage and syntactic behaviour.
A number of surveys conducted on English as Second Language (ESL) learners' use of dictionaries show that learners' dictionaries are useful for helping learners determine the meanings and usage of target English words. However, research suggests that learners often do not take time to consult them even when it would be useful for them to do so (Christianson, Reference Christianson1997), and that when they do consult dictionaries, they ignore or misread useful information (Nesi & Meara, Reference Nesi and Meara1994). Their preconceptions of the usage and/or meanings of a certain word may override dictionary information, resulting in ignorance of explicit details relevant to their learning needs. Location of a wrong dictionary entry and misinterpretation and misapplication of dictionary information are also often witnessed (Luppescu & Day, Reference Luppescu and Day1993; Tang, Reference Tang1997; Bogaards, Reference Bogaards, Fontenelle, Hiligsmann, Michiels, Moulin and Theissen1998; Chan, Reference Chan2012, Reference Chan2014). The ‘kidrule’ strategy identified by Miller & Gildea (Reference Miller and Gildea1985) and elaborated in Nesi & Meara (Reference Nesi and Meara1994) observes that learners tend to select a short familiar segment from a definition of a target word, compose a sentence containing the selected segment, and substitute the target word for that segment (Nesi & Meara, Reference Nesi and Meara1994: 4). Chan (Reference Chan2014) identified a reverse kidrule strategy in which learners hunt for and model on a definition or example which contains a segment or expression they have in mind, and a failure to find an exact match often results in inappropriate meaning determination or construction of inappropriate sentences. Although many learners regard learners' dictionaries as useful to their studies, their awareness of the potential uses and their actual use of learners' dictionaries are often biased towards the search for individual word meanings, so the usefulness of such resources for the search for grammatical information and patterns of word usage has often been undermined. For advanced learners of English, the ability to determine the different meanings of a word used in different syntactic contexts and good mastery of word usage are of great importance to their path to becoming successful self-learners.
In view of the problems outlined above, this paper sets out to provide some guidelines to ESL teachers on what they can do to help students make the best use of learners' dictionaries and how they can incorporate these important self-learning resources into their normal classrooms. A concrete example of how teachers can help students use a learner's dictionary will also be given.
Guidelines on helping students make the best use of learners' dictionaries
Arousing learners' awareness of what learners' dictionaries can offer
The most fundamental question that ESL teachers need to tackle is that of how to heighten their learners' understanding and awareness of what learners' dictionaries can offer, as a lack of appreciation will often result in oversight and even neglect. Most learners are well aware that dictionaries provide a rich source of information on word meanings for decoding purposes. What is less well understood, however, is the contribution that dictionaries can make to word usage knowledge and their provision of grammatical information for both decoding and encoding. Careful scrutiny of the contents of different learners' dictionaries coupled with the results of recent research (Chan, Reference Chan2012, Reference Chan2014) shows that grammatical information is presented both explicitly and implicitly in learners' dictionaries. The most easily identifiable grammatical information is word class information, which has been argued as the kind of grammatical information which learners tend to pay most attention to in their use of learners' dictionaries (Chan, Reference Chan2012) and which learners are most successful in retrieving (Watts, Reference Watts2004). Other grammatical information often given explicitly includes countability of nouns (e.g. by the use of abbreviations such as U for uncountable and C for countable), transitivity patterns of verbs (e.g. by the use of abbreviations such as V, Vn or Vnn to show that a verb is intransitive, transitive or ditransitive), noun and adjective complementation patterns (e.g. the use of an abbreviation such as (~ of/about sth) to show that a target word (e.g. knowledge) is often followed by of or about something), and choice of verb forms after a target word (e.g. by the use of V -ing to show that a target verb is followed by another verb in the participle form). These kinds of information are often given in the extra columns or text boxes, or in the main entry itself using grammar codes and/or abbreviations. Special features such as bold font are sometimes used. Though useful, explicit grammatical information is often fragmentary, as only a section of a clause or a sentence is shown or highlighted. Embedded in the examples and/or definitions, implicit grammatical information tightens learners' grasp of word usage and gives additional information such as the kinds of subjects which can be used with a word (e.g. whether the subject is human or non-human), the structures normally associated with a target word (e.g. the choice of a preposition after a verb), as well as the context in which a certain structure is usually used (Chan, Reference Chan2014). Although users need to have a certain level of grammatical competence and linguistic skills as well as meticulousness in order to successfully retrieve such information, the word knowledge that learners can thus acquire is richer, supplementing explicit grammatical information and giving a more comprehensive picture of the usage of a word. ESL learners should thus be made aware that dictionary consultation is not just for meaning seeking for decoding purposes, but is also for learning about usage patterns that will be useful for both decoding and encoding purposes. They should also be alerted to the availability of both explicit and implicit grammatical information in addition to semantic information in learners' dictionaries.
Eradicating faulty assumptions
One faulty assumption that many ESL students have about the use (and usefulness) of learners' dictionaries is that these resources are only used (or perceived as useful) for new and/or ‘difficult’ words, so when students encounter familiar and/or ‘easy’ words, they will not resort to dictionary consultation at all. While it is true that learners may find a word difficult if they have not come across it before (i.e. a new word), common and familiar words are not necessarily ‘easy’. On the contrary, they are often wrongly used or misinterpreted. Take the common word market as an example. While it is very common to say that we can buy our food at/in the market with the prepositions at or in used in the prepositional phrase at/in the market, the preposition on should be used when we say something is available for people to buy, such as in There are many dictionaries available on the market. However, it is not uncommon to see or hear students use the preposition in in such a context instead. Common and familiar words are not as unproblematic as many students think.
Many common words are polysemous, but learners often have the assumption that the meaning they are familiar with is the only meaning, so even though that particular meaning does not make sense in a certain context or when the context is biased towards another meaning, they are unwilling to abandon that familiar meaning and adopt the less familiar meaning (Durkin & Manning, Reference Durkin and Manning1989; Huang, Reference Huang2003). Their assumption for word usage goes the same way: they often think that the usage they are familiar with is the only usage of the word and are therefore unwilling to abandon that familiar usage. An example can be seen from Chan's (Reference Chan2014) study, in which learners were required to construct sentences using common words with the use of learners' dictionaries. Although students were instructed to construct a sentence using the word cause with the meaning reason, they were still inclined to adopt the structure cause + of, meaning a person, event, or thing that makes something happen, and constructed sentences such as It is our job to establish the cause of the fire after dictionary consultation. The desired grammatical pattern cause + for (e.g. in sentences such as What is the cause for fear?) was not used, apparently because the participants took it for granted that the meaning and usage they were familiar with were the only ones (Chan, Reference Chan2014). ESL learners should, therefore, be made aware that dictionary consultation is not just for seeking help on new and/or unfamiliar words but also for enhancing and extending their knowledge of how to use ostensibly common and/or familiar words.
Abandoning inappropriate dictionary strategies
Recent research on dictionary use has found that instead of scrutinizing dictionary information carefully to make a selection, ESL learners are inclined to skim dictionary entries for quick location of (thought-to-be) relevant information. Once the (thought-to-be) required information is located, they will immediately end the search, with the result that inattention to or disregard of useful or important details often occurs. Information that is often thought to be relevant includes a word's meanings and usage that learners already knew and/or had in mind before conducting a dictionary search. Upon encountering such preconceived usage and/or meaning, they will neglect definitions, examples and/or even explicit information on alternative grammatical associations and/or meanings which may otherwise be more suitable and relevant to the learning context in question. As such, dictionaries are often used merely for seeking confirmation rather than acquiring new information. Chan (Reference Chan2012) cites an example where the definition of the transitive use of the verb approve meaning to accept, allow or officially agree to something was selected in the determination of the meaning of the intransitive use of approve in a sentence such as Do you approve of my idea. The selection was made because the students already had the selected meaning in mind. They felt reassured upon encountering that very meaning in the dictionary being consulted and immediately ended their search, thus overlooking the subtle differences between the different meanings of the target word used in different transitivity patterns. Other inappropriate dictionary strategies, such as the reverse kidrule strategy mentioned earlier, are also common, showing that ESL learners, especially advanced learners who have been learning the language for a number of years, often have certain preconceptions about word meanings and/or usage and even prior expectations about what to look for, and these preconceptions and/or expectations often override the information given in learners' dictionaries.
Learners should, therefore, be made aware of the adverse effects of their possible preconceptions in the meanings and usage of a target word as well as their inappropriate dictionary strategies on the outcomes of their dictionary consultation. They need to abandon the habit of cursorily reading dictionary entries for fast location of information, and learn instead to search for and correctly identify information that is actually relevant to their immediate learning needs. Upon encountering a piece of seemingly relevant information, they should not end a search immediately but should compare the ‘selected’ dictionary information with the learning context in question to identify any discrepancy between grammatical associations and contexts of use. They should also continue to scrutinize the information given in other sub-entries and do similar comparisons with the learning context in question in order to determine the most appropriate sub-entry or dictionary information for their present purposes.
Developing advanced dictionary skills and integrating different facets of word information
As can be seen from the discussion above, the grammatical patterns associated with the different meanings of a polysemous word may be clearly distinguished by learners' dictionaries, yet learners often do not notice the subtle meaning distinctions between these different patterns, and hence the different grammatical associations also go unnoticed (Chan, Reference Chan2012). It is, therefore, important that ESL teachers help students develop advanced dictionary skills utilizing and integrating different facets of word information. Word meanings do not just reside in typical combinations of lexical choices but also in typical combinations of grammatical choices (Hunston, Reference Hunston, Scott and Thompson2001), so a word's syntactic environments are sometimes important in semantic interpretation. An example can be seen from the word deliver, which is often used in the pattern V + something to something/somebody with a well-known meaning of taking something somewhere/to somebody. When the word is used in expressions such as They delivered somebody from something, it has the meaning of rescuing somebody or save somebody from something. In Chan's (Reference Chan2012) study, the participants who ignored the syntactic environment of V + someone from something when consulting a learner's dictionary wrongly opted for the well-known meaning, whereas those who meticulously compared the target syntactic pattern with the structure of the definitions in the dictionaries being consulted could arrive at the appropriate semantic interpretation. For advanced learners of English who want to be lifelong independent learners, dictionary skills subsume not just the ability to locate a word, identify the part of speech and select a random meaning or usage pattern. They also subsume an ability to distinguish the meaning and the associated syntactic pattern of a certain sense of a multi-senses word from the meanings and grammatical associations of its other senses, to filter out the word meanings which seemingly fit the immediate learning context but which have deviant associated structures, and to retrieve the most appropriate word meaning (and usage). Users need to conduct careful scrutiny of the sub-entries and deliberate comparisons between the contexts of the examples, definitions and usage information etc. given in the entries with the immediate learning contexts of the users. Similar strategies are also needed when learners' dictionaries are used for encoding. Dictionary training programmes should target such advanced dictionary skills and train learners to integrate different facets of word information.
A concrete example
The foregoing discussion presented four principles which could form the scaffolding for an advanced dictionary training programme, and which ESL teachers should bear in mind if they are to help their students make the best use of learners' dictionaries. This section will provide a concrete example of how dictionary training can be incorporated into the classroom. Occupying about five to ten minutes per class, a specific training session can be given to students once a week for a few weeks. ESL teachers can, based on their students' proficiency levels, choose a common polysemous word for every training session. These words are preferably those which have some meanings and usage patterns that are more familiar to their students (e.g. ‘boast’ to mean ‘to speak proudly about yourself’), and some other meanings and usage patterns that will be less familiar to the students (e.g. ‘boast’ meaning ‘possess’). Teachers can discuss the meaning and usage of the chosen word and ask students to give examples of the word in use. It is more than expected that the familiar meaning (e.g. talk with too much pride) and usage of the word (e.g. She is always boasting about her achievements/I don't want to boast) will come up in the discussion. Teachers can then show a sentence of the target word used in an unfamiliar context, such as The little hotel boasts several hot springs (Chan, Reference Chan2012) and ask students to compare the grammatical contexts of the target word in the given sentence (i.e. transitive use: boast something) with the use of the word used in the sentences given by the students (i.e. intransitive use: boast or boast about something). Teachers can then show a dictionary entry of the target word, highlighting the sub-entries and the different information given, such as the word's meanings when used transitively and intransitively, the preposition following the intransitive use of the word (e.g. about), the kinds of subjects associated with the transitive use (i.e. can be human or non-human) and those associated with the intransitive use (i.e. normally human), and the like. After familiarizing students with the ways to scrutinize a dictionary entry and its subentries, teachers can then ask students to model on the examples given in the dictionary and make up sentences with the target word used in the target meaning.
Upon completion of a few specific training sessions, students will develop a heightened awareness of the contribution of syntactic environments on meaning determination and a better understanding of the structure of a dictionary entry. Teachers can then incorporate dictionary training into their normal classroom teaching periodically. When doing normal language learning tasks, teachers can choose a target word (e.g. market, deliver, approve, cause, etc.) from the task materials and ask students to do similar dictionary consultation exercises (i.e. meaning determination and sentence construction) with students' own dictionaries.
Conclusion
Unlike general-purpose dictionaries, which are targeted for native speakers of the language, or translation dictionaries, which are used for identifying equivalent meanings, learners' dictionaries are designed to be used by second or foreign language learners for both decoding and encoding purposes. As such, they are rich sources of information not only on word meanings but also on word usage. Learners' dictionaries are not meant to be used just for quickly locating desired information. Users are expected to carefully scrutinize entries and sub-entries and integrate the different kinds of information provided to arrive at a complete representation of word usage and meaning. Students' complaints about the inadequacy of learners' dictionaries are often due to their faulty assumptions and cursory use of these resources, and these faulty assumptions and inappropriate dictionary habits should be addressed explicitly by ESL teachers in their classrooms. Dictionary training should not be a peripheral element of an ESL curriculum. On the contrary, it is an integral component, which complements both vocabulary teaching and grammar teaching. While the teaching of grammar can help students grasp a set of formal rules and/or generalizations for using the language accurately in different communicative contexts, and the teaching of vocabulary can facilitate students' comprehension and use of a word, the teaching of advanced dictionary skills can lead students to the self-discovery of the most systematic and comprehensive lexical descriptions of individual lexical items in the language. With the introduction of electronic dictionaries and the popular use of smartphones and/or portable tablet computers, learners' dictionaries have never been more easily accessible. Students who want to become independent lifelong learners can make use of these useful self-learning resources almost anywhere and at any time, but there is an important role for the teacher to play in ensuring that they are doing so effectively.
ALICE YIN WA CHAN is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. Her teaching interests include English Linguistics, English and Chinese in Contrast, English Grammar, and English Phonetics and Phonology, and her research interests include Second Language Acquisition, Grammar, Phonetics and Phonology, and Lexicography. Email: enalice@cityu.edu.hk.
