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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. literature review, 3. the study, 4. concluding remarks, supplementary material, acknowledgments.

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Dictionary Use and Vocabulary Learning in the Context of Reading

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Yuzhen Chen, Dictionary Use and Vocabulary Learning in the Context of Reading, International Journal of Lexicography , Volume 25, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 216–247, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecr031

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This empirical study attempts to explore the role of dictionary use in L2 vocabulary learning in reading context. It involved the use of English-Chinese bilingualized dictionaries (BLDs) for EFL vocabulary task completion and incidental vocabulary acquisition by undergraduate English majors in Chinese universities. The subjects were asked to read an English passage and perform a reading task under one of three conditions: with the aid of a paper BLD (PBLD) or an electronic BLD (EBLD), or without access to any dictionary. After task completion, they were given an unexpected retention test on the target lexical items included in the reading passage. The same retention test was repeated one week later. The study found that BLD use can effectively facilitate vocabulary comprehension and enhance incidental vocabulary acquisition, suggesting that dictionary use is a more effective strategy of vocabulary learning than contextual guessing. There was no significant difference in dictionary effectiveness between the PBLD and the EBLD, yet the latter showed some advantage over the former for vocabulary retention. Students varying on vocabulary proficiency levels and reading conditions fared differently on incidental vocabulary acquisition.

Dictionary use has long been recognized as one of vocabulary learning strategies ( Gu and Johnson 1996 , Scholfield 1997 , Nation 1990 , 2001 , Gu 2003 , Nation and Meara 2010 ). Yet despite the important role of the dictionary for L2 learning and the relatively long history of the research on vocabulary learning through dictionary use, in the domain of L2 vocabulary acquisition, ‘interest from a research perspective has been limited and sporadic over the years’ ( Ronald 2003 : 285). 1 Fortunately, recent years have witnessed steady development of dictionary use research which includes investigations of the use and usefulness of dictionaries for various language activities. This study attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of dictionary use for L2 vocabulary learning in reading context. It examines the use of English-Chinese bilingualized dictionaries (henceforth BLDs) for EFL vocabulary task completion and incidental vocabulary acquisition during reading. This type of dictionary is hugely popular with Chinese EFL learners, yet has received little attention from researchers of dictionary use studies. By evaluating the effectiveness of such dictionaries for EFL vocabulary learning and identifying the problems with dictionary use, this research attempts to shed some light on vocabulary pedagogy and dictionary use instruction in a Chinese EFL environment.

2.1 Dictionary use and vocabulary comprehension

Dictionaries are supposed to be useful aids to reading comprehension. However, studies comparing dictionary use and non-dictionary use during reading comprehension have yielded different or even contradictory findings. Some researchers (e.g. Bensoussan, Sim and Weiss 1984 , Nesi and Meara 1991 , Neubach and Cohen 1988 cited in Nesi 2000 : 37–39, Heijnen 2000 cited in Welker 2010 : 177–178) identified a non-significant relation between dictionary accommodation and test scores of reading comprehension. Such results were ascribed to the following reasons: In addition, dictionary users’ limited lexical knowledge, their lack of ability to infer and their lack of experience in dictionary use also accounted for the failure of dictionary access to have positive effect on test scores ( Heijnen 2000 , cited in Welker 2010 : 177–178). Albus et al (2001) reported that a significant benefit of dictionary use was found only for the intermediate-level students, but not for lower or higher level proficiency students. In Chang’s study (2002) , the use of glosses or dictionaries did not bring about substantially better results of reading comprehension than non-dictionary use, yet the case with vocabulary retention was different. Padron and Waxman ( 1988 , cited in Szczepaniak 2006 : 6) indicated that among fourteen strategies related to reading achievement, looking up words in the dictionary turned out to be a negative one. Aizawa (1999) even found that subjects in the non-dictionary condition achieved significantly better results of reading comprehension than those using dictionaries.

the test itself was made up of items which were not likely to be affected by the availability of a dictionary,

the dictionary did not include information needed to answer the comprehension questions, and

the user failed to identify the words in the text which were most crucial for correct answering of the test questions ( Nesi and Meara 1991 : 643).

In contrast, some studies demonstrated a positive correlation between dictionary use and vocabulary comprehension. Summers (1988) revealed that compared with no-entry use, the use of dictionary entries yielded substantially better results of comprehension as well as production. Tono (1989) , later republished as Tono ( 2001 : 75–83), showed that a significant difference in performance existed between reading comprehension with dictionaries and that without dictionaries. Similar findings were obtained by Bogaards ( 2002 , cited in Welker 2010 : 178–179) and Hayati and Pour-Mohammadi (2005) . In Szczepaniak (2006) , the monolingual dictionary was found to be effective for the successful completion of a paraphrase task as a source of the hardly inferable canonical meaning of idioms. Nevertheless, despite a 50% rise in scores after dictionary consultation, in only two cases (of the four idioms) was the difference between the dictionary and non-dictionary condition statistically significant ( Szczepaniak 2006 : 84). In other words, the study confirmed a mildly positive influence of the dictionary on the comprehension of contextually modified idioms.

Electronic dictionaries have proved to be very useful tools for researchers to gain more accurate and non-intrusive information about dictionary use. One of the most frequently cited study is Knight (1994) which will also be mentioned in the next section due to its major focus on incidental vocabulary acquisition. The results of Knight’s study concerning reading comprehension indicated that the dictionary group obtained significantly higher scores than the non-dictionary group. However, this overall result was due to the low verbal ability group only ( Knight 1994 : 293). In contrast, Koga ( 1995 , cited in Kobayashi 2006 : 59) showed that, for the low-reading-ability group, there was no significant difference in reading comprehension scores across three dictionary groups while the case for the higher-reading-ability group was different. Koga attributed the advantage of the on-line dictionary to the fact that it had less interference in the reading process and thus facilitated students’ reading comprehension. The benefit of on-line dictionaries was substantiated by Zucchi ( 2010 , cited in Welker 2010 : 310–311) who found that the scores of the dictionary groups were significantly higher than those of the non-dictionary group.

The findings of dictionary-supported comprehension studies reviewed above seem to point to one fact: there is no simple yes-or-no answer to the question whether the dictionary is useful for vocabulary comprehension or not. A variety of factors should be taken into consideration during dictionary assessment, one of which is the proficiency level of learners. In addition to the mere presence of a dictionary, the accessibility of information and the presentation style of dictionary entries may also play a role. Furthermore, even if similar evaluation instruments such as multiple-choice comprehension questions are used, it would be inappropriate to assume equivalence between different tests, as items can depend to a greater or lesser degree on overall text comprehension or the comprehension of individual vocabulary items, and such balance is difficult to control ( Lew 2004 : 28).

2.2 Dictionary use and incidental vocabulary acquisition

From its origin in stimulus-response psychological studies to the popular strand of research on L2 vocabulary acquisition, incidental learning has been given various interpretations and investigated under different research paradigms, usually as a construct opposed to intentional learning ( Hulstijn 2001 , 2003 , 2005 , in press, Laufer and Hulstijn 2001 , Laufer and Hill 2000 , Schmidt 1994 , 2001 ). In this study, incidental vocabulary learning refers to the learning mode in which participants are not informed, prior to their engagement in a learning task, that they will be tested afterward on their retention of lexical information ( Hulstijn 2005 ). In other words, the author chooses to use incidental learning as a technical term instead of an academic construct, for, theoretically, the distinction between intentional and incidental learning has become difficult to maintain ( Hulstijn 2001 , 2003 ).

Compared with the studies on the role of dictionary use in reading comprehension, researchers seem to show more interest in the association between dictionary use and incidental vocabulary learning. Most studies have identified a positive impact of dictionary use upon vocabulary retention. Krantz ( 1991 , cited in Welker 2010 ) showed that students retained 15.5% of the target words after reading an English book and that the more proficient readers tended to learn more words than the less proficient ones. As reported by Luppescu and Day (1993) , students using dictionaries fared significantly better on the vocabulary retention test than those who did not. The finding was corroborated by a more carefully designed study by Knight (1994) who also showed that high verbal ability students learned more words than those with low verbal ability. Cho and Krashen ( 1994 , cited in Laufer 2003 ) suggested that reading plus dictionary use resulted in better vocabulary retention than reading only. In his assessment of the impact of lexical process strategies on vocabulary learning, Fraser (1999) found that the strategy of dictionary consultation led to better comprehension than inferring and the combined use of dictionary consultation and inferring could significantly improve vocabulary retention.

Some studies presented a more complicated picture of the effect of dictionary use on vocabulary learning. In a well-conceived study by Hulstijn et al. (1996) , the group reading with marginal glosses had the highest scores of vocabulary tests while the bilingual dictionary group, due to a scarce use of the dictionary, did not perform significantly better than the control group. However, in the few cases in which the students did use the dictionary, their retention scores were even higher than those of the students with marginal glosses. Aizawa (1999) showed a different role of dictionary use for vocabulary comprehension and vocabulary retention: for the former, the non-dictionary group scored significantly higher than the dictionary group while there was a reverse result for the latter. Nevertheless, for those more proficient learners, there was almost no difference in vocabulary retention. In the same vein, Chang (2002) found that reading with different conditions did not produce significant effects on reading comprehension but for vocabulary retention, the use of marginal glosses and electronic dictionaries yielded different results.

Different from the above-mentioned studies, Conceição ( 2004 , cited in Welker 2010 ) concluded that dictionary use does not contribute significantly to vocabulary retention as there was no significant difference in retention scores between subjects who did consult the dictionary during reading and those who did not. It should, however, be pointed out that the study suffers from a methodological flaw. The author used the VKS (Vocabulary Knowledge Scale) developed by Paribakht and Wesche (1993) as a measure of vocabulary retention, but such a test form is appropriate for tracking the states of knowledge for particular words, not for summing up different scores of different words. Furthermore, the small sample size (35 vs. 16 subjects) also makes it premature to generalize the claim. In Laufer (2011) , the retention scores of the looked up collocations measured one week later turned out to be very low, which was believed to result from learners’ failure to locate the target collocations in the dictionary entries or their overconfidence which prevented them from seeking dictionary help.

In Chinese EFL learning context, only a few studies have probed into the relationship between dictionary use and incidental vocabulary acquisition. By considering factors such as students’ learning strategies, learning motivation, vocabulary proficiency, gender and family background, Wu et al (2007) unveiled a rather complicated picture about the effects between the use of a monolingual dictionary and the use of a word list on vocabulary retention. Zhang (2007) showed that in terms of vocabulary gains, the provision of marginal glosses was the more beneficial than the availability of dictionary and non-dictionary use. However, when readers did consult the dictionary, the result was even better than the use of marginal glosses. In terms of vocabulary retention, these three groups showed no significant difference, yet words inferred or looked up can be remembered slightly better than those provided directly with meanings. Shi (2008) revealed that consulting lexical information in the dictionary tended to be associated with better retention than contextual guessing, yet a combined use of learning methods was more conducive to incidental vocabulary learning than separate use of them. This finding was supported by Ji (2009) .

Despite the differences in research designs, the above-reviewed studies prove that incidental vocabulary acquisition does occur and most of them point to the advantage of dictionary use for vocabulary retention. Yet with the only exception of Laufer (2011) , all studies mentioned above did not involve any BLD use. This is one of the reasons that initiated the present study.

2.3 Paper dictionaries vs. electronic dictionaries

There is now a large body of literature on the use of various kinds of electronic dictionaries covering such topics as the usefulness of dictionaries for learning tasks, the comparison of dictionary effectiveness between different types, and lookup preferences and behavior of dictionary users in CALL context etc. Yet on the whole, the contrastive studies between electronic dictionaries and paper dictionaries with a focus on vocabulary learning are relatively few.

Some researchers (e.g. Koyama and Takeuchi 2003 , Iso and Osaki 2004 , cited in Kobayashi 2006 : 63, Kobayashi 2007 , Chen 2010 ) found that there were no significantly different effects on vocabulary learning between pocket electronic dictionaries and paper dictionaries. Laufer (2000) compared the effects of paper glosses and electronic glosses and found that on both retention tests, the electronic glosses yielded significantly higher scores than the paper ones, which may be ascribed to the visual impact produced by a word embedded in a pop-up window and appearing in a prominent position on the computer screen, or the more involvement load induced by the consultation of electronic glosses which led to better retention. In Koga (1995) , the on-line dictionary was found to be more effective than the paper dictionary for the higher-reading-ability group, yet for the low-reading-ability group, there was no significant difference.

Dziemianko ( 2010 , 2011 , in press) has presented some interesting findings about the comparison between on-line e-dictionaries and their book versions. In Dziemianko (2010) , e- COBUILD6 was found to be much more effective for the receptive task, the productive task and the retention of both meaning and collocations than COBUILD6 in book form. The author ( Dziemianko 2010 : 265) assumed that the form of presentation on the computer screen, possibly more captivating and less distracting than the view of headwords on a page in a paper dictionary, may account for the superiority of electronic dictionaries over paper ones. However, such findings were not confirmed by the author’s own replication studies ( Dziemianko 2011 , in press) which adopted exactly the same experimental conditions except for the dictionaries used, i.e. the on-line and paper versions of LDOCE5 and OALDCE7 . It was found that, the e-versions of LDOCE5 and OALDCE7 were no better for language reception, production and learning than the dictionaries in book form (Dziemianko in press). In other words, the medium had no statistically significant bearing on reception or production and it did not affect the retention of meaning and collocation either ( Dziemianko 2011 ). As explained by the author, compared with the clearer and more neatly organized website of e- COBUILD6 , e- LDOCE5 is characterized by an excess of unsolicited information such as colorful widgets, banners, animation, and noise etc. which distract users’ attention and make dictionary information much less salient on the glutted website. The studies by Dziemianko seem to suggest that dictionary form may not be the decisive factor accounting for dictionary effectiveness; instead, form-independent factors such as layout, font and line spacing may play an even more important role.

As far as the present author knows, there is scarcely any research comparing the use of dictionaries on computer desktop and paper form, neither is there any study involving BLDs of different forms except for the one the author did, i.e. Chen (2010) in which BLDs on pocket electronic dictionaries and paper form were compared in the context of sentence use. Therefore, in the present study, the author chose a desktop BLD and its print version and compared their effects on vocabulary learning in the context of reading.

3.1 Research hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: Students using the PBLD or the EBLD achieve significantly better results of vocabulary learning than those without access to the dictionary.

Hypothesis 2: There is no significant difference between the PBLD and the EBLD in terms of dictionary effectiveness for vocabulary learning.

Hypothesis 3: Students varying on vocabulary proficiency levels and reading conditions fare differently on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Here reading condition refers to reading with the assistance of the PBLD or the EBLD, or with no access to any dictionary.

3.2 Design issues

Subjects of the study were asked to finish a reading task, which was followed by an unexpected vocabulary retention test that was repeated one week later. The following is a detailed introduction to design issues.

3.2.1 Selection of the reading material and target lexical items

Several factors were taken into consideration for the selection of reading material. The priority is to ensure that the reading text is of an appropriate level of difficulty with a lexical density that would allow general comprehension through contextual guessing. Therefore, the author adopted a density of 98% known words as advocated by Hu and Nation (2000) and Nation (2001) . To arouse students’ interest in reading under experimental conditions, narratives were preferred over other types of writings such as argumentation, exposition or description. Furthermore, texts which are too long or too short would not be considered as appropriate for practical reasons of test administration. In view of these considerations, two texts of similar levels of difficulty, length and type were chosen from a corpus that is not accessible to the subjects. Three teachers of extensive English reading programs were consulted about the suitability of the reading material and finally one of the two texts was agreed upon as the instrument of the study.

The target lexical items were chosen according to four criteria. First, they are agreed upon by the above-mentioned three teachers as unfamiliar to most of the participants based on the teachers’ teaching experience and their estimate of the general vocabulary proficiency levels of the participants. Secondly, there is more or less context which provides some chance to guess the meaning of the lexical items so that the non-dictionary group would not be placed at a disadvantage. Thirdly, they are not proper nouns or technical terms which are of relatively less experimental value. And fourthly, they are not too long or too difficult in spelling which may otherwise induce a heavier memory burden on the participants. It needs to be mentioned that the lexical items include single words and a chain of words such as phrasal verbs, collocation and idioms which are characterized by co-occurrence. Altogether, there are six single words and four multi-word units, namely conjure , wand , rope in , wind up , wobble , a dab hand , rapt , cabaret , augment , and play up to .

3.2.2 Design of the reading task

The reading text is accompanied by 13 comprehension questions. Different from the regular type of reading comprehension questions which mostly involve global text comprehension, this study adopts a word-focused approach: most of the questions are related to the comprehension of the target items. This approach can be justified by two considerations. One is to avoid the pitfall of test design of some previous studies such as Bensoussan et al. (1984) and Nesi and Meara (1991) : the test may be made up of items which are not likely to be affected by dictionary use. By incorporating target items into comprehension questions, a closer correlation between word comprehension and dictionary use will be established. Meanwhile, some of the comprehension questions are also connected with the overall text comprehension so as to prevent participants from doing skipping reading only. To be specific, the questions concerning the comprehension of target lexical items account for nearly 70% of the total, i.e. among 13 questions, nine are word-focused, six of which are multiple choice questions and three in question-and-answer form. Given the nature of the study, the scores of these nine questions were analyzed, rather than the total score of all 13 questions.

The other reason to adopt a word-focused approach is to ensure a higher incidence of incidental vocabulary acquisition. As reported by previous researchers ( Hulstijn 1992 , Cho and Krashen 1994 , Parikbakht and Wesche 1997 , Zahar et al. 2001 , Horst 2005 ), vocabulary gains through reading without any enhancement tasks tend to be extremely small, ranging from one to seven words per text (which is up to 7,000 words). Empirical evidence supports the claim that in instructed L2 context, word-focused activities play a more important role than reading alone in building the learner’s lexical knowledge ( Paribakht and Wesche 1997 , Laufer 2001 , 2003 , Hill and Laufer 2003 , Peters 2007 ). The author’s previous experience with a failed study also showed that reading without a word-focused task could barely lead to any incidental vocabulary learning. In that study, the author divided subjects in two groups, namely a dictionary group and a non-dictionary group, who were told to read a text which included some target words and then do a comprehension task. The target words were not marked or distinguished in any way and the questions were mostly based on the overall text comprehension. It turned out that the incidental vocabulary gains of both groups were so small that it made no sense to make any comparison. Since that reading task did not directly involve the comprehension of individual target words which, to make matters worse, were not marked for salience in the text, most subjects simply did not pay any attention to them, let alone do any contextual guessing or dictionary consultation. That experience, together with previous researchers’ findings, leads the author to believe that the inclusion of target items in test questions can effectively enhance vocabulary retention.

With regard to the issue of test format, in addition to the multiple choice test which is preferred by a majority of previous studies, a generative test form is also adopted, i.e. the subjects were required to give their own interpretation for the questions asked instead of choosing passively from given options. It is believed that the combination of two test forms can reveal a fuller picture of subjects’ comprehension of target items.

3.2.3 Design of the vocabulary retention tests

Like most incidental learning research, vocabulary retention in this study is measured by checking whether the subjects can recall the meaning of the target items. 2 The study included two retention tests of the same contents, one was conducted immediately after the reading task, the other one week later. Hulstijn ( 2003 : 372) argues that experiments comparing different methods of cognitive processing of new lexical material need only immediate post-tests, for it would not be possible to differentiate the extent to which performance on delayed post-tests is affected by processes during the experimental learning session or by processes after that session. However, the author believes that with certain control devices, as will be explained in Section 3 .4, the delayed test could also yield some valuable decay data to provide a clearer picture of the actual learning that has taken place, as hoped by Waring and Nation ( 2004 : 107).

3.2.4 Selection of the BLDs and solution to the problem of dictionary underuse

As the study also involves a comparison of effectiveness between a PBLD and an EBLD, to strictly control the variable of dictionary form, the author operationalized the electronic-paper opposition by using a desktop dictionary and its printouts so that factors related to dictionary information, lexicographical presentation, layout, font, and line spacing etc. are balanced off, allowing to isolate the on-screen versus paper presentation. Many dictionary surveys report that Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (henceforth OALECD ) is by far the most popular paper dictionary with Chinese EFL learners, yet the electronic version of the current dictionary edition is very hard to find, except in a few high-profiled pocket electronic dictionaries such as CASIO , which, unfortunately, are owned by a relatively small number of students. The only electronic version of OALECD available on the Internet is its fourth edition rather than the sixth or seventh, therefore, the author had to settle for OALECD4 . Actually, e- OALECD4 was downloaded from http://www.lingoes.cn/zh/dictionary/ and installed in Lingoes 2.7.1.0, a powerful multi-lingual software program released as a freeware translation utility. The author copied all the relevant on-screen dictionary information and made a paper minidictionary which contains only the entries of ten target items. In other words, the EBLD used for the study is OALECD4 installed inside Lingoes and the PBLD is a minidictionary with exactly the same information copied from the EBLD. It should be mentioned that, unlike the EBLD, the PBLD does not use, due to financial reasons, colors to represent different categories of information except bold type. Figures 1 and 2 are example screenshots of rapt in different BLD versions.

Screenshot of dictionary entry for rapt in the EBLD. This figure appears in colour in the online version of the International Journal of Lexicography .

Dictionary entry for rapt in the PBLD. This figure appears in colour in the online version of the International Journal of Lexicography .

However, the availability of a dictionary can not guarantee that subjects would use it. The problem of dictionary underuse has been identified by a number of studies (e.g. Krantz 1991 , Hulstijn et al. 1996 , Atkins and Varantola 1998 ) which registered disappointingly low rates of dictionary use during experimental treatment. This poses a fundamental methodological problem to dictionary use research, because the failure to consult dictionaries masks any potential effects of dictionary consultation ( Lew 2004 : 59). The author’s failure experience of the study mentioned in Section 3 .2.2 also made her aware that a more strict control for dictionary use in the treatment groups might be needed. Therefore, several steps were taken in this study to minimize dictionary underuse effect. First, all the target lexical items in the reading text were marked in bold type so as to obtain a higher degree of salience. Secondly, all of them were included in the question items, in bold type again, and subjects had to know their meanings when completing the task. Thirdly, the dictionary groups were encouraged to consult the target lexical items and told to underline in the reading text any word they consulted during task completion. Those who failed to consult the target items were excluded from the final data analysis. Fourthly, the study was done in subjects’ regular class sections and under the supervision of their respective teachers, which promoted a higher degree of willingness on the part of students to cooperate and follow test instructions. All these measures proved useful to handle the problem of dictionary underuse in experimental treatment.

3.2.5 Selection of the Vocabulary Levels Test

Generally, there are two areas of interest in L2 vocabulary testing: estimating vocabulary size (or breadth of vocabulary knowledge) and assessing quality of word knowledge (or depth of knowledge) ( Read 1997 ). It is argued that except for certain research purposes, there is little point in eliciting all that learners may know about a particular set of words ( Read 2007 : 113). In fact, learners’ word knowledge naturally deepens as vocabulary size increases, so that good size measures may be all that are required ( Vermeer 2001 ). Furthermore, there are so many more aspects of word knowledge that could potentially be assessed and no consensus has emerged as to which are the most significant ones ( Read 2004 ). Therefore, the author decided on a two-section Vocabulary Levels Test (henceforth VLT), adapted from Nation (2001) , Schmitt et al. (2001) and Laufer and Nation (1999) . The first section is taken from Schmitt et al.’s version of VLT (2001) in which subjects are requested to match words with their synonyms or short definitions. The following is an example. Considering the estimated general vocabulary levels of the participants, only three levels were chosen, i.e. the 3000 word level, the 5000 word level and the Academic Vocabulary. An informal random pilot test done by the present author on junior students showed that a majority of them knew nearly all the words in the 2000 word level and barely any word in the 10,000 word level, which led to the exclusion of these two. For practical reasons of test administration, only seven clusters were chosen out of the original ten clusters at each word level and each cluster contains three tested items, leading to a total of 63 items.

clock _part of a house

horse _animal with four legs

pencil _something used for writing

He was riding a bic ycle.

For the same reasons mentioned above, only three word levels, i.e. the 3000 word level, the 5000 word level and the University Word List level were adopted and except for the University Word level which includes 13 items, each level contains 12 sentences with 12 tested items, thus reaching a total of 37 items. Altogether, there are 100 tested items in the VLT.

3.3 Participants

Participants for this study included three intact teaching classes of English seniors from Putian University and another four classes of juniors from Xiamen University and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, two classes from each. Initially, more than 210 students participated in the first phase of the study, yet unfortunately, due to some reasons that will be explained in the next subsection, the number of qualified participants was reduced to 176. These students come from similar linguistic backgrounds and have learned English for at least eight years. Nearly all of them have passed the Test for English Majors (TEM, Band 4).

3.4 Testing and scoring procedures

The study was conducted during two regular class sections on two consecutive weeks under the supervision of the participants’ respective teachers. In the case of Putian University, the author monitored the testing processes in her own classes while at the other two universities, the teachers in charge were trained beforehand as to how to administer the tests. In the first week, the study was conducted in students’ language labs which are equipped with computers. All classes were randomly divided into three groups, each assigned to one of three reading conditions: to read with access to an EBLD, or a PBLD, or with no access to any dictionary. As mentioned in Section 2 .2.4, the EBLD was OALECD4 installed in Lingoes, a multifunctional translation software program which had been downloaded and installed on the computer desktop prior to the study. Lingoes was also set up in such a way that only OALECD4 was available. In other words, students had to use OALECD4 as it was the only dictionary contained in Lingoes after resetup. And other irrelevant functions of Lingoes were also forbidden. A few minutes had been given to familiarize the EBLD group with the dictionary before the study began. Except for the EBLD group, all computers in the seats for the other two groups had been shut off.

Before the study began, the participants were informed of the purpose of the study, i.e. to compare the effects between different reading conditions, but they were not forewarned of the upcoming vocabulary retention tests. Both the reading task and the retention tests were done in paper and pencil. To minimize the time-upon-task effect, a 25-minute time constraint was imposed on all participants to finish the reading task. As introduced in Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, the reading text contains ten target items marked in bold type and the reading task includes questions related to the comprehension of individual target lexical items. During the reading task, from time to time, the dictionary groups were required to use the designated dictionaries and underline in the text every word they looked up while the non-dictionary group (henceforth the ND group) were encouraged to do contextual guessing. After all students had handed in the reading task material, with all computers shut down and minidictionaries returned, an unexpected immediate retention test (henceforth RT1) was administered in which students were asked to recall the meaning of the target items in either L1 or L2. The RT1 was to be finished within six to seven minutes and without the assistance of any dictionary. At the end of the RT1 paper, students were also asked to identify among the target lexical items the word(s), if any, that they had known prior to the study. No mention was made of the other retention test that would follow in the next week, but students were told in a delicate way not to do anything more with the target lexical items after the RT1. In addition, they were instructed not to tell their fellow students in other classes anything about the study so as to prevent collaboration. This first phase of study, including the reading task and the RT1, took about 45 minutes.

Seven days later, the participants were given a delayed retention test (henceforth RT2) in the same class and under the supervision of the same teachers. The RT2 was exactly the same as the RT1 except for a rearranged order of the target lexical items as an effort to avoid the carryover effect from the previous test. After the RT2, students were told to do the VLT to assess their vocabulary levels. They had no access to any dictionary and there was no time limit, but most students finished it within 45 minutes. This second phase, including the RT2 and the VLT, took about 50 minutes. The reason why the VLT was done in the second week is out of practical considerations of test administration. After all, the VLT does not include any target item in the reading task, so it is unlikely to be affected by the experimental treatment.

Altogether, four kinds of data were collected from the study: the score of the reading task, the RT1 score, the RT2 score, and the VLT score. Nearly 40 students were excluded from final data processing. Some of them took part in only one of the study phases or failed to produce all the data required. For example, several students turned in only three kinds of data instead of four, perhaps for fear that their poor performance would make an unfavorable impression on their teacher. Despite the instruction to use the dictionary, some students in the dictionary groups still did not use it or used it only for some target lexical items, as no words or not all target items were underlined in the reading text. This happened more frequently in the PBLD group than in the EBLD group. In addition, some students had known two or more target items before the study. It should be mentioned that although a few students identified one or more target lexical items as previously known, a crosscheck with their answers in the RT1 showed that they either wrote the wrong meaning or did not provide any answer at all. In such cases, they were not eliminated from the study as evidence indicated that they had not known the identified items prior to or even after the reading task. Furthermore, some students scored higher in the RT2 than in the RT1 which means they either further processed the target items after the RT1 or used the dictionary sneakily during the RT2 despite the teacher’s instruction. Some of them may be highly motivated students, eager to learn vocabulary at every opportunity; some may have known from other students that there would be another retention test. The exclusion of all these students from the study left the final number at 176.

The author alone undertook all the scoring work. For the reading task, the maximum score is 18 for the nine word-focused questions. Each correct answer for the multiple choice question yielded two points. The scoring of question answering was based on the semantic and pragmatic criteria. If each question was answered correctly and appropriately, it would get two points. If the answer fit only one of the criteria, then one point. For example, when asked to compose a sentence with a dab hand , many students wrote sentences like I’m a dab hand in cooking , she is a dab hand with her papers or he is a dab hand in farming , instead of using the idiom with a more frequent preposition at , which is shown in the examples in the dictionary entry. In such a case, only one point was given. The two retention tests were scored in the same way: one point for correct responses while half point for partially correct ones. The total score is 10. In the case of polysemous target lexical items, if students wrote other correct meanings instead of the one used in the reading text, they could also get points. For example, several students wrote 激怒, 使生气 (make sb. angry) for wind up though in the reading text it meant 以 … 结束 (end up). There were chances that when students used the dictionary, they would incidentally acquire more meanings of a word than the one involved in reading and this did happen in this study, though at a low frequency. The total score for the VLT is 100 with one point for each tested word. The second section of the VLT involved the spelling of word forms. Any minor spelling errors, say, sooth for soothe , or adequaet for adequate were ignored, as was the case with the use of verb tense. For example, if students used scared instead of scare , they could also get a point.

After the scoring procedures, all data were further processed by SPSS 16.0. Results and findings are discussed at length in the next section.

3.5 Results

3.5.1 vocabulary comprehension.

As mentioned above, the reading task was viewed as a measure of vocabulary comprehension. A one-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance, with post hoc tests) was performed to compare the results of different reading conditions. Table 1 shows that the PBLD group obtained the best scores, followed by the EBLD group and then the ND group. There is a strongly significant mean difference between the three groups [F(2, 173) = 36.04, p < 0.001] (see Table 2 ). Post-hoc tests (Games-Howell) revealed that the mean score of the ND group differed significantly from those of the EBLD group and the PBLD group (p < 0.001) while the latter two were not significantly different from each other (p = 0.088).

Descriptive statistics of vocabulary comprehension scores (Max = 18.00)

ANOVA between vocabulary comprehension scores

A one-way ANOVA was also conducted to compare participants’ VLT scores which verified the non-significant difference between these three groups in terms of vocabulary proficiency [F(2, 173) = 1.38, p = 0.254; see Table 3 ). This means the significant difference in students’ comprehension scores did not result from the different vocabulary proficiency levels between these groups. Very probably, it was the experimental treatment that led to the significant difference in group performance. Apparently, the use of dictionaries facilitated vocabulary comprehension much more than contextual guessing.

Descriptive statistics of VLT scores (Max = 100.00)

3.5.2 Vocabulary retention

As shown in Table 4 , on both retention tests, the EBLD group obtained the highest scores and the ND group the lowest. Retention scores were submitted to 3 × 2 repeated measures ANOVA with reading Groups (the EBLD, the PBLD and the ND groups) as the between-subjects factor and Time (the RT1 and the RT2) the within-subjects factor. The measure of effect size is η 2 , expressing explained variance. Results in Tables 5 and 6 indicate a significant main effect for both Time [F(1, 173) = 237.03; p < 0.001; η 2 = 0.578] and Groups [F(2, 173) = 32.23; p < 0.001; η 2 = 0.271] and a significant time × groups interaction as well [F(2, 173) = 4.64; p = 0.011; η 2 = 0.051]. As revealed by multiple comparisons (Scheffe), a significant difference occurred between the ND and the other two groups (p < 0.001) while the latter two did not differ substantially from each other (p = 0.137).

Descriptive statistics of retention scores (Max = 10.00)

Test of within-subject effects (retention scores)

Test of between-subjects effects (retention scores)

3.5.3 Vocabulary levels and reading conditions

Based on their VLT scores, the students were divided into three vocabulary levels: higher, medium and lower. The mean score of the whole sample is 76.2. Forty-seven students who ranked at the top with scores ranging from 83 to 95 belong to the higher level group, taking up 26.7% of the entire sample. The lower level group included another 47 students whose scores were at the bottom, between 20 and 70, also accounting for 26.7% of the whole sample. Any comparison done in this study only involved the higher and the lower level students. An Independent Samples T-test confirmed that there was a highly significant difference between these two groups in their VLT scores (p < 0.001).

Two two-way ANOVAs were performed with two levels of vocabulary proficiency (higher and lower) and three levels of reading conditions (EBLD, PBLD and ND) as the between-factor variables and vocabulary retention scores as the dependent measure, one for the RT1, the other the RT2. Table 7 demonstrates that the interaction between the effects of the between-factor variables on students’ RT1 scores was significant [F(2, 88) = 3.76, p = 0.027, η 2 = 0.079]. Therefore, the ‘significant’ main effect of vocabulary levels on RT1 scores [F(1, 88) = 14.35, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.140] and the same ‘significant’ results in the case of reading conditions [F(2, 88) = 13.52, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.235] (see also Table 7 ) should be treated with caution. Table 8 and Figure 3 indicate that the two BLD conditions produced different effects on students’ immediate vocabulary retention for the higher and the lower level groups. Simple effect analyses (Post hoc tests) were performed by computing a new variable with each of the original cells as a level and found that there was a significant effect difference between cell codes [F(5, 88) = 11.89, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.403]. Results of multiple comparisons in Table 9 suggest that in terms of the RT1, for the higher level group, those who used the PBLD fared significantly better than those with no access to the dictionary (mean difference = 1.99, p = 0.008); for the lower level group, those who used the EBLD scored significantly higher than those who did not use any dictionary (mean difference = 3.27, p < 0.001), and those with access to the PBLD (mean difference = 2.45, p = 0.009).

Profile plot: RT1 scores for vocabulary levels. This figure appears in colour in the online version of the International Journal of Lexicography .

Two-way ANOVA for RT1 scores as a function of reading conditions and vocabulary levels

R Squared = 0.403 (Adjusted R Squared = 0.369).

Descriptive statistics of RT1 scores as a function of reading conditions and vocabulary levels

Post hoc tests for six new cell codes: multiple comparisons Dependent variable: RT1 scores (Tukey HSD)

Based on observed means. The error term is Mean Square (Error) = 2.996.

*The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

Results of two-way ANOVA in Table 10 show that there was no significant interaction between the effects of vocabulary levels and reading conditions on students’ RT2 scores [F(2, 88) = 1.15, p = 0.322, η 2 = 0.025]. The main effect of vocabulary levels on students’ long-term vocabulary retention was statistically significant [F(1, 88) = 13.30, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.131], so was the case with reading conditions [F(2, 88) = 6.73, p = 0.002, η 2 = 0.133]. Multiple comparisons (Tukey HSD), together with the figures in Table 11 , indicated that students at both levels of vocabulary proficiency using the EBLD obtained significantly better scores than the ND group (mean difference = 1.72, p = 0.003).

Two-way ANOVA for RT2 scores as a function of reading conditions and vocabulary levels

R Squared = 0.270 (Adjusted R Squared = 0.229).

Means, standard deviations, and n for RT2 scores as a function of reading conditions and vocabulary levels

3.6 Interpretation and discussion

3.6.1 bld use vs. contextual guessing.

The study yielded clear evidence to support Hypothesis 1 proposed in Section 3 .1, i.e. students using the PBLD or the EBLD achieve significantly better results of vocabulary learning than those without access to the dictionary. Students who used the BLDs fared much better on the vocabulary comprehension test than those who didn’t, suggesting that BLD use is a more effective strategy for vocabulary comprehension than contextual guessing. This result accords with the findings of some previous studies, such as Summers (1988) , Tono (1989) , Knight (1994) , Koga ( 1995 ), Bogaards ( 2002 ), Hayati and Mohanmmadi (2005) , and Zucchi (2010) . Although this study differs from previous research in several aspects such as involving the use of BLDs, a type of dictionary rarely investigated before, and using English majors as subjects, it does confirm the effectiveness of dictionary use strategy for vocabulary comprehension.

Compared with guessing from the context, the use of dictionary can guarantee an exposure to richer and more accurate lexical information, provided students have proper dictionary skills. For example, when asked to explain the meaning of wand , many students in the ND group gave wrong answers such as a magic trick/performance/phenomenon , or a towel/handkerchief/clothing used by magicians ; some figured out a more approximate meaning such as a tool or something used by magicians , while a majority of students in the BLD groups could write the correct meaning of this target word, though they were warned in advance not to copy the exact definition from the BLD entry. Another example is the use of a dab hand . Over 70% of the ND group wrote sentences such as She is a dab hand with/in/of cooking while most students of the BLD groups could use a more appropriate preposition at , as shown in the dictionary examples. Some students in the BLD groups also made mistakes by using with/in , probably because they did not pay attention to the dictionary examples. It should be mentioned here that, conventionally speaking, the use of target lexical items belongs to the dimension of language production rather than comprehension, but of course comprehension precedes production as students have to decode before they can encode ( Rundell 1999 : 35). Therefore, here the author prefers to include such cases (actually only two) in a more general dimension of vocabulary comprehension.

It is interesting to note that despite the significantly better performance obtained by the BLD groups, a close scrutiny of students’ responses to each question revealed that dictionary use did not necessarily produce better results than non-dictionary use in every case. Table 12 shows the correct answer rates for each question between the ND group and the two BLD groups combined. For the sake of convenience, the author only analyzed the six multiple choice questions.

Correct answer rates for each multiple choice question

wind up ( infml 口) (of a person) arrive finally in a place; end up （指人）终於到达某处, 安顿: … … wind (sth) up finish (a speech, etc) 结束（讲话等）: … … wind sb up cause sb to reach a high level of excitement or agitation 使某人高度兴奋或激动: … … wind sth up settle the affairs of and finally close (a business, company, etc) 清理业务并最後关闭（企业﹑ 公司等）: … …

wind up (informal) (of a person) to find yourself in a particular place or situation 以 … 告终（或终结） … …

3.6.2 BLD use and incidental vocabulary acquisition

As revealed by the study, students who had access to the dictionary, be it the PBLD or the EBLD, achieved significantly better results on both vocabulary retention tests than those who did not, thus confirming the benefit of BLD use for incidental vocabulary learning. As can be calculated from Tables 5 and 6 , there was a large effect size of both time (η = 0.76) and reading conditions (η = 0.52) on vocabulary retention scores. Since the RT2 was done seven days later than the RT1, the factor of time surely played a major role, for a loss of lexical knowledge is bound to occur when students have no further exposure to target lexical items. The more noteworthy finding is the large effect size (η = 0.52) of reading conditions upon retention scores, suggesting that the former exerted a powerful impact on the latter.

The advantage of dictionary use for vocabulary retention identified by the study echoes what was found in Luppescu and Day (1993) , Knight (1994) , and Hulstijn et al. (1996) . It can be explained in terms of the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) . This task-induced construct involves motivational and cognitive dimensions: need , search and evaluation , which can be absent or present during word processing in a natural or artificially designed task. Compared with the ND group, the task-induced involvement load of the BLD groups is higher, because the component of search was present: students had to consult the dictionary when dealing with the task. According to the hypothesis, retention of hitherto unfamiliar words is conditional upon the amount of involvement during word processing. The higher involvement load imposed on the BLD groups naturally led to better retention results than those without access to the dictionary.

As shown in Table 4 , the average vocabulary retention rate of the two BLD groups is 65.9% measured immediately after the reading task and 43.9% one week later. Even for the ND group, the retention rate reached 42.0% on the RT1 and 27.4% on the RT2. Compared with the results of previous studies, these figures are quite high. One of the possible reasons is the large extent to which the reading task contributed to incidental vocabulary acquisition. In Knight (1994) , the dictionary group retained about 20.6% on a definition-supply retention test and the figure dropped to 14.0% after two weeks. For those who did not use the dictionary, the retention rate on definition-supply test was as low as 7.2%, but it unexpectedly rose to 9.6% after two weeks. The reading task involved in Knight (1994) was a proposition recall, i.e. subjects were asked to write down whatever they remembered about the contents of reading texts. Besides, the target words in the reading texts were not highlighted or distinguished in any manner. In Laufer and Hill (2000) all target words were highlighted and students were encouraged to consult them in a specially designed dictionary program, but the retention test was performed immediately after text reading and followed by a comprehension exercise about the text. In other words, there was no enhancement task prior to the retention test. Nevertheless, it was found that 47.7% of the target words were remembered, much higher than those in Knight (1994) . Three reasons may explain the discrepancy: the salience of target words in reading texts, the length of reading texts and the number of target words. Laufer and Hill used a short text of 120 words and tested 12 target words while Knight used two texts with a total of 500 words and tested 24 target words. The even higher rate of vocabulary retention identified by the present study than that of Laufer and Hill’s may be attributed to the word-focused reading task: students had to understand the meaning of target lexical items while doing the reading task. In other words, the present study proved that word-focused activities can significantly enhance word retention, a finding supported by Paribakht and Wesche (1997) , Laufer ( 2001 , 2003 ), Hill and Laufer (2003) and Peters (2007) . Actually, the retention rates yielded by the present study are quite similar to those of Hill and Laufer (2003) . Two of the three tasks involved in their study were form-oriented, one for comprehension, the other for production. They found that the average retention rate induced by the two form-oriented tasks was 67.1% on the immediate test and 41.6% on the delayed test seven days later.

3.6.3 Comparison between BLDs in paper and electronic form

The study showed that there was no significant difference between the PBLD and the EBLD groups in either comprehension scores or retention scores, suggesting that the effect of BLD use on vocabulary learning is not dependent on the form of the dictionary when students’ vocabulary proficiency is not considered. Since the two BLDs are exactly the same except for their form and there was no significant difference in vocabulary proficiency levels between groups, the outcomes of vocabulary learning can be safely regarded as indicators of the effects between different dictionary forms. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 postulating non-significant difference between the PBLD and the EBLD in terms of dictionary effectiveness for vocabulary learning is verified.

This finding corroborates the result found by the author’s previous research, i.e. Chen 2010 , though the two studies compared PBLDs with different forms of EBLDs: one with pocket EBLDs, the other with the computer desktop BLD. It is also in line with the results found other studies comparing paper dictionaries and pocket dictionaries (e.g. Koyama and Takeuchi 2003 , Iso and Osaki 2004 , and Kobayashi 2007 ). More interestingly, the present study is supported by the recent findings of Dziemianko ( 2011 , in press) that there was no significant difference between the on-line and paper versions of LDOCE5 and OALDCE7 in terms of dictionary usefulness for language production, comprehension and learning. In Dziemianko (2010) , COBUIL6 online was found to be significantly more useful for language tasks and retention than its paper form, yet its replication study, Dziemianko (2011) , which yielded different findings with LDOCE5 revealed that the better effects of e- COBUILD6 than e- LDOCE5 are to a large extent due to its clearer and more neatly organized layout of web-pages. Accumulating evidence seems to suggest that dictionary effectiveness is not dependent on dictionary form. In other words, the difference in the form, paper vs. electronic, may not be the major factor accounting for dictionary usefulness. As far as BLDs are concerned, the present study, together with Chen (2010) , confirms that the form of BLDs is not a very important issue for the assessment of BLD usefulness in vocabulary learning. Of course, other factors such as extra functions, the speed of use, and portability of the dictionary etc. should also be taken into consideration for the overall evaluation of dictionaries of different forms, yet these are not the focus of the present study.

Interestingly, despite the overall non-significant difference between PBLD and EBLD use for vocabulary learning, the former yielded higher comprehension scores than the latter while on retention tests, the result was reversed. The EBLD group retained 68.63% of the vocabulary gained a week before while the PBLD kept 64.63%. In other words, the PBLD seemed to be slightly better than the EBLD for vocabulary comprehension while the EBLD proved to be a little more advantageous for vocabulary retention. Actually, the PBLD group got a higher mean score of the VLT than the EBLD group did (77.16 vs. 74.30 against a total of 100), which may account for their better performance at vocabulary comprehension. However, this small advantage of the PBLD group in vocabulary proficiency did not lead to better vocabulary retention. The slight superiority of the EBLD over the PBLD for vocabulary retention may be attributed to their different access route. In the EBLD, any keyboard input of headword would bring the entry information on the screen in an instant while PBLD users have to spend more time looking through the headwords for the needed one. Another reason may be related to the different degree of salience of entry information, for, unlike the EBLD, the PBLD did not use different colors to indicate different categories of entry information except bold type, although these two are identical in contents, font and line spacing. Furthermore, unlike the EBLD, the PBLD used in the study is not a regular and complete dictionary which prevents users from following up on some other entries besides the target ones. This might also affect negatively on users’ performance.

3.6.4 The effects of vocabulary levels and reading conditions on incidental vocabulary acquisition

The study revealed a significant interaction, with a medium effect size (η = 0.28), between the effects of vocabulary levels and reading conditions on students’ RT1 scores. In particular, the effect size of reading conditions was larger than that of vocabulary levels (0.48 vs. 0.37), suggesting that the former exerted a more powerful influence on vocabulary retention than the latter. What is more noteworthy is the finding about the effects of different BLDs on immediate vocabulary retention for students at different vocabulary levels. For the higher level group, PBLD use led to significantly better result than non-dictionary use whereas for the lower level group, EBLD users fared significantly better than the PBLD and the ND groups. In other words, students at the higher vocabulary level were at an advantage when using the PBLD while the EBLD proved to be more beneficial for those at the lower vocabulary level.

As to the long-term retention measured by the RT2, the interaction between the effects of vocabulary levels and reading conditions was not statistically significant, though the main effect of both factors reached the 0.05 significance level. The effect size of both factors dropped from large in the case of the RT1 to medium in the RT2 and was very close to each other in the latter case. Obviously, the impact of reading conditions and vocabulary levels both decreased with the lapse of time. Students at the higher vocabulary level achieved substantially better scores on both retention tests than those at the lower level. In other words, more proficient students remembered more words than less proficient ones. For students at both levels of vocabulary proficiency, those using the EBLD fared significantly better than those without access to the dictionary. Interestingly, for the higher level group, the advantage of PBLD use over non-dictionary use diminished to a considerable degree from the RT1 to the RT2 while students at the lower level group were still at an advantage when using the EBLD.

The discussion above substantiates Hypothesis 3, i.e. students varying on vocabulary proficiency levels and reading conditions fare differently on incidental vocabulary acquisition.

The study revealed that compared with non-dictionary use, BLD use can effectively facilitate vocabulary comprehension, indicating that dictionary use is a more effective strategy of vocabulary learning than contextual guessing. Useful as it is, contextual guessing might be a process prone to incomplete or wrong inference, in particular for those students at the low level of L2 proficiency, whereas the use of dictionary means exposure to the richer and more accurate lexical information which is vital for correct comprehension of words. With adequate dictionary use skills, students having access to good dictionaries will be much more likely to achieve successful word comprehension than those who simply rely on contextual guessing. Therefore, as a strategy of vocabulary learning, dictionary use deserves more attention in L2 vocabulary research and pedagogy.

It was also found that BLD use is conducive to incidental vocabulary learning as students with the aid of BLDs obtained substantially better results of vocabulary retention than those reading in non-dictionary condition. What is more noteworthy is that the study yielded higher vocabulary retention rates than most of previous related studies. One of the reasons is the word-focus approach adopted by the present author: students were given tasks involving the comprehension of individual lexical items prior to retention tests. This is illuminating for L2 vocabulary pedagogy. Reading alone might not be a good solution to incidental vocabulary learning. Instead, a combination of dictionary use and word-focus vocabulary tasks, together with reading, can effectively enhance vocabulary retention. Considering the limited amount of language input students are exposed to in L2 learning context, such an approach should be advocated in vocabulary learning.

There was no indication of significant difference in dictionary effectiveness between the PBLD and the EBLD, suggesting that success in vocabulary learning is not dependent on the form of the dictionary. However, despite the relatively lower level of vocabulary proficiency of the EBLD group, they still achieved better vocabulary retention than those using the PBLD. Apparently, the electronic dictionary has some advantage for vocabulary retention. Therefore, this type of dictionary should not be subject to prejudice and is worth recommending to students. Teachers should first of all have an enlightened attitude towards dictionaries of different media and then help their students make an informed choice among different dictionaries.

Despite the general advantage of BLD use over non-dictionary use for vocabulary learning, some problems with dictionary use were also identified by the author. Some of them are related to the dictionary itself, but more are concerned with students’ inadequate dictionary use skills. For example, some students were unable to distinguish variant forms of phrases or collocations; some did not pay sufficient attention to dictionary examples; and some were too careless or overconfident to make judicious choice. These problems might not be specific to BLD use and might also be found with students using other types of dictionaries. Therefore, teachers should pay sufficient attention to students’ dictionary use skills and provide necessary training to help them make the best use of the dictionary.

Supplementary material is available at International Journal of Lexicography online.

I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions. I’m also indebted to Professor Jan Hulstijn, Dr. Robert Lew and Dr. Anna Dziemianko for their generous help. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Paul Bogaards for his careful editing of the article. Last but not least, I would like to thank all the teachers who helped me supervise the study and all the students who participated in my study.

1 In this article, the term L2 refers to second or foreign language acquired after one’s native language (L1). The acquisition-learning distinction as proposed by S. Krashen (1981) is not distinguished here; therefore, the terms vocabulary learning and vocabulary acquisition are used interchangeably throughout the article.

2 It is acknowledged that such a simple format allows only a crude measurement of the word knowledge elaborated by Nation (2001) . However, since the purpose of the study is not to investigate how well subjects mastered new lexical items but how much they retained after different experimental treatment, there is reason to claim that such a test is as adequate as any other.

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primary research

Quick reference.

Techniques of original data collection or research direct from the target respondents. Primary research is different from secondary research in that secondary research uses data or research that has already been collected. Primary research includes qualitative and quantitative research and can include surveys, focus groups, questionnaires, and interviews. Since primary research typically takes anywhere from weeks to months to gather and is very expensive, secondary sources are typically exhausted first before any primary research is conducted.

From: primary research in A Dictionary of Marketing »

Subjects: Social sciences — Business and Management

Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English. 2014

2014, Lexicography

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How To Cite The Oxford English Dictionary: Using MLA And APA

Published June 2, 2022

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How To Cite The Oxford English Dictionary Using MLA 9th Edition

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If you’re accessing the Oxford English Dictionary via a library database and you know who the author is, this is how you cite it.

Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary , edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, Edition if given and not first edition, vol. Volume Number if more than one volume, Publisher Name, Date of Publication, pp. First Page-Last Page. Name of Database . https://doi.org/DOI if there is one.

If the word you’re referencing is only found on one page, list it as such—no need to write it as a first page-last page. But if there’s no page number, you can choose to omit it. What if you don’t know who the editors are or what volume it is? You can also leave them out of your citation.

In-Text Citation:

(Author’s Last Name, page number)

If the page number is unavailable:

(Author’s Last Name)

Unknown Author

What if you don’t know who the author is? Here’s how to cite your entry.

“Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary , edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, Edition if given and not first edition, vol. Volume Number, Publisher Name, Date of Publication, pp. First Page-Last Page. Name of Database . https://doi.org/DOI if there is one.

What if you don’t have specific information such as pages volume numbers and editors? You don’t have to include them.

Since you don’t know the author, you need to input the first one to three words from the entry title. Please remember to enclose the title within quotation marks. Also, don’t forget to capitalise the first letter of each word. Just like this:

(“Diversity”)

Perhaps the easiest way to access the Oxford English Dictionary is through their various websites. If you know the author, here’s how to cite it:

Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary , Publication or Update Date, URL. Accessed Day Month Year site was visited.

Did you notice that “Accessed Day Month Year site was visited” is unique to website citations? If you’re wondering, it simply refers to the day you visited the website. Also, don’t forget to abbreviate the month for the publication/update date and the accessed date; it’s necessary to abbreviate the month.

If you don’t know who the author is, you can cite your entry this way:

“Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary , Publisher if known, Copyright Date or Date Updated, URL. Accessed Day Month Year site was visited.

With the lack of author information, all you have to do is place the first one to three words of the entry title within quotation marks. Remember to capitalise the first letter of each term. Here’s how:

(“Victorian”)

Of course, we can’t forget physical Oxford English Dictionaries! If you intend to use one, here’s how you can cite the material:

Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary, edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, Edition if given and not first edition, vol. Volume Number, Publisher Name, Year of Publication, pp. First Page-Last Page.

In case the author’s name is not provided, just the editors’, cite it this way:

“Title of Entry.” Title of Encyclopedia or Dictionary , edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, Edition if given and not first edition, vol. Volume Number, Publisher Name, Year of Publication, pp. First Page-Last Page.

Since there’s no author information available, you can use the first one to three words of the entry title and enclose it with quotation marks. Capitalise the first letter of each word. Then place the page number after. Take a look at this:

(“Middle Age” 545)

How To Cite Two Authors

How should you cite the material if there are two authors? By listing them how they appear on the page. Not alphabetically!

First Author’s Last Name, First Author’s First Name, and First Name Last Name of Second Author

Here’s what it will look like:

Will, Thomas, and Melissa Jones

How To Cite More Than Two Authors

If there are more than two authors, what you need to do is to focus on the first author in the list.

Last Name, First Name, et al.

In actual practice, it will look like this:

Will, Thomas, et al.

How To Cite The Oxford English Dictionary Using APA 7th Edition

The APA style is more straightforward than the MLA. When citing authors, remember it’s only the last name that’s spelt out. The first name is abbreviated. If the author’s name is Melissa Jones, the citation will look like this:

Jones, M.

If the author’s middle name is given, for instance, Melissa Smith Jones, here’s how to cite it.

Jones, M.S.

When referencing the Oxford English Dictionary you find online, determine if it’s an archived version or not. If not, it means that the dictionary is continuously being updated.

Online Archived Version:

Author A. A. (Date). Title of entry. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Name of dictionary/encyclopedia . URL.

Online Version With Continuous Updates:

Author A. A. (n.d.). Title of entry. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Name of dictionary/encyclopedia (edition, if not the first). Publisher. URL.

No Authors, But There Are Editors:

Editor, A., & Editor, B. (Eds.). (Date). Dictionary/Encyclopedia entry. In Name of dictionary/encyclopedia (edition, if not the first). Publisher.

No Authors And No Editors: Use Company As Corporate Author

Corporate Author. (Date). Dictionary/Encyclopedia entry. In Name of dictionary/encyclopedia (edition, if not the first). Publisher.

In-Text Citation

(Author’s last name, date)

Wrapping Up

There you have it! By now you know how to cite the Oxford English Dictionary using both the MLA and APA styles. You’ll be more confident writing your papers from now on.

Online Reference Resources: Finding and using resources

examine facts and statistics about the world
decipher abbreviations and definitions
gain an overview of a topic

They can be really useful resources as you begin your background research into a topic, before you move on to more in depth research via your Subject databases .

The availability of these resources in online format has made discovery a much quicker and easier process.

You can search online to discover the material you need, instead of wading through printed indexes and multi volume printed works. Printed reference works were traditionally for use within the library online. Online reference works are available to you 24/7 from wherever you login.

Finding and Using Reference Resources

Key Reference Collections

Library Search

Language Dictionaries
Biographies
Country & Industry Data
Legal Dictionaries & Reference Works
Very Short Introductions Online
The key online resources flagged here provide access to a wide range of reference works across many different subject disciplines.
You can examine a particular work in detail, or search across a range of different reference works to find content on your topic of interest.
These are a great starting point for your research if you need to explore unfamiliar concepts or research areas.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window Online dictionaries, reference books and encyclopedia covering general reference, language and quotations and subject topics across, Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences.

Oxford Reference Online contains works spanning these subject areas / categories

Sage Knowledge This link opens in a new window You can choose to search or browse just the reference titles that are available from Sage Knowledge. more... less... You will not need to login to the service if you are on campus. If you are off campus, use the Login via your institution option. Select the University of Exeter from the drop down list then login with your usual IT Services username and password when you are taken to the Single Sign On login screen for the University.

Screenshot of Browse menu for reference materials on Sage Knowledge

Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new window Full text access to the Oxford Handbooks in the Archaeology, Business and Management, Classical Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Economics and Finance, History, Law, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion and Sociology collections.

Gale ebooks This link opens in a new window Online collection of reference and handbook titles across a range of subject disciplines. Content is browseable by subject area and can be crossed search for multi disciplinary research.

Gale ebooks search screen showing subjects and search box

The Library Search services will help you discover books, journals, articles, audio visual material and more on your chosen topic. This is a good place to start when you are beginning to research a topic as you can draw on content from a variety of different sources.

Just add dictionary or encyclopedia and your topic to see what is available. For example; language dictionary , french dictionary , legal encyclopedia, quotation dictionary

Online support is available for Library Search.

Library Search Example

Search for energy encyclopedia in Library Search and view the results.

A mix of print and online titles are available.

Key Online Language Dictionaries

Free language resources.

Cambridge Dictionary : A mixture of free and subscription resources. Various language dictionaries are freely available.

Collins dictionary : Free online resource. Includes dictionaries for Enfgish or bilingual word reference for various languages plus thesauri.

Dictionary.com : Free online dictionary. Thesaurus also available as well as a free mobile app. The Random House unabridged dictionary is the foundation of this resource.

Merriam-Webster dictionary online : Free access to longstanding US dictionary and thesaurus service

You may come across references to key people/names in your research.

If these names are unfamiliar you can use the online biographical resources to find out more about their life and works and their contribution to history and society

People / Biography Resources

You may need to explore key facts and figures about a country. For example you may want to look at a country's or region's:

population demographics
political scene
key industries and productivity.

Key Resources

Office for National Statistics The UK's largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK.
Europa This link opens in a new window Official website of the European Union, for information on all aspects of European Union activity.. Use the EU by topic menu to focus your research on particular subject areas.
CIA World Factbook Provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues of countries around the world

Also take a look at the Statistics LibGuide and explore the Business LibGuides

Legal Dictionaries

You can use Library Search to discover online and print legal dictionary titles available you you.

The majority of the print legal dictionaries are shelved at KL 40 in the Law Library Reference Section - Bay 1 in the Law Library.

Examples include:

Specialist Reference Works

As well as general reference works you will reference works which focus on particular legal topics or disciplines. Examples include the following. There are many more! Library Search will help you to find these

Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Public International Law This link opens in a new window Compilation of peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of public international law. Written and edited by a team of scholars and practitioners in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. more... less... Cross searchable via OPIL: Oxford Public international Law

Halsbury's Laws of England

Halsbury's Laws of England via Lexis Library Halsbury's Laws provides a complete narrative statement of the law in England and Wales. If you are new to researching a particular area of law it is a good starting point for you.

The encyclopedia is arranged alphabetically by topic and provides up to date commentary and links to relevant caselaw and legislation.

The online version via Lexis makes it easy for you to follow through references to relevant case law, legislation and commentary.

It also makes it easy to search for topics that straddle a range of legal areas.

The multi volume print version is also available for quick reference in Bay 1 of the Law Library.

Very Short Introductions Online This link opens in a new window Concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects.

The books in the Very Short Introductions series act as a bridge between reference works and higher academic work, providing easy-to-read introductions to a diverse range of subject areas. All titles provide intelligent and serious introductions to a huge range of subjects, written by experts in the field who combine facts, analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make challenging topics highly readable.

Wikipedia is a free online collaborative encyclopedia.

L aunched in 2001, it has grown in popularity and become one of the most visited websites on the internet, with millions of visitors every month.

To find out more about this resource, including discussion of its value as a research resource, take a look at the Wikipedia LibGuide.

Last Updated: Sep 20, 2023 3:53 PM
URL: https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/reference

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Writing Tips

How to Cite a Dictionary in Harvard Referencing

3-minute read

8th May 2023

If you come across a source from a dictionary and want to use it in your research, make sure you cite it correctly, both in the text and on the reference page. In this post, we’ll show you how to cite a dictionary using basic Harvard referencing , one of the most common university referencing styles.

How to Cite a Dictionary on a Reference Page

As with any citation, you’ll need to provide all the basic source information on your reference page, whether you’re citing a print or an online dictionary:

● Author’s name

● Year of publication

● Title of the dictionary entry

● Title of the dictionary

● Edition number

● Place of publication (for print dictionaries)

● Publisher (for print dictionaries)

● URL (for online dictionaries)

Please see below for examples of each format.

Print Version

Author, X. (year). “Title of dictionary entry,” Title of Dictionary , edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Online Version

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

Author, X. (year). “Title of dictionary entry,” Title of Dictionary, edition number [Online]. Available at: URL (Access date).

The following are examples of what each one might look like on your reference page.

Smith, E. (2023). “Symposium,” Oxford English Reference Dictionary , 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Online Version:

Smith, E. (2023). “Symposium,” Oxford English Reference Dictionary , 4th ed. [Online]. Available at: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/symposium?q=symposium (Accessed May 25, 2023).

How to Cite a Dictionary in the Text

You can use a parenthetical or a narrative citation to reference a dictionary entry in the body of your essay. A narrative citation mentions the author’s name in a sentence and immediately follows the name with the year of publication in parentheses.

A parenthetical citation provides the surname of the author and the year of publication in parentheses immediately following the sentence. A narrative citation looks like this:

And a parenthetical citation will look like this:

Be sure to follow the Harvard guidelines for citing multiple authors. For in-text citations, the names of up to two authors are included. For three or more authors, you should shorten the citation using the abbreviation “et al.”:

Expert Academic Proofreading

When conducting research for an essay, cover all your bases and make sure your citations hit the mark. When you send you paper to our expert editors, include your academic reference list and in-text citations so you can rest assured that they meet all the required guidelines.

We’re experienced in an array of referencing styles, so no matter what field you’re studying, we’ll make sure the structure and format of your citations are correct. See for yourself – try out our proofreading services by sending us a free sample of 500 words or less.

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ENGL 1102 Worozbyt Spring 2024 : Databases

Library Catalog
MLA Citation Help
Tutoring at Decatur

Oxford English Dictionary - Online Access

Literature Databases

A source for literary research on writers and their works throughout history and the world. Content is obtained from Facts On Files print literature collection, Harold Blooms essays, and critical articles published by noted scholars under the Blooms Literary Criticism imprints.

Includes essays and commentary on the careers and works of major literary figures. Coverage: 1800s - present. Formerly Literature Criticism Online.

A digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It offers an interdisciplinary journal archive across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences

ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window Provides support for the study of English literature by bringing together primary works, reference materials, and literary criticism. Content includes books and scholarly journals covering 600 AD to the present. Formerly: Literature Online (LION)
Project Muse This link opens in a new window Provides complete, full-text content in digital humanities and social science from over 120 publishers, Including scholarly journals from leading university presses and scholarly societies are indexed and peer-reviewed, and full-text access includes current content from over 400 titles

General Databases

These are our big, multi-disciplinary databases. They are good places to start when you are still working on your topic.

A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications. PDF content dates back to 1887.

Database Tutorials

GSU Databases
What's a database?
Scholarly Journals?
CQ Researcher

A more in-depth, longer version of the above video:

<< Previous: eBooks
Next: MLA Citation Help >>
Last Updated: Apr 10, 2024 3:31 PM
URL: https://research.library.gsu.edu/ENGL1102WorozbytSpring2024

IMAGES

Oxford English Mini Dictionary by Oxford Dictionaries, Paperback
Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd edition)
Oxford English Dictionary News
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: Paperback
Oxford Paperback Dictionary & Thesaurus by Oxford Dictionaries (English
Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition, 27th Edition

VIDEO

Oxford English Dictionary Review #shortsfeed #enhypen #straykids #jennieblackpink
CLASS-7/HINDI/ periodic test question paper Oxford Public School
CLASS-2/COMPUTER/ half yearly examination question paper/ Oxford Public School
Oxford Picture Dictionary Academic Study Vocabulary آموزش تصویری تحصیلات آکادمیک
Oxford English Dictionary History
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary #english #shorts

COMMENTS

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research, n.¹ meanings, etymology and more
research, n.¹ meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary. The historical English dictionary. An unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world. ... It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide ...
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
The largest and most trusted free online dictionary for learners of British and American English with definitions, pictures, example sentences, synonyms, antonyms, word origins, audio pronunciation, and more. ... Find out by reading the Oxford 3000 and Oxford 5000 position paper, or get tips on using the word lists and download a FREE lesson ...
The New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors
The dictionary gives clear guidance on such matters as spellings (American English and British English), punctuation, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes, units and quantities, and symbols.Revised and fully updated, this new edition of the Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors includes feature entries on key areas, substantially ...
(PDF) A Study of Dictionary Use by International ...
This paper reports on an investigation into the dictionary&hyphen;using habits of international students studying in the medium of English at a British University. Over a period of three years ...
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PDF The Oxford Phrasal Academic Lexicon™
OPAL has been created with reference to the following corpora: the Oxford Corpus of Academic English (OCAE), the fiction subcorpus of the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), the spoken element of the British National Corpus (BNC) and a subset of the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, developed within the University of Warwick
Dictionary of Social Research Methods
Over 400 entriesThis new dictionary offers succinct, clear, expert explanations of key terms from both method and methodology in social research. It covers the whole range of qualitative, quantitative, and other methods, and it ranges from practical techniques like correlation up to methodological approaches such as ethnography.
International Journal of Lexicography
Discover a more complete picture of how readers engage with research in International Journal of Lexicography through Altmetric data. Now available on article pages. Publishes research in all aspects of lexicography, including issues of design, compilation and use, and with dictionaries of all languages, though the.
Research into the use of online dictionaries
This difference holds for both paper and online dictionaries, 1 testifying to the entrenchment of culturally important dictionary types in the respective traditions. In terms of payment for dictionary content, only a small minority of the respondents are prepared to pay, though most accept advertising on dictionary pages.
Dictionary Use and Vocabulary Learning in the Context ...
1. Introduction. Dictionary use has long been recognized as one of vocabulary learning strategies (Gu and Johnson 1996, Scholfield 1997, Nation 1990, 2001, Gu 2003, Nation and Meara 2010).Yet despite the important role of the dictionary for L2 learning and the relatively long history of the research on vocabulary learning through dictionary use, in the domain of L2 vocabulary acquisition ...
Oxford English Dictionary Research Papers
The paper focuses on three Canadian desk dictionaries that comprise the apex of the lexicography of contemporary Canadian English to this day. These are the Gage Canadian Dictionary and the ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary from 1997 and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary from 1998.
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Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English. 2014
Download Free PDF. View PDF. Lexicography ASIALEX (2014) 1:189-192 DOI 10.1007/s40607-015-0014-7 BOOK REVIEW Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English. 2014 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1023 pages, ISBN 978-0-19433350-4 Deny A. Kwary Published online: 10 March 2015 u0002 Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015 As the title suggests, the ...
How To Cite The Oxford English Dictionary: Using MLA And APA
How To Cite The Oxford English Dictionary Using APA 7th Edition. The APA style is more straightforward than the MLA. When citing authors, remember it's only the last name that's spelt out. The first name is abbreviated. If the author's name is Melissa Jones, the citation will look like this: Jones, M.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias
Welcome to Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Current, peer-reviewed trustworthy research, read in 30 minutes or less across 25 encyclopedias. Includes the Encyclopedia of Social Work and the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Learn more.
Online Reference Resources: Finding and using resources
These are a great starting point for your research if you need to explore unfamiliar concepts or research areas. Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window Online dictionaries, reference books and encyclopedia covering general reference, language and quotations and subject topics across, Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
The world's bestselling advanced-level dictionary for learners of English. Since 1948, over 100 million English language learners have used OALD to develop their English skills for work and study. Now in its tenth edition, OALD builds English vocabulary better than ever before and leads the way to more confident, successful communication in ...
How to Cite a Dictionary in Harvard Referencing
Author, X. (year). "Title of dictionary entry," Title of Dictionary, edition number [Online]. Available at: URL (Access date). The following are examples of what each one might look like on your reference page. Print Version. Smith, E. (2023). "Symposium," Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press ...
Dictionary entry references
The author and publisher are the same for the dictionaries in the examples, so the name appears in the author element only to avoid repetition. Provide any edition information about the dictionary in parentheses without italics after the dictionary title. Provide the page number for the entry in parentheses after the title of the dictionary.
Databases
It offers an interdisciplinary journal archive across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Provides support for the study of English literature by bringing together primary works, reference materials, and literary criticism. Content includes books and scholarly journals covering 600 AD to the present. Formerly: Literature Online (LION)