'Look it up' A survey on the use of dictionaries among students in a Swedish upper secondary school. 2003 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year))Student thesis

Abstract [en]

Recent Second Language Vocabulary Learning research and studies of computer corpora have shown that words collocate, i.e. go together to form phrases and expressions, which thus can be treated as entities. This implies that learning and knowing words not only involve spelling and definition, but also, for example, collocation, grammatical and syntactical characteristics along with phrases and expressions containing the word. These 'chunks' of language can be learned by a conscious use of vocabulary learning strategies, i.e. discovery or consolidation strategies. These involve techniques like guessing from context, use of semantic fields, vocabulary notebooks and learner dictionaries. This essay starts with a review of different dictionaries and historical account of monolingual learner dictionaries, followed by an outline of vocabulary learning research and vocabulary learning strategies. Thereafter follows a report on a study performed in four classes at a Swedish upper secondary school, in the format of a questionnaire containing questions asking for students' use of dictionaries. The results shoe that the students prefer to use social strategies, especially asking friends for definitions, and to work with bilingual rather than monolingual dictionaries. In order to help students enhance their vocabulary knowledge and language abilities teachers need to focus on words, phrases and expression, and adopt a lexical approach to vocabulary learning.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

2003.

Keywords [en]

Dictionary/-ies, monolingual, learner dictionary, vocabulary learning, learning strategies, lexical approach

Identifiers

URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-10798Local ID: U5909OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-10798DiVA, id: diva2:365922

Uppsok

Humanities, Theology

Note

Denna uppsats kan beställas från arkivet / This paper can be ordered from the archive. Kontakta / Contact: arkivet@hh.seAvailable from: 2010-11-09 Created: 2010-11-09Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

By organisation

School of Teacher Education (LUT)

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle ScholarTotal: 64 hits