How Can We Raise Strategic Dictionary Use in the Classroom: The Effect of a Dictionary Awareness Program on Dictionary Use Strategies

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of an explicit and integrated dictionary awareness program on primary school pupils' dictionary use strategies. The survey involved a total of 150 participants, aged 10–12 years old, from mainstream and intercultural schools. Data was collected before and after the implementation of the program using the Strategy Inventory for Dictionary Use (SIDU), a reliable and validated self-report tool that accurately profiles paper dictionary users' reported use in real-life contexts (Gavriilidou 2013). The dictionary awareness program consisted of targeted activities and was implemented to a group of 75 students, including 50 from mainstream schools and 25 from an intercultural school. The findings suggest that there is a lack of dictionary culture among students attending Greek schools, as evidenced by the moderate strategic use of dictionaries and the incomplete integration of dictionaries as reference tools in the educational process. Additionally, the comparison of the percentage of each strategy category before and after the implementation of the program showed a significant effect of the program on all categories of Dictionary Use Strategies (DUS) employed by the experimental group. This study contributes to the discussion of the "teachability" of dictionary use strategies by highlighting the effectiveness of dictionary awareness programs in promoting a dictionary culture. Keywords: dictionary use strategies, dictionary awareness program, explicit and integrated strategy instruction, dictionary culture, CALLA, strategy based instruction, look up strategies, lemmatisation strategies