Impact of media and language factors on the efficacy of dictionary use

Abstract

The ever-increasing use of the internet has resulted in the development of various types of sophisticated web-based dictionaries while diminishing the use of paper-based dictionaries. Still in question, however, is the efficacy of different types of media among learners of different proficiency or cognitive/education levels. This efficacy issue pertaining to the media factor remains intertwined with the language factor (monolingual vs. bilingual), given the contradictory perspective on the overall usefulness among different proficiency levels. This study attempts to 1) investigate the extent to which the media factor interacts with the language factor in terms of the efficacy of dictionary use, 2) compare the efficacy of four different types of dictionaries between two groups of different educational levels, and 3) conduct a survey to explore learners` views on the proper use of a dictionary. The research findings reveal that strong interactions exist between the media and language factors, and that secondary education learners find the paper-based Korean-English dictionary the most facilitative, whereas the web-based English-English dictionary is the most effective for the tertiary education group. Based on the survey results, the majority of respondents prefer to use web-based dictionaries due to its user-friendliness despite the fairly high efficacy of paper-based dictionaries.