Abstract
AbstractThe aim of the paper is to investigate the usefulness of different illustration formats in online English learners’ dictionaries for the accuracy and speed of meaning comprehension as well as immediate and delayed retention. In a controlled online experiment, the meaning of selected English words and phrases had to be explained with the help of purpose-built monolingual dictionary entries. Four experimental conditions were created, which reflected the presence and format of illustrations in the entries: color pictures, greyscale pictures, line drawings, no illustrations. Meaning retention was checked immediately after exposure and two weeks later. The results show that it is worthwhile to include illustrations in online learners’ dictionaries and suggest the most beneficial illustration formats. Line drawings prove the most recommendable; they considerably improve meaning comprehension, reduce reception time, and stimulate the best immediate and delayed retention. Color pictures emerge as the second best. They produce results comparable with those for line drawings, except they do not help so much to remember meaning in the long run. Entries with greyscale pictures are the least recommendable. They do not contribute more to meaning comprehension and delayed retention. Yet, they even shorten reception time and help users to remember more words immediately after exposure.
Highlights
Dictionary illustrations are ostensive definitions whereby a word is explained by pointing to an object (Landau, 2001: 168)
One-way GLM ANOVAs were calculated for each dependent variable
Meaning explanation was significantly less successful when no illustrations were given in entries (54%) than when color pictures (80%, p = 0.01) or line drawings (77%, p = 0.02) were present
Summary
Dictionary illustrations are ostensive definitions whereby a word is explained by pointing to an object (Landau, 2001: 168) They help clarify meaning, disambiguate between senses, group or distinguish between words from one semantic field, and convey information on culture-specific words that might be difficult to explicate verbally (Gangla-Birir, 2015: 47; Heuberger, 2000: 36). Being more explicit than text, illustrations are believed to enhance information retrieval (Gangla-Birir, 2015: 40) They are said to have an aesthetic value and make the dictionary more appealing (Heuberger, 2000: 36; Klosa, 2015: 516). That illustrations, which are absent from many online dictionaries, are considered “a welcome addition” (Lew & Szarowska, 2017: 157)
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