Paper Dictionary Research Articles

Developing the KATAKU Mobile Application to Enhance Vocabulary Acquisition for Deaf Students

This study presents the development of the KATAKU (Kata untuk Tunarungu Interaktif dan Unik) application as an educational tool designed to support vocabulary learning for deaf students. Deaf students, who have the same educational rights as their hearing peers, often attend Special Schools (SLB). The integration of visual aids and technology in learning has proven effective in increasing their engagement and interest. This study employed a mixed-methods approach, including vocabulary assessments for deaf students, classroom observations, and teacher interviews for a needs analysis to identify the specific requirements of schools and students. Results from the vocabulary assessments revealed that deaf students face significant challenges, particularly with academic terms and word categorization. Classroom observations at three SLB schools in Jombang highlighted engaging but challenging learning dynamics, reinforcing the need for accessible and efficient teaching tools for educators. Teacher interviews indicated that using the paper dictionary provided by the Ministry of Education can be time-consuming and lacks efficiency. This study concludes that deaf students in Jombang face substantial obstacles in vocabulary comprehension, especially with academic vocabulary. The findings underscore the need for targeted vocabulary interventions using modern technological tools to better prepare students for advanced educational demands.

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

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

English as a Foreign Language University (EFL) Students’ Perception of Dictionary Use and Training

This article examines students’ perceptions of dictionary use and training in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The needs of English as a foreign language students in terms of specific dictionary types have received little attention. This research was conducted with 48 English as a foreign language students at a public university in Costa Rica over a year. The researcher used a survey (Appendix 1) to collect students’ opinions about the role of the dictionary in their major. Data indicates that: 1) not all dictionary types are known and used by students, 2) students favor the electronic dictionary over the paper dictionary, and 3) dictionary instruction is weak despite its perceived importance by learners. These conclusions are consistent with the literature surveyed. Furthermore, students’ opinions suggest that dictionary instruction and exposure have not been adequately approached in the language educational program. These results should advance new educational policies that promote the systematic and progressive inclusion of dictionary instruction across the study plan.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING PAPER DICTIONARY AND E-DICTIONARY EFFECTS IN MEMORIZING NEW WORDS

Nowadays, students are using e-dictionary on their smartphones, rather than using paper dictionaries. In this study we aimed to show how paper dictionary is rather beneficial and provides long-lasting knowledge when studying a second language. To ensure the accuracy, we involved 105 EFL sophomores of the same level, studying professional English in Mandakh University, and used mixed methodology of quantitative and qualitative data analysis such as interview, notes, focus group, and observation. We conducted a survey to identify the use of paper dictionaries in the classroom. There was also a memory test, which was taken from the students, to investigate how students encode, store, recall, decode and forget the given words. The result of the survey identifies that looking up a word in an e-dictionary takes only a few seconds, and the words are stored in short term memory, while using a paper dictionary allows the learner to recite the word multiple times in their mind or mouth and the whole process takes usually a minute. Taking a longer time to look up for a word helps the user to memorize the word in their long-term memory, in this paper we have tried to prove this theory with proper research.

Applied Corpus Linguistics for Lexicography: Sepedi Negation as a Case in Point

So far, Sepedi negations have been considered more from the point of view of lexico­graphical treatment. Theoretical works on Sepedi have been used for this purpose, setting as an objective a neat description of these negations in a (paper) dictionary. This paper is from a different perspective: instead of theoretical works, corpus linguistic methods are used: (1) a Sepedi corpus is examined on the basis of existing descriptions of the occurrences of a relevant verb, looking at its negated forms from a purely prescriptive point of view; (2) a "corpus-driven" strategy is employed, looking only for sequences of negation particles (or morphemes) in order to list occurring con­structions, without taking into account the verbs occurring in them, apart from their endings. The approach in (2) is only intended to show a possible methodology to extend existing theories on occurring negations. We would also like to try to help lexicographers to establish a frequency-based order of entries of possible negation forms in their dictionaries by showing them the number of respective occurrences. As with all corpus linguistic work, however, we must regard corpus evidence not as representative, but as tendencies of language use that can be detected and described. This is especially true for Sepedi, for which only few and small corpora exist. This paper also describes the resources and tools used to create the necessary corpus and also how it was annotated with part of speech and lemmas. Exploring the quality of available Sepedi part-of-speech taggers concerning verbs, negation morphemes and subject concords may be a positive side result. Keywords: African languages dictionaries, corpus linguistics, negation, Sepedi, Northern Sotho, lexicography, part-of-speech tagging, corpus query processing

Building specialized dictionaries using lexical functions

It is now widely acknowledged that terms enter into a variety of structures and that classic taxonomies and meronymies represent only a small part of the relationships terms share. This can be seen in recent specialized dictionaries that account for derivational relationships, co-occurrents, synonyms, antonyms, etc. It also has been underlined in several articles written by terminologists as well as linguists or computational scientists working with specialized corpora. This article will discuss the advanta ges and shortcomings of trying to account for semantic relations between terms using a specific framework, i.e. lexical functions (Mel’cuk et al. 1984-1999, 1995). It is based on a long-term project aimed at converting an existing paper dictionary (Dancette & Réthoré 2000) into a relational database. We will show that even if lexical functions have several advantages, a number of decisions must be made to accommodate the description of specialized terms.

The use of paper dictionary on L2 vocabulary learning and retention

Vocabulary learning and retention are the two components that are essential in assessing students’ abilities to understand the meaning of words. The study examines students’ attitudes of learning vocabulary and their learning feedback of using a paper dictionary. It also investigates the factors that students favour and dislike when using the resources for vocabulary retention. The method uses to collect the data in the current study is Explanatory Sequential Research Design. Both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are employed as the instruments in the current study. The study found that students had positive learning attitudes using paper dictionary in learning vocabulary. There was also various learning feedback that was obtained concerning the use of the resource for the learning of vocabulary. In terms of vocabulary retention, students provided different viewpoints in the use paper dictionary to assist them in memorising the definition of a target word. Finally, the study found a few factors that restricted them to use the resources to retain the vocabulary learnt. The study implies that the use of a paper dictionary is still significant as it helped students to enhance their understanding of a particular vocabulary.

THE ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY “THE MYTHOLOGICAL VOCABULARY OF THE PERM REGION” AS A BASIS FOR LINGUO-GEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH: NOMINATIONS OF THE MERMAID IN ANAREAL PERSPECTIVE

The paper demonstrates the possibilities of using the electronic dictionary “The Mythological Vocabulary of the Perm Region” in linguo-geographical research: in the areal aspect, nominations of the mermaid that have been noted in the region are considered. A corresponding linguistic map has been created with the help of the dictionary. The analysis shows that the all-Russian unit rusalkais the most widespread one in the region and has been recorded in the majority of its districts. Someareasformspecial nominations (chertovka, leshachikha, vodianaia, shishiga, poludnitsa). The rest of the names are local. The absence of names for the mermaid, common to the entire Perm territory, and the presence of many local nominations indicate the graduallossof ideas about this character in the Permian mythological tradition. The commonality of the regional tradition is maintained only at the level of individual beliefs, not the language. Beliefs that are represented in the nominations of the mermaid andsupport the integrity of her image in the region include ideas about her demonic nature, her place of residence, the presence of her long hair, the prohibition to call her by her direct name and about the need toappease her. The advantage of the electronic dictionary “The Mythological Vocabulary of the PermRegion” when creating a linguistic map is the ability to go both from the vocabulary (through the section “Mythological character”) and from the geographical label (through the section “Geographic indexof lexical units”). Both approaches make it possible to compile a map faster than when working with a paper dictionary, since the dictionary makes it possible to automatically either get a list of all mapped units, or not to refer to dictionary entries atall, but to work only with geographical labels.

Словари русского языка в интернете

The article offers an overview of web resources containing monolingual linguistic dictionaries of the Russian language. It explores Internet lexicography from educational, research, and general cultural perspective. Anonymous sites that disregard the standards of language are abundant. This has a negative impact on the way dictionaries are used in both educational and social sphere. The deformation of ideas about the principles of working with dictionaries is also affecting the professional community of linguists and teachers. Few authoritative resources lose to unauthorized ones, which is obvious from search request results on search engines. This is only logical, since the former have no functional or structural advantages over the latter, but are significantly inferior in completeness. Internet dictionaries have become an essential tool for linguists. The special features of an electronic dictionary as a lexicographic product or as a functionally enriched electronic version of a paper dictionary, have been described theoretically. However, the theoretical description has not been consistently implemented. Large lexicographic projects continue to be accomplished with the priority given to printed dictionaries. What is more, fully-functional Internet versions of classical dictionaries crucial for several branches of linguistics are not available. Besides, early projects on digitizing some of these dictionaries were suspended due to obsolete technical solutions. Sites that have relatively rich functionality in terms of search options and dictionary structure are rare and contain only special-purpose dictionaries. Even those vocabulary projects that are structurally and technically formed as a hypertext lexicographic environment still do not have a web version, e. g., The Dictionary of the 21st Century Russian Language. Under these conditions, benchmarks for the functional organization of the dictionary Internet space are set by non-professional lexicography, primarily Wiktionary, the ironic attitude towards which is gradually weakening in the research community. The absence of a single publicly available authoritative web dictionary of the Russian language impedes the solution of both educational and research tasks related to Internet lexicography. This gap is also a cultural issue and shows Russia as inferior at the backdrop of other national Internet communities.

المعجم الالکترونی ودوره فی تنمیة التواصل اللغوی لمتعلمی اللغة العربیة الناطقین بلغات أخرى من وجهة نظر المختصین والمعلمین

الملخص عنوان البحث: المعجم الالکتروني ودوره في تنمية التواصل اللغوي لمتعلمي اللغة العربية الناطقين بلغات أخرى من وجهة نظر المختصين والمعلمين. هدف البحث: تعرف دور المعجم الالکتروني في تنمية التواصل اللغوي لمتعلمي اللغة العربية الناطقين بلغات أخرى من وجهة نظر المختصين والمعلمين، وذلک من خلال المحاور الآتية: الصوت والنطق، والصرف، والنحو، والمفردات والدلالة، والمهارات، وسهولة الاستخدام، والاستفادة القصوى من المعجم الالکتروني. ولتحقيق هذه الأهداف استخدم الباحثان المنهج الوصفي، واستخدما الاستبانة أداة للبحث. وکانت نتائج البحث کالآتي: 1- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور الأول (الصوت والنطق) تراوحت بين الاتجاهين (موافق بشدة، وموافق) وهذا يعني أن اتجاه المحکمين يشير إلى الموافقة نحو أهمية المعجم في تعليم الصوت والنطق لدى المتعلمين. 2- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور الثاني (الصرف) تشير إلى الاتجاه بشدة مما يعين المتعلم على فهم صيغ اللغة العربية من حيث التذکير والتأنيث والأعداد والأزمنة والأفعال وکذلک يعين على استخدام الصيغ المناسبة من حيث ترتيب الکلمات. 3- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور الثالث (النحو) تشير إلى الاتجاه بشدة مما يدل على أنه يساعد المتعلم على التمکن من الصحة اللغوية لوجود العديد من الأمثلة التوضيحية، مما يقلل أيضا من الأخطاء اللغوية. 4- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور الرابع (المفردات والدلالة) تشير إلى الاتجاه بشدة، هذا يدل على مساعدته للمتعلم في فهم معاني المفردات بدلاتها وسياقاتها المختلفة، کما يساعد أيضا على تذوقه للأدب العربي من خلال فهمه للدلالات المختلفة. 5- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور الخامس (المهارات) تشير إلى الاتجاه بشدة مما يعني أن يساعد مساعدة فعالة في تنمية المهارات اللغوية الأربع. 6- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور السادس (سهولة الاستخدام) تشير إلى اتجاه موافق بشدة مما يعنى سهولة استخدامه في تتبع المفردة ودلالتها وبعدة مواضع ترتيب. 7- أن النسب المئوية والمتوسطات للمحور السابع (الاستفادة القصوى) تشير إلى اتجاه موافق بشدة مما يعني أن الاستفادة القصوى منه أکبر من المعجم الورقي مما يمتلکه من إمکانات کبيرة ومتنوعة. کما توصل البحث إلى عدة توصيات ومقترحات. Abstract Research Title: Electronic dictionary and its role in the development of linguistic communication for learners of Arabic language among the non – native speakers from the point of view of specialists and teachers. The purpose of the research: Introducing the role of electronic dictionary in the development of linguistic communication for learners of Arabic language among the non–native speakers from the point of view of specialists and teachers, through the following axes: sound and pronunciation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, skills, easiness of usage and maximum utilization of the electronic dictionary. To achieve these objectives, the researchers used the descriptive approach and used the questionnaire as a research tool. The results were as follows: 1. The percentages and averages of the first axis (sound and pronunciation) ranged between the two directions (strongly and agree). This means that the direction of the examiners indicates the approval of the importance of the dictionary in learning the sound and pronunciation by the learners. 2. The percentages and averages of the second axis (morphology) tend towards ‘’strongly agree, which will help the learner to understand the forms of the Arabic language in terms of masculinity and femininity, numbers, adverbs and verbs and also helps to use the appropriate forms in terms of words arrangement. 3. The percentages and averages of the third axis (syntax) tend towards ‘’strongly agree, which shows that it will assist the learner to master the correct linguistic approach, because it contains many illustrative examples, thereby reducing linguistic errors. 4. The percentages and averages of the fourth axis (vocabulary and meaning) tend towards ‘’strongly agree, this shows that it assists the learner in understanding the meanings of vocabulary and its different contexts, and also helps him to enjoy the Arabic literature through his understanding of its various usage and indications. 5. The percentages and averages of the fifth axis (skills) indicate (strongly agree), which means that it will serve as an effective assistance in the development of the four language skills. 6. The percentages and averages of the sixth axis (easiness of usage) indicate “strongly agree”, which means it makes it easy to track the usage of vocabulary, its meaning and mostly its arrangement order. 7. The percentages and averages of the seventh axis (maximum utilization) indicate strongly agree, which means that the maximum benefit derived from it is greater than the paper dictionary with its large and varied potential. The research also reached several recommendations and proposals.

A Critical Evaluation of Three Sesotho Dictionaries

This article gives a perspective on Sesotho lexicography and a critical analysis of the macrostructures and microstructures of three selected Sesotho dictionaries. The monolingual paper dictionary Sethantso sa Sesotho , the bilingual paper dictionary Southern Sotho–English Dictionary and the Sesotho online Bukantswe v.3 are evaluated. Their virtues and shortcomings as reference works will be viewed against dictionaries of high lexicographic achievement in order to establish to what extent they fulfil the most basic requirements of macrostructures and microstructures. The inconsistencies addressed in this article reflect the need for Sesotho lexicographers to use corpora in dictionary compilation in order to enhance the quality of entries on both microstructural and macrostructural levels. It will be argued that much more research and description of lexicographic issues is required to bring Sesotho lexicography on a par with its sister languages, Sepedi and Setswana and with good dictionaries for major languages of the world. After decades in existence, currently available Sesotho dictionaries are in dire need for revision and new dictionaries aimed at specific target users should be compiled.

ОТ АБАРМА ДО ЯЩИЧИШКА: РАЗРАБОТКА ЛЕКСИКОГРАФИЧЕСКОГО КОМПОНЕНТА ТОМСКОГО ДИАЛЕКТНОГО КОРПУСА

One of the most important trends in modern dialectological science is creating new electronic resources. The article gives an overview of Russian resources of this kind. Among them dialectal corpora hold a special place. The author of the article focuses on the Tomsk Dialect Corpus, which today includes more than 1,700,000 tokens. This resource is unparalleled in Russian scientific practice. It is designed as a universal information retrieval system which includes three modules: 1) textual, 2) grammatical, 3) lexicographic. The aim of the lexicographic component is to provide definitions of dialect lexemes. To do this, it is proposed to use the Dictionary of Russian Old-Timers’ Dialects of the Middle Part of the River Ob Basin (1964–1967) edited by V.V. Palagina and two supplements to it (1975, 1983–1986). The phases of the implementation of the lexicographic module into the Tomsk Dialect Corpus are described. The first phase was the automatic recognition of the above-mentioned paper dictionary. The second stage is editing the dictionary. The principles of editing the source material are determined by the fact that the lexicographic component is considered as part of a universal electronic system. Two basic editing principles are: the possibility to process a word automatically and the autonomous functioning of each dictionary entry. In accordance with them, the vocabulary and the structure of the dictionary entry were formed. At the stage of forming the vocabulary, some dictionary entries (for example, two-word ones) were discarded. The structure of the dictionary entry contains the main areas: headword, definition and contexts. One of the main editing tasks is to combine dictionary entries from different volumes of the dictionary into one. These words are marked either as homonyms, or as the meanings of one word. Examples of dictionary entries before and after editing are presented in the article. By now, about a half of the original vocabulary has been processed (letters from A to M, 12,450 entries). The final version of the electronic dictionary as part of the Tomsk Dialect Corpus is planned to be presented on the website of the Laboratory of General and Siberian Lexicography (http://losl.tsu.ru/) by June 2021. The prospects of the project include, firstly, the expansion of the vocabulary, and secondly, the implementation of search by dictionary labels (diminutives, augmentative, etc.) into the corpus. The presented solutions can be used in the development of other dialect corpora.

FORM, MEANING OR USE: WHAT WORD KNOWLEDGE ASPECT SHOULD L2 LEARNERS FOCUS ON DURING DICTIONARY LOOKUPS? ALL AT ONCE OR ONE AT A TIME?

A twenty-six-item questionnaire featuring 26 various word knowledge components (i.e. pieces of information relevant to a word) was handed to 90 Saudi EFL learners in order to a. identify the individual components that they were most and least interested in when performing dictionary lookups and b. pinpoint the word knowledge aspect (i.e. the strand or category to which individual word knowledge components relate to) to which their lookups were mostly oriented (i.e. form , meaning , or use ). The subjects reported an extreme interest in digital pronunciation of words (i.e. pronunciation embedded in digital dictionaries), L1 equivalents, spelling as well as the L2 first and basic meaning of words paralleled with a high negligence towards verb transitiveness, word origin, pronunciation in a paper dictionary, meanings of word affixes as well as stylistic usage of words. In terms of word knowledge aspects , their word lookups were reportedly far more oriented towards word meaning and word form with significantly far less attention paid to the aspect of word use. Hence, we believe, L2 learners should be cautioned when performing dictionary lookups against this notable disinterest in the aspect of word use as it would most likely, in the long run, have a negative effect on their communicative competence in the L2 (i.e. their knowledge about how and when to use L2 utterances appropriately). Finally, we suggest that this study be replicated in other contexts and countries of different L1 backgrounds so that we can ascertain whether the learners’ L1 background has any relevance to the interest and attention they would pay to the three word knowledge aspects when consulting dictionaries (e.g. would word use be given significantly more attention among EFL Latin learners than Arab learners?). Article visualizations:

The Effect of Using Google Translator Website on Understanding a Short Story

Translation has historically been performed by traditional ways like paper dictionary or by asking expert bilinguals who is equipped by strong knowledge. This way of translation was further driven by the digital revolution in the 90s where a huge need of interpreting text from source language and into target language. Twenty years on, translation means continue to flourish, even tending towards machine translation. Consequently, this technology became a part of everyone’s life. This paper is to highlight the advantage of using Google translation website on understanding a short text by secondary school students. Keywords: Google Translate, ESP students, machine translation, translation utilization. DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-18-14 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Folk Lexicography. Main Features of “Naive” Explication

[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]
 “Folk lexicography” is a phenomenon of modern linguistic culture, the result of the metalingual activity and one of the most significant manifestations of naive linguistics. Online slang dictionaries for amateur creation are becoming an indispensable research area and a generous source of information for traditional lexicographers. Their “online” form makes data collection extremely user-friendly, and in terms of audience coverage, they cannot compete with any other phenomenon. Open dictionaries provide the opportunity to discover the latest slang units, to monitor their use in the most modern contexts, to analyze the lively process of linguistic creation. From the general point of view, amateur dictionaries are more likely to be attributed to encyclopedic ones than to linguistic dictionaries, as the units of description of their articles more often are concepts, of lexical rather than grammatical meanings. If a paper dictionary can be understood as a scientific resource, then an open electronic dictionary – a multivariate creation of a modern virtual community can be perceived as a continuous creative process.

Efektyvaus užsienio kalbų mokymo(si) veiksniai: studentų požiūrio analizė

‘Folk lexicography’ is a phenomenon of modern linguistic culture, the result of the metalingual activity and one of the most significant manifestations of naïve linguistics. Online slang dictionaries for amateur creation are becoming an indispensable research area and a generous source of information for traditional lexicographers. Their ‘online’ form makes data collection extremely user-friendly, and in terms of audience coverage, they cannot compete with any other phenomenon. Open-access dictionaries provide an opportunity to discover the latest slang units, to monitor their use in the most modern contexts, as well as to analyze the lively process of linguistic creation. If a paper dictionary can be understood as a scientific resource, then an open electronic dictionary – a multivariate creation of a modern virtual community – can be perceived as a continuous creative process.

A study on the effectiveness of electronic and paper dictionaries: comparing the hybrid use of both and the pure use of either

Playing an important role in assisting vocabulary acquisition, dictionary use has been studied from various perspectives, among which, investigation of the facilitative effects of dictionary consultation in promoting word learning is a particular focus. However, no research has ever been conducted to compare the effectiveness of various approaches to dictionary consultation (e.g., the pure use of either paper or electronic dictionary, or the hybrid use of both). The present research, therefore, responds to this call and conducts two experiments among 185 language learners to examine the facilitative effects of diverse methods of dictionary use. We also interview the participants to inspect their perceptions of dictionary use. The empirical results demonstrate the superiority of the paper dictionary over the electronic dictionary, the usefulness of repetition, and the greater effectiveness of the hybrid use of both paper and electronic dictionary than the pure use of either. The results also shed light on the factors that are of concern to language learners while using dictionaries. We further conclude this study by highlighting the importance of processing for constructing memory, repetition for consolidating memory, and diversity for reinforcing memory in promoting word learning.

The Influence of Electronic Dictionaries on Vocabulary Knowledge Extension

<p>Vocabulary learning needs special strategies in language learning process. The use of dictionaries is a great help in vocabulary learning and nowadays the emergence of electronic dictionaries has added a new and valuable resource for vocabulary learning. The present study aims to explore the influence of Electronic Dictionaries (ED) Vs. Paper Dictionaries (PD) on vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian EFL learners. Seventy college students formed the participants of the study. Before the treatment, a Preliminary English Test was used for assessing the participants’ homogeneity. The participants were assigned to Electronic Dictionary (ED) group and Paper Dictionary (PD) group. The treatment lasted for 15 sessions. Eighty-eight new target words were selected in order to be taught in this study. The ED group participants were asked to use their mobile dictionary (Blue Dict dictionary), that include eight popular different dictionaries. The participants of the PD group used their ordinary Paper Dictionaries for finding the meaning of words. In order to check their short-term and long-term vocabulary learning, both groups took part in an immediate and delayed post-test respectively after the treatment. Based on the t-test results, the participants in ED group outperformed those of PD group. The overall results indicate that EDs can improve vocabulary learning.</p>

An Exploration of the Effects of Electronic Dictionaries on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension

This research examined the L2 learners’ use of electronic dictionaries compared to printed dictionaries. Nowadays, with the advancement and growth of technology, there has been a shift of trend from traditional paper dictionaries to online and electronic dictionaries. In this study the learners’ questionnaire, a reading textbook, a paper dictionary, an electronic dictionary, a reading comprehension test, and the semi-structured interviews were employed as instruments. At first, two questionnaires and the semi-structured interviews were conducted to identify the attitudes and beliefs of EFL learners in relation to the effectiveness of paper and electronic dictionaries on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ reading comprehension. TOEFL Reading Flash: The Quick Way to Build Reading Power by Milada Broukal (1997) was used as the reading textbook. The Seventh edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary authored by Hornby (2005) was chosen as the paper dictionary. The other dictionary used in this study was an equivalent electronic version of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary on a CD-ROM as the electronic dictionary. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, 20) was used in order to analyze required statistics. A series of paired-sample t tests were run to examine the learners' reading comprehension scores. In addition, a series of chi-square tests were run to analyze the questionnaires. As results showed, electronic dictionary use has positive effect on learners’ reading comprehension skills and also electronic dictionaries help learners’ vocabulary learning. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.

Jolly and Less Jolly Challenges in Working on the Norwegian-Lithuanian Dictionary

The Norwegian-Lithuanian Dictionary is a joint project of lexicographers from the universities of Vilnius and Oslo. The dictionary consists of approximately 48,000 entries. It is initially intended as a paper dictionary, but as it is compiled in XML, an electronic version is also planned for the future. The dictionary is bidirectional: that is, it is intended for native speakers of both Norwegian and Lithuanian, and it provides information on both the source language (Norwegian) and the target language (Lithuanian).The aim of the article is to give a presentation of the project, point out innovative aspects of the project, and analyse the jolly (expected) and less jolly (unexpected) challenges we faced in the two main stages of compiling the dictionary. In the first stage we adapted a base from another bilingual dictionary (the Large Norwegian-Russian Dictionary), reusing its lemma list and information on the source language, Norwegian. In the second stage we created a conception and a system for information on the target language, Lithuanian, and (perhaps for the first time in Lithuanian bilingual lexicography) included several types of information for non-native users of Lithuanian.