How high school students and university students use dictionaries
and their attitude to them
Naoko Jikuya
Summary
No matter how good schools and teachers are, we can’t master English without a positive attitude. As a learner, it is important to be autonomous. One of the ways to be an autonomous learner is using a dictionary well and making the most of it. In this thesis, I looked at how high school students and university students use their dictionary and their attitude to their dictionary. Also, I collected data on the use of electronic dictionaries which are becoming increasingly popular recently.
Research questions
1. How do high school students and university students use their dictionary?
2. What is the attitude to their dictionary?
The experiment
Subjects: The subjects are 73 Japanese high school students and university students who are learning English. Their ages are from 15 to 22 years old. The high school students are in comprehensive school and the university students major in English and English literature. They are all women except two high school students.
Instrument: Questionnaire
Procedure: 1. Questions about their background; age, sex, the length of learning English, and so on.
2. Questions about their use of dictionaries; if they have an electronic dictionary or not, the ratio and frequency of using these dictionaries, items they check in dictionaries, and so on.
3.Questions about their attitude toward dictionaries; their opinion on pronunciation written in Katakana and word lists at the end of textbooks for junior high school students, features they feel a dictionary should have, and so on.
Results
1. 74.2% of university student have an electronic dictionary and 63.1% of high school students have one.
2. The ratio of using paper dictionaries and electronic dictionaries is 16.4%:83.5% on average. 26.0% of electronic dictionary users use only the electronic one and don’t use a paper one at all.
3. There is no distinctive age to get an electronic dictionary.
Table 1: The age of getting the first electronic dictionary
Age / -13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21-Percentage (%) / 2.0% / 16.6% / 14.5% / 18.7% / 10.4% / 12.5% / 10.4% / 12.5% / 2.0%
4. 54.5% of paper dictionary users want an electronic dictionary because it is easy to carry. On the other hand, 45.5% don’t want one. They just like a paper dictionary and do not feel the necessity of getting an electronic one.
5. The ratio of using English-English dictionary and Thesaurus is low.
Table 2: The ratio of using four kinds of dictionaries
English-Japanese dictionary / Japanese-English dictionary / English-English dictionary / Thesaurus65.9% / 28.4% / 3.6% / 2.2%
6. Most of the subjects think that an English-Japanese dictionary is a definite necessity for students except for elementary school students. They think an English-English dictionary is less necessary for all ages.
7. More than half of them have a negative opinion about word list at the end of most text books for junior high school students so that the students do not need a dictionary because students can’t make it a habit to use a dictionary.
8. Only 27.7% of the subjects think that they know how to use their dictionary well.
9. 29.1% of the subjects can read pronunciation symbols while 20.8% can’t read them at all. Others feel that they can read it a little.
10. 29.1% of the subjects look it a word up after guessing the meanings of it from the context when they come to an unknown word.
11. What they need for dictionary is 1) it contains many words 2) it’s easy to find words 3) they contain a lot of information.