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Assessing the Effectiveness of Monolingual, Bilingual, and “Bilingualised”

Dictionaries in the Comprehension and Production of New Words

Article in Modern Language Journal · June 1997

DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1997.tb01174.x

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Assessing the Effectiveness of Monolingual, Bilingual, and "Bilingualised" Dictionaries in the
Comprehension and Production of New Words
Author(s): Batia Laufer and Linor Hadar
Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 189-196
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations
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Assessing the Effectivenessof
Monolingual, Bilingual, and
"Bilingualised" Dictionaries in the
Comprehension and Production of
New Words
BATIA LAUFER LINOR HADAR
Department ofEnglishLanguage DepartmentofEnglishLanguage
and Literature and Literature
UniversityofHaifa,Israel ofHaifa,Israel
University
Email: batialau@research.haifa.ac.il

This article examines the differences in effectiveness of 3 types of dictionaries-

monolingual, bilingual,and "bilingualised" in the comprehensionand production of new
wordsbyEFL learners.The participantsin the researchwere 123 high school and university
learners. The test consisted of 15 low-frequencywords. Five were given with theirentries
froma monolingual learner's dictionary,5 with theirtranslationsfroma bilingual dictio-
nary,and 5 with the entryfroma bilingualised (or semibilingual) dictionary.The study
tested participantson the comprehension of the targetwords and on theirabilityto use
these words in their own sentences. The resultsof the experimentsuggest that different
dictionaries may be suitable for users with differentabilities in dictionaryuse.

BACKGROUND more helpful. In the above study,it was found

A good product is expected to satisfythe
needs and preferencesof its consumers.A wise
production team will, therefore,try to deter-
mine these needs, when the user is mostlikelyto
require the product,and whattypeof consumer
will benefit most from the product. Diction-
aries, the products of lexicographers'work,are
writtento be used by those who need them;
language learners are consumers in need. It is
not surprising, therefore, that one growing
field of dictionaryresearch is dictionaryuse.1
One of the most comprehensivestudies includ-
ing over 1,000learnersin seven European coun-
tries (Atkins & Knowles, 1990) showed that
bilingual dictionarieswere used bythe majority
of the students(75%). This preferencedoes not
necessarilymean thatbilingual dictionariesare
TheModern
Language 81,ii (1997)
Joumrnal,
0026-7902/97/189-196 $1.50/0
?1997 TheModern
LanguageJournal
thatveryoften the monolingual dictionarywas
more successfulin helping users find the rele-
vantinformationthan was the bilingualdiction-
ary.The monolingual entrycan generallypro-
vide more detailed and precise information
about the word than the bilingual entry; for
example, informationabout idiomatic usage,
common collocations, connotations,and regis-
ter.Moreover,a simple one-wordtranslation,in
a bilingual dictionary,can be misleading,espe-
cially when there are semantic incongruencies
between the two languages. According to
Bejoint and Moulin (1987), bilingual diction-
aries are ideal for quick consultation, while
monolingual dictionaries, though more diffi-
cult to use, have the extra merit of directly
introducingthe user to the lexical systemof the
L2.
And yet L2 learners, even those who have
achieved a good level of L2 proficiency and
have been trained in academic skills,including
dictionary use, still reach out for a bilingual
dictionary.Some use a monolingualand a bilin-

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190
gual dictionarytogether.In his surveyof studies
of dictionaryuse, Piotrowski(1989) concludes
that no matterwhat theirlevel of competence,
foreign learners and dictionary users turn to
their bilingual dictionaries as long as theyuse
dictionaries at all.
If this is the consumer reality,then a hybrid
dictionarythat contains the two typesof infor-
mation (monolingual and bilingual) seems to
be the most appropriate product of lexicogra-
phers' efforts.This realization resulted in the
appearance of over 20 bilingualisedversionsof
English dictionaries over the last two decades,
starting with the OxfordStudentDictionaryfor
HebrewSpeakers(1978). Bilingualised versionsof
English monolingual dictionaries have also
been writtenfor speakers of the followinglan-
guages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
Arabic, Greek, Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Thai,
Chinese (Mandarin), Bahasa Indonesian, and
Estonian. A bilingualised dictionaryis a combi-
nation of a learner's monolingual dictionary
(same numberof entriesand meaningsforeach
entry)witha translationof the entry.If the tar-
get English word has several meanings, then
each meaning is translated. The English-
English-Hebrew dictionary,for example, is a
bilingualised version of the OxfordAdvanced
Learner'sDictionary ofCurrent
English(1974).
Because the bilingualised dictionaryis a new
phenomenon, studies evaluating its use have
just begun. The most detailed study,to our
knowledge, is that of Hartmann (1994), who
examined user reactionsto six exemplarsof this
dictionary type. Interviewswith participants
and direct observation during a reading task
revealed,among otherthings,thatusers,at four
differentL2 proficiencylevels,appreciated the
juxtaposition of target language definitions
and mother tongue translation equivalents.
Most participantsconsulted both the definition
and the translationpart of the dictionaryentry
when looking up the unknown words. Laufer
and Kimmel (1997) conducted a controlled
experimentthat specificallychecked students'
look-up behavior when consulting a bilin-
gualised dictionary.The resultsshowed thatdif-
ferentpeople used differentpartsof dictionary
entries. Some looked at monolingual informa-
tion, some at bilingual,some used both partsof
the entry,and some looked at different partsfor
differentwords.
However,as for the usefulnessof the diction-
ary, the appreciation on the part of the user
does not necessarily indicate that the bilin-
gualised dictionary is any differentfrom the
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TheModernLanguageJournal81 (1997)
other two types.To determineits relativeeffec-
tiveness,a controlledstudyshould be designed
to compare the threedictionarytypeson identi-
cal taskswith the same participants.Moreover,
the presentationof unknownwords should be
done out of the text'scontextin order to elimi-
nate the possible effecta context can have on
comprehension. To our knowledge,controlled
studies comparing dictionaries are scarce and
such studies on bilingualised dictionaries are
nonexistent. Our study investigates precisely
this new area of dictionaryuse.
THE STUDY
Purpose
The aim of the presentstudywas to examine
the differencesin the effectivenessof three
types of dictionaries-learner's monolingual,
bilingual,and bilingualiseddictionaries.Specif-
ically,we wantedto see whichtypeof dictionary
entrywould be most helpfulin the comprehen-
sion of unknownwords and in the production
of original sentenceswiththese words.
Participants
The participants were two groups of EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) learners,alto-
gether 123 learners.Their native language was
Hebrew.2 One group consisted of 76 high
school learnersat the end of 11thgrade, thatis,
after7 years (about 800 hours) of EFL instruc-
tion. These participantswill be referredto as
"preadvanced." The second group was a group
of 46 EFL universitystudents, non English
majors. They had 8 years of school instruction
and at the time of the experiment,theywere
finishinga semestercourse in English forAca-
demic Purposes (EAP). The additional school
year provided them with about 100 hours of
instruction,mostlydevoted to reading authen-
tic texts and composition writing.The univer-
sity EAP course (50 hours of instruction) is
mainlya reading comprehensioncourse of aca-
demic argumentativeprose. We will referto the
universitystudentsas "advanced." Althoughno
identical proficiencytest was given to the two
groups in the experiment,we could assume dif-
ferencesin Englishproficiencyon thefollowing
grounds: (a) Israeli universitystudentsare, in
general,more advanced than the average Israeli
high school graduates because acceptance to
the universityis conditional upon passinga gen-
eral psychometricentrance exam, and in many
cases departmentalentrance exams as well; (b)
Batia Lauferand LinorHadar 191

the universitystudentsin our experimentwere were used: LongmanDictionaryof Contemporary

classified as the most advanced (among those English(monolingual),TheMegiddoModern Diction-
required to take the English course) by the ary(English-Hebrew),and OxfordStudents Diction-
English component of the universitypsycho- aryforHebrewSpeakers(bilingualised). Here are
metric placement test. This test divides all the the different
entriesfor bequeath:
candidates into three levels of English profi-
ciency: (a) advanced II, (b) advanced I, and (c) Monolingual: bequeath /bi'kwi:th,bi'kwith/,v
preadvanced. The testwas constructedforhigh [T (TO)] fml-to giveto othersafterdeath: Her
school (12thgrade) graduates.The mean of the collection of paintings was bequeathed to the
English section,whichis 100 standarddeviation National Gallerywhen she died.
20, places the candidate at advanced I. The uni- [+ OBJ(I) + OBJ (D)] His fatherbequeathed
him a fortune.
versityparticipants in our study were better
than the average candidates. They were at Bilingual:bequeath,vt
n-iIl
advanced II level. As for our high school sub- Bilingualised:bequeath ,V.)7111
jects, 11thgraders are typicallyless proficient 1) arrange (by makinga will) to give (property,
than the average high school graduateswho, in etc.) at death: He has bequeathed me his
turn,are typicallyless proficientthan advanced gold watch. Vw1715
II universitystudents.Therefore, even though 2) hand down to thosewho come after:discover-
the high school studentsdid not take the psy- ies bequeathed to us by the scientistsof the
chometrictests (it is taken by universitycandi- last century.
dates only),we could safelyassume a difference "13
in proficiencylevel between the two groups. Procedure

Testitems Participantstook the tests during class time

and each testwas treated like a language exer-
We selected a list of 22 items that occurred cise.3The participantsreceiveda listof 15 target
less than three times per million running wordswiththeirdictionaryentries.Because we
words, according to TheAmericanHeritageWord wanted to compare the three typesof diction-
Frequency Book(Carroll, 1971). The words in the aries, we included in each test sheet 5 words
list were not included in the high school syl- with the monolingual entry,5 with the bilin-
labus and were not taughtin the EFL university gual, and 5 with the bilingualised entry.(The
course prior to the experiment. The list was arrangement into the groups of 5 words was
given to seven English majors (the most ad- done randomly.)We wantedto avoid a situation
vanced English learnersin the university)to be in which all the studentswould have the same
translatedinto the learners' L1. We chose as test wordsexplained bythe same typeof dictionary.
items 15 words that were unfamiliar to these Therefore,each thirdof the testshad 5 differ-
learners.The 15 testitemswere: deride, perme- ent words explained by the same dictionary.
fete,
ate,resilient,
dais,swindle,influx,occult,insipid,var- This way,each word was testedby threediction-
iegated,bequeath,hoard,stub,terse,venerable.A fur- aries and each studentwas exposed to threedic-
ther check in Thorndike and Lorge (1972) tionarytypes.
confirmedthat these itemswere indeed of low The two researchers marked the tests. Dis-
frequency,except for hoard,which occurred 11 agreementabout scoringoccurred onlyin a few
timesin a millionrunningwords.The word ven- instances of "approximate" answer in the pro-
erableoccurred 6 times; bequeathand stub,5 duction test.However,the inter-rater reliability
4 times;permeate,
times; deride, fete,2 times;
occult, was .93. Comprehension of the test words was
dais, insipid, terse,variegated,each once; and checked by a multiple-choice test given out
never occurred. Furthermore,we could
resilient, simultaneouslywith the test words and their
assume that the words were unfamiliarto our entries. Each word was presented with three
participantsbecause theywere less proficientin possible meaning equivalents and the students
English than the English majorswho were unfa- were required to choose the correctalternative.
miliar with the selected words. (This was also One of the threewas the correctmeaningequiv-
confirmedafterthe administrationof our tests. alent, one had an approximate meaning to the
The teachers asked the learnerswhetherany of tested item,and one was completelyincorrect.
the tested words had been previouslyencoun- We tested production of testwords by asking
tered. The participants were indeed seeing the students to write original sentences with
them for the first time.) These dictionaries each of the targetwords. They were instructed

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192
specificallynot to reproduce dictionaryexam-
ples withminor changes.
The scoring procedure was as follows: For
each correctmultiplechoice answer or correct
use of the word in a sentence, the participant
got 2 points; for an approximate answer or
word use, the participant got 1 point; for an
incorrectanswer or word use, no points.4Cor-
rectnessof use was determinedbysemantic cri-
teria only. Even though grammaticalinforma-
tion constitutesa part of a dictionaryentry,we
decided to disregard grammatical errors. In
our experiment,it was hard to know whether
incorrect grammar in sentences produced by
the learners had to do with misunderstanding
this informationor with the learners' general
language knowledge. In most cases, we felt it
was the latter. Thus, the maximum score for
each task (comprehension or production) for
each dictionarytypewas 10 (5x2). The compos-
ite score (comprehension + production) could
reach 20 for each dictionarytype.
RESULTS
Entiresampleresults
Differencesamong dictionaries were exam-
ined bytheANOVA procedure. Looking at theF
values in Table 1, we see significantdifferences
across dictionarytypesin thecomprehensionof
new words, the learners' production of these
words, and the overall dictionaryeffectiveness
as expressed by the sum of comprehensionand
production scores. The latter show that the
bilingualiseddictionaryyielded the best results.
In order to check where exactly (that is, be-
tween which pairs of dictionaries) the signifi-
TABLE 1
All Learners
Comprehension
Dictionary
Type Mean SD
Monolingual 6.46 A 1.62
Bilingual 6.37 A 1.65
Bilingualised 6.93 B 1.54
F test 4.24
p .01
n = 123
Note.The meansmarkedbydifferent lettersshowa significant
difference
levelforall comparisonswas .05.
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TheModernLanguageJournal81 (1997)
cant differences occurred, Duncan multiple
range testswere performed.The means marked
by differentlettersin the table are significantly
different.We can see thatthe bilingualiseddic-
tionary is significantlybetter than the mono-
lingualdictionaryon bothtasks- comprehension
and production. In comprehension, the bilin-
gualised dictionary is also significantlymore
effective than the bilingual dictionary, al-
thoughin production it yielded the same score.
Our common sense assumption was that
learners of differentproficiency levels would
score differently both on the overall compre-
hension and production of new words and on
the individual dictionarytests.Therefore,one
should look at the differencesamong diction-
aries at each proficiencylevel.This assumption
was not confirmed.As can be seen fromTable
2, the mean scores of the preadvanced and the
advanced learnerswere verysimilar.T testsfor
independent samples comparing the two profi-
ciency groups on the comprehension+ produc-
tion resultsforeach dictionaryshowedthat,sta-
tistically, there were indeed no significant
differencesbetween the two groups.
In spite of the differences in proficiency
between the two groups, all participantsmust
have had enough vocabulary knowledge to
understandthe monolingual entries.The Long-
manDictionary ofContemporaryEnglishuses a core
vocabularyof 2,000 base words-the Longman
Defining Vocabulary (LDOCE, 1988, general
introduction).At the end of 7 years of instruc-
tion, learners have the passive knowledge of
from 3,000 up to 3,500 words.5Therefore,the
results in Table 2 and the T tests suggest that
language proficiencydoes not determine the
learner's abilityto use the informationin the
dictionary. Therefore, we decided to analyze
Production Comprehension+
Production
Mean SD Mean SD
5.77 A 3.04 12.23A 4.02
6.39 B 2.22 12.76A/B 2.97
6.39 B 2.49 13.31B 3.29
4.45 5.24
.01 .006
acrossdictionarytypes.The a
Batia Lauferand LinorHadar
TABLE 2
Preadvancedand AdvancedLearners-Comprehension+ Production
Preadvanced
Dictionary
Type Mean SD
Monolingual 12.28 4.06
Bilingual 12.67 2.97
Bilingualised 13.53 2.94
n = 76 for preadvanced
n = 47 for advanced
the data takingas the independentvariable dic-
tionary use skill rather than language profi-
ciency. Dictionary use skill was determinedby
the totalscore on the test,thatis, the sum of the
monolingual score (comprehension + produc-
tion) plus the bilingualscore (comprehension+
production) plus the bilingualised score (com-
prehension+ production).The maximumscore
could be 60. All the learnerswere divided into
three groups: those who received less than 30
(group 1), those whose score ranged from30 to
45 (group 2), and thosewitha score higherthan
45 (group 3). All of theFtests comparinggroups
scoresforeach dictionaryhad significantresults
(see Table 3). This showed that,irrespectiveof
language proficiency,we had three different
groups of dictionaryusers among our learners.
In each group, we had learners from the pre-
advanced and the advanced classes.
In Group 1, the learners scored less than 30,
that is they could benefit from less than one
half of the dictionaryinformation.In our dis-
cussion of each group's results,these learners
will be referred to as "unskilled dictionary
users." In our sample of 123 learners, 23 be-
longed to this group. In group 2, in which the
scores ranged between 30 and 45, therewere 75
learners. They will be referredto as "average
dictionary users." Group 3 consisted of 25
learners. They received more than 45 and will
be called "good dictionaryusers." Let us now
look at the effectivenessof the three diction-
aries for each group of dictionaryusers.
TABLE 3
FTests Comparingthe Three Groupsof
DictionaryUsers
Dictionary Comprehension+
Type Production
Monolingual F= 63 p = .0001
Bilingual F= 35.53 p = .0001
Bilingualised F = 57.79 p = .0001
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193
Advanced Difference
Mean SD T p
12.15 3.99 0.04 .85
12.89 2.99 0.16 .68
12.95 3.79 0.88 .34
GroupResults
The resultsshow that,for "unskilleddiction-
ary users," the bilingual dictionary produces
the best resultson the overalldictionaryuse. In
comprehension alone, the highest score was
achieved with the bilingualised dictionary,but
the differencebetween the two was not signifi-
cant on any of the two tasks.The monolingual
dictionaryproduced the worst results,signifi-
cantlyin both comprehension and the overall
dictionaryuse.
The results show that "average dictionary
users" were somewhat different from the
unskilled users. The bilingualised dictionary
yielded the highestscores, significantlyhigher
in comprehension than the bilingual diction-
ary. Also, on the overall use, the bilingualised
dictionary proved significantlymore useful
than the monolingual. As for the monolingual
dictionary,the average users benefitedfromit
more than did the unskilledgroup. This is evi-
dent fromthe comprehensionresults.
The F-testresultsshowthatfor"good diction-
aryusers," therewere no significantdifferences
in comprehension,production,and overalldic-
tionaryuse forthe three dictionaries,although
the scores themselveswere slightlyhigherwith
the bilingualised dictionary.6
From Tables 4, 5, 6, and the Duncan testswe
can see thatthe three typesof dictionariesmay
have differenteffectswith differentdictionary
users. For comprehension, all three groups of
learnersreceivedthe best scoreswhen using the
bilingualised dictionary. However, while the
unskilledusers benefitfroma bilingualdiction-
ary more than from a monolingual one, the
opposite was true of the average and the good
users. The schematic representation of the
comprehension resultsappears in Table 7.
Now let us consider the production results.
As in comprehension,the unskilledusers bene-
fited more from bilingual information than
frommonolingualentries.The bilingualdiction-
194 TheModernLanguage
Journal81 (1997)
TABLE 4
TypeEffecton theScoresofUnskilledUsers
Dictionary

Comprehension Production Comprehension+

Dictionary Production
Type Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Monolingual 5.09 A 1.47 2.09A 2.04 7.17A 2.64
Bilingual 5.70A 1.66 4.21 B 2.31 9.91 B 2.89
Bilingualised 6.04A 1.94 3.27 A 2.37 9.18A 3.18
F test 2.23 6.06 7.90
p .12 .009 .003
n= 23
Note.
The meansmarkedbydifferent
letters
are significantly
different.
The a levelforall comparisons
was .05.

TABLE 5
TypeEffecton ScoresofAverageUsers
Dictionary

Comprehension Production Comprehension +

Dictionary Production
Type Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Monolingual 6.56 A/B 1.51 5.87A 2.49 12.42A 3.22
Bilingual 6.25 A 1.64 6.40 A 1.83 12.65A/B 2.43
Bilingualised 6.95 B 1.41 6.47A 1.76 13.43B 2.32
F test 3.20 2.11 2.77
p .05 .10 .07
n= 75
Note.The meansmarkedbydifferent
letters
are significantly The a levelforall comparisons
different. was.05.

TABLE 6
TypeEffecton theScoresofGood Users
Dictionary

Comprehension Production Comprehension+

Dictionary Production
Type Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Monolingual 7.44 1.19 8.88 1.05 16.32 1.28
Bilingual 7.32 1.24 8.36 1.11 15.68 1.52
Bilingualised 7.68 1.11 8.92 1.08 16.60 1.47
F test 0.50 2.07 1.9
p .61 .14 .16
n= 25

ary produced the best resultsand monolingual
theworstwitha significantdifferencebetweenthe
worse
two.The monolingualwas also significantly
than the bilingualised. The average users ap-
peared to applymonolingualdictionariesdiffer-
ently in production and in comprehension.
Althoughin comprehensionthemonolingualdic-
tionarywas thesecond best,in sentencewriting,
it
yieldedthelowestscores.However,thedifferences
werenot significant.In thecase of skilleddiction-
aryusers,monolingualdictionarieswere the sec-
ond best in the comprehensionand the produc-
tion tasks.Theyproduced betterresultsthan the
bilingualdictionarieswhilethe bilingualiseddic-
tionariesyielded the highestscores, thoughthe
differencesamong the three dictionarieswere
not significant.The schematicrepresentationof
the production results appears in Table 8.

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Batia Lauferand LinorHadar
TABLE 7
DictionaryEffecton Comprehension
Unskilled
users: bilingualised> bilingual> monolingual
Average
users: bilingualised> monolingual> bilingual
bilingualised * > bilingual
Good
users: bilingualised> monolingual> bilingual
Note.The sign> standsfor"betterthan;* >
standsfor"significantlybetterthan."
TABLE 8
DictionaryEffecton Production
Unskilled
users: bilingual> bilingualised> monolingual
bilingual * > monolingual
bilingualised * > monolingual
Average
users: bilingualised> bilingual> monolingual
Good
users: bilingualised> monolingual> bilingual
Note.The sign> standsfor"betterthan;* >
standsfor"significantlybetterthan."
CONCLUSION
One of our findingswas a lack of difference
between preadvanced and advanced learnersin
dictionaryscores. To explain thisresult,we sug-
gest the notion of "entryunderstandingthresh-
old." As mentioned before, both groups had
enough vocabulary knowledge to understand
the defining vocabulary in the monolingual
entry.The higher proficiencylearners of the
advanced group, who had betterreading com-
prehension and writingability,mightnot have
provided the advanced participantswitha clear
advantage in understanding the dictionary
entry because both groups of learners were
beyond the entryunderstandingthreshold.7
As for the effectivenessof the three diction-
aries, Table 1 (the entiresample) showsthatthe
significantlyhigher scores were almost always
obtained when consultingthe bilingualiseddic-
tionary. It was significantlybetter than the
other two dictionaries for comprehension and
significantlybetter than the monolingual dic-
tionaryfor production. This suggests that the
combination of the monolingual information
containing a definition and examples with a
translationof the new word into the learner's
mother tongue tends to produce the best
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195
results.We say "tends" because not all the dif-
ferences between the bilingualised dictionary
and the other two were statisticallysignificant
when the sample was divided into unskilled,
average, and good users.
Comparing the monolingual and the bilin-
gual dictionaries,we notice that their relative
effectivenessmay well depend on the type of
dictionaryuser and the task he or she has to
perform. The more skilled the learner is in
using dictionaries in general, the more infor-
mation he or she appears to be able to extract
fromthe monolingualdictionary.The unskilled
users were probablynot using the monolingual
part of the bilingualised entryat all. The aver-
age learners used the monolingual part of the
entryforcomprehension,but apparentlyfound
it too difficultto use for production purposes.
This mayexplain the differencesin the compre-
hension and the production results of these
learners.The good dictionaryuserscould bene-
fit from the monolingual informationin both
tasks.However,even thisbest group of learners
performed slightly better when the bilin-
gualised dictionarywas used, that is, when the
translationequivalentwas available in addition
to the monolingualinformation.Ifwe relatethe
results of this study to Laufer and Kimmel
(1995), it seems that the good dictionaryusers
are those who can benefit from both parts of
the entry.
With regard to pedagogy,our resultssuggest
that learners have to be taught to exploit all
available informationin the entrybeforedecid-
ing on the meaning of the new word. Another
practical conclusion of the studyseems to be
that a good "bilingualised" dictionary is suit-
able for all typesof learners.When the learner
is stillunskilledin dictionaryuse, he or she may
relymostlyon the bilingual information.With
progress in these skills,the monolingual infor-
mation will gain relevance and importance,
firstin comprehensionand laterin production.
Even when the monolingual part of the entryis
used to its full potential,as in the case of our
good dictionaryusers,the translationsmaystill
be helpful in reassuring and reinforcingthe
learner's decisions about the meaning and use
of new words.
Recently,both lexicographers and research-
ers of dictionaryuse have expressed the need to
provide the users withall possible information
about wordsand at the same timeto teach them
how to select and use onlyrelevantinformation,
in termsof a specifictask. User friendlinessof a
dictionaryis anotherconcern of futurediction-
 196
ary writers (Dictionary and Use Symposium,
AILA, 1996). Bilingualised dictionaries are a
step in the rightdirection. They provide more
informationthan monolingual or bilingual dic-
tionaries and allow the user to choose explana-
tions in the one language withwhich he or she
is more comfortable,or in both languages for
reassurance and reinforcement.
NOTES
1Studies have been carried out on dictionariesand
reading, users' motivationforlooking up words,and
the dictionaryas a learning tool. Reviewingthese is
beyond the scope and the purpose of our paper. For
extensivereviews,see Bogaards (1991,1994, 1995).
2 Even though Hebrew has a non-Romanalphabet,
thiswas not considered to have any hinderingeffect
on dictionary use. After 7 and 8 years of learning
English, a differentwritingsystemshould no longer
presenta problem to an average learner.And even if
it were to slow down the learner's reading, no time
limitwas set for the experimental tasks. Therefore,
the studyis of relevanceto learnersirrespectiveof the
writingsystemof theirnative language.
3 In high schools and in the university, dictionary
use is demonstratedand some practice is devoted to
the organization of the entry,distinction between
definition and examples, grammatical information,
and multiple meanings. Nevertheless,no systematic
trainingis provided.
4 Here is an example of whatwe called an approx-
imatelycorrect sentence: "Last year I tried to swindle
the income tax out of what I owed them." The basic
meaning of swindlewas understood, but a semantic
restriction was violated (one doesn't swindle an
institution).
5 This figure is in accordance with the reports of
the Ministryof Education and the resultsof vocabu-
larysize tests (Nation, 1983),whichwe carried out in
several representativehigh schools.
6 Since the F testsdid not show a significantdiffer-
ence, therewas no need to performpost hoc tests.
7 Learners at a lower proficiencylevel than in our
studymayreceive differentgrades due to difficulties
in understandingthe definingvocabulary.
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