Bilingual and Monolingual Dictionaries - Literature review Example

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW LITERATURE REVIEW ON BILINGUAL AND MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES Name Course Institution Introduction Scientifically investigating the learning of foreign language vocabulary which is the building block of communication has been neglected largely favoring research in other language acquisition areas in the century’s second half, first three decades (Ard, 1982). A study by Holley in 1973 noted that learning of vocabulary’s role in the education of foreign languages is secondary. This is the result of first language acquisition which has led to teachers being misled. In fact, children in acquisition of the first language start acquiring vocabulary in a small range until after mastering structural patterns, thereby pushing the vocabulary’s role into the background as indicated in Carter’s study in 1988. There exists ways that are wide and varied that deal with vocabulary. Dictionary use has been triggered and is convention of instruction method used in learning both first and second language. A comment by Marckwardt’s research in 1973 depicts that dictionaries in most cases give information that is not found elsewhere about the language. In addition to this, they also give information on grammar, status, usage, discrimination, synonym, application of affixes of derivatives and differences between written and spoken English. Laufer’s research in 1990 likewise, believes that a familiar word whose sentence in which it is used or makes no sense on its wider context at all, consulting a dictionary by the learner is encouraged. When reading independently using a dictionary gives meaning of difficult vocabulary for the reader. It also helps figure out, based on information that is contextual, unfamiliar words’ meanings. Dictionaries also expose the word on other contexts, with different constructions and collocate by enabling the learner view the words in relation to the dictionary and the passage that is to be read. A number of studies regarding dictionary use in learning second language have been reported literally. This literature review essay proves that monolingual dictionaries are better than bilingual dictionaries to the learners. Literature Review of Bilingual and Monolingual Dictionaries Presently, research therefore tries to show the necessity by comparing the bilingual and monolingual dictionaries that may influence vocabulary retention and recall of the proficiency of the level of intermediate language. Some teachers support the contribution of the learning of vocabulary by monolingual dictionaries. In a study conducted by Underhill in 1985, he says that appropriate treatment is given to words of high frequency in monolingual dictionaries. Baxter in 1980 claimed that definitions that are used alternatively in items which are lexical are demonstrated in monolingual thereby providing the means by which the definitions can be employed. He encourages the use of monolingual dictionaries due to the fact that fluency is promoted by giving definitions contextually as opposed to bilingual dictionaries that lead the leaner to having translations which are single-worded. This may not fit the question’s discourse. In his survey on EFL students of a university in Japan, Baxter supports his claims. He has it combined with the justification for more direction needed in skills of reference. Baxter in 1980 favors the monolingual English dictionary. In his study, he established that among university students, only those who majored in English actually purchased a monolingual dictionary. Few of them however utilized it on daily basis. As he concludes, Baxter has the recommendation that both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries should be used. Whether it matters what type of dictionary student’s use is the issue at hand, in one way or another, many dictionary experts and teachers agree that quality information is rarely achieved in bilingual dictionaries compared to that got in the students’ monolingual dictionaries. Learners using monolingual dictionaries also agree with this suggestion as claimed by Bejoint’s study in 1981. A familiar debate is that students should get into the behavior of ‘reasoning in the target language': this will make them not to comprehend efficiently and be English users if they always operate through an extra step of having to translate into the language of their first choice. This is greatly encouraged by the use of bilingual dictionaries. Some learning research also bears on this, for example in Ahmed’s 1989’s survey of learning vocabulary strategies by students of English based in Khartoum, he came up with two kinds of learners that are unsuccessful. The group that was at the lower level had the characteristic of hardly using any strategy in learning at all; this includes never making use of any type of dictionary. The other way of making learning unsuccessful, a characteristic exhibited by some of the university level students in the research, was to make use of bilingual dictionaries and depend on the type of translation that is connected during the learning. Learners were more successful at that higher level after shifting from using trilingual dictionaries to the use monolingual ones, thereby making use of pieces of information in these dictionaries beyond the definitions.e Contrarily, Thompson in 1987 has this belief that the bilingual dictionary equally gives every piece of information the monolingual dictionary claims to posses. Apart from this, he says that though the monolingual dictionaries give vocabulary definitions that are restricted, the structures of grammar in use are not, thereby rendering the definitions’ understanding difficult. He concludes by saying that many learners find monolingual dictionaries expensive when it comes to rewards like the effort versus correct word choice. During Yorio's 1971 and Bensoussan et al's 1984 research, learners were presented with an opportunity to choose between the use of monolingual or bilingual dictionaries, those that had a distinct choice for bilingual dictionaries were more than half. Yorio in 1971 comes to the conclusion that although the bilingual dictionaries are frequently misleading or inaccurate, they seem to give a concrete answer that is secure to students as opposed to the monolingual dictionary which normally forces them to have the meaning guessed, thereby making the existing ones more doubtful. Given the fact that the bilingual dictionaries are frequently misleading or inaccurate, this essay finds them inappropriate for learning. For example, Luppescu and Day in 1993, in their study, focused on the contribution of bilingual dictionaries to learning vocabulary while reading by 293 Japanese students in the university who studied EFL. The study revealed that the students who made use of a dictionary scored higher on tests on vocabulary compared to those who did not. During Knight's investigation in 1994, that blocked the learners due to their level of proficiency in language, the outcome was similar. Learners using a bilingual dictionary ended up with higher scores on all the tests administered on vocabulary. In most cases EFL teachers, researchers and language educators prefer their learners to make use of the monolingual dictionary; this is according to Ard and Snell-Hornby in 1984. The educators' prefer the monolingual dictionary, as suggested by Yorkey in 1970 and Snell-Hornby in 1984 because the bilingual dictionaries are counterproductive since they bring about the assumption that is erroneous of the existence of direct correspondence between the two languages’ words. Walz in 1990 describes two views that are opposing each other. The first being that of Ard in 1982, whose preferences lies with the monolingual dictionaries for the very reason that distinct meanings of translations that are equivalent are not handled in bilingual dictionaries. He seconds this with that of Thompson in 1987, who has bilingual dictionaries at heart because for one, to utilize monolingual dictionaries, the leaner must know the word to be looked up, a process encoding rules out. Thompson's also prefers bilingual dictionaries because the monolingual dictionary’s definitions are circular. Researches have shown that with the passage of time, performance is affected. Tests were carried out on the capability of the two dictionaries to give immediate and delayed as well as retention and recall. The tests indicated that after a period of four weeks the learners using the monolingual dictionary could easily remember the vocabularies they had learnt without delay. This is unlike to their counterparts who had used the bilingual dictionaries since they showed significant differences in definitions of vocabularies from what they had given immediately after learning. From the group’s performance, it is evident that for learners to keep words for longer periods in their memory, it is advisable that they use the monolingual dictionary. Chastain's study in 1988 supported this fact that the retention capability of monolingual dictionaries is far much better than that of bilingual dictionaries. Although monolingual dictionaries are efficient when time limits do no exist, Chastain indicates that the longer time periods required positively affects the storage capability. Conclusion According to Bensoussan, Sim & Weiss (1984) in spite of all these arguments in addition to other results of certain researches of the use of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, students using the monolingual dictionaries have an upper hand. This is evident because learners using monolingual dictionaries have no or little inquiries to make. The dictionary conditions the learners to easily recall vocabularies immediately. In addition to that, learners at the intermediate level have a high retention capacity if they use this dictionary. In this regard, this literature review essay finds monolingual dictionaries more appropriate for use by learners compared to bilingual dictionaries. References Ard, J. (1982). The use of bilingual dictionaries by ESL students while writing. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 58, 1-27. Baxter, J. (1980). The dictionary and vocabulary behavior: a single word or a handful? TESOL Quarterly XIV,3, 325-336. Bensoussan, M. (1983). Dictionaries and tests of EFL reading comprehension. ELT Journal 37, 4, 341-345. Bensoussan, M., Sim, D. & Weiss, R. (1984). The effect of dictionary usage on EFL test Performance compared with student and teacher attitudes and expectations. Reading in a Foreign Language 2, 262-276. Chastain, K. (1988). Developing Second Language Skills: theory and practice. (3rd Ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, Inc. Laufer, B. & Melamed, L. (1994). Monolingual, bilingual and 'bilingualised' dictionaries: Which Are more effective, for what and for whom? In: W.Martin, W. Meijs, M. Moerland, E. ten Pas, P. van Sterkenburg & P. Vossen (Eds.),EURALEX 1994 Proceedings, pp. 565-576. [-14-] Scholfield, P. (1982). Using the English dictionary for comprehension. TESOL Quarterly 16, 2, 185-194. Snell-Hornby, M. (1984). The bilingual dictionary: help or hindrance? In R.R.K. Hartmann (Ed.), LEXeter '83 Proceedings. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 274-281. Mentioned by Aust, R. Kelley, M.J. & Roby, W. Heterogeneous). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 72. Thompson, G. (1987). Using bilingual dictionaries. ELT Journal 41, 282-286. Tickoo, M. L. (1989). which dictionary and why? Exploring some options. In: Tickoo, M. L. (Ed.), 184-203. Underhill, A. (1980). Use Your Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press. Mentioned in: Scholfield, P. Walz, J. (1990). The dictionary as a secondary source in language learning. The French Review 64,1, 79-94. [-15-] Yorkey, R.C. (1970). Electronic dictionaries in CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning 1, 95-109. Mentioned by Aust, R. Kelley, M. J. & Roby, W. Read More