Cantonese ESL learners' use of grammatical information in a monolingual dictionary for determining the correct use of a target word

Abstract

This article reports on the results of an empirical study which investigated the use of a monolingual dictionary by advanced Cantonese ESL learners for determining the correct use of a word. Thirty-one students participated in a grammaticality judgment task using a dictionary with and without explicit grammatical information. Two types of self-reporting protocols and a post-task focus-group interview were employed to tap into the participants' thinking processes. It was found that a monolingual dictionary was useful in helping learners determine the correct use of a word, yet it was examples rather than explicit grammatical information which helped them most. Various problems were encountered in dictionary consultation, including learners' difficulty in identifying the transitivity of verbs and the countability of nouns. Inappropriate generalizations were occasionally made from learners' misreading of examples. It is suggested that ESL professionals incorporate grammar training into dictionary training programs, and that lexicographers' design and compilation of ESL dictionaries should be informed by empirical dictionary research. © 2011 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.