The contribution of dictionary use to the production and retention of the middle construction for Chinese EFL learners

Abstract

This empirical study explores the learning effects of dictionary use in L2 acquisition of the middle construction. First, a survey was taken of five Chinese-English dictionaries. From this, it is concluded that there is inadequate information on the middle construction in these bilingual dictionaries. Then, a pre-test was taken of the target construction among eighty-six participants. This revealed that they know little about this construction. A month later, three randomly formed groups of seventy-five of the participants were asked to translate a Chinese passage into English with the support of an embedded experimental dictionary. The passage contained four middle construction sentences. In addition, an unexpected retention test was conducted one week later. It was found that dictionary use could effectively facilitate the production and retention of the middle construction, and that consulting frequency significantly improves the correct production of the middle construction, rather than the way of presentation or the language proficiency of the users.