Педагогические науки/5. Современные методы преподавания

Серікова Ә.С., Тулегенова А.М.

Евразийский национальный университет им. Л.Н.Гумилева, Казахстан

E-dictionaries for young people

An electronic dictionary is a portable electronic device that serves as the digital form of any kind of dictionary. Available in a number of forms, electronic dictionaries range in function from general single-language dictionaries to very specific, terminology-based dictionaries for medical, legal, and other professional languages. The size of most print dictionaries can be cumbersome and costly, so putting this information into electronic form reduces the unwieldiness of carrying them as well as reduces their cost, as large quantities of paper are saved and the material is contained in computer memory devices [1, 36].

Longman’s Interactive English Dictionary was the first learner’s dictionary to appear in CD-ROM form, back in 1993 [2, 86]. Early versions of CD-ROM dictionaries were partly a sales gimmick and partly a genuine effort to engage with the new technology and see how it could improve access to the information in the dictionary. The new medium provided far more powerful search functions than the basic alphabetical order that conventional dictionaries rely on. Throw in audio pronunciations, and a few games and exercises, and that was the basic package for several years. Looking back, what is striking about those early electronic dictionaries is that the print medium was assumed to be the ‘primary’ one, with the electronic a sort of afterthought: the layout of the CD-ROM screens more or less replicated what you would find on the pages of the printed book, and publishers were slow to grasp the implications of the new medium [3, 54]. For example, dictionaries have traditionally handled idioms by explaining them at one entry, and using cross-references to redirect the user from other possible locations: thus, kick the bucket might be defined at the headword kick, and if you looked it up at bucket you would be referred to the ‘right’ entry. This was, simply, a space-saving strategy: paper dictionaries have to pack a lot of information into a limited space, so you can’t afford to have two (or more) entries for the same idiom. There is no need to do this is an electronic dictionary, of course – but old habits die hard.

With the purpose of exploring the effectiveness of the computer dictionaries and encyclopedias there the experimental teaching in 10th grades of the Karaganda high school was conducted. The number of participants was 40 where the 10 “a” class was an experimental group and the 10 “b” class – control group. The main criteria of selection of participants of the experiment were level of English Proficiency, level of computer literacy and age. So, to identify the level of English there has been presented the pretest that consists of three stages: grammar-vocabulary test, listening comprehension tasks and speaking on the curriculum topics. The age of the participants was 16 years old. It was agreed to use computer dictionaries for in-class activities and computer encyclopedias for out-of-class work in ESL teaching in a short-term view. In the frame of the main objective of the research the main tasks of experimental teaching were the following:

- to teach school students to work with electronic dictionaries and translation systems;

- to teach school students to study English with the help of computer dictionaries;

- to lead the comparative analysis of work with traditional and computer dictionaries;

- to conclude the result and offer the recommendations.

The criteria of the estimation of the experimental teaching have been allocated the time, during which students would be making the tasks; the speed, with which work would have been done and the correctness of results of the done assignments. The teaching and learning process has been researched in two high school classes, in which in one class there was teaching with the use of traditional dictionaries and in another one - the use of computer dictionaries. The experiment lasted a half of one school term (one month).

The task that was given to the students was to practice the new lexical units on the module: “What do you like?”, “What’s best in your country?”; to listen and to comprehend the content of the texts translating with use of the dictionary “Lingo” and speak on the topic using the studied words and word expressions. At the lessons there has been used the multimedia base of the interactive whiteboard (IWB), which is known as a touch-sensitive projection screen that allows the teacher to control a computer directly by touching the screen. The IWB is a convenient modern tool for effective academic purposes, business presentations, and seminars. It not only combines advantages of the big screen and marker boards, but also allows to keep all marks and the changes made during discussion and even to operate computer applications, not interrupting performance and providing access to resources of the Internet.

Table1: Indexes of the quality of the learning progress of the 10 “A” class

Week number (lessons a week)	Respondents number	Respondents number who got excellent and good marks	% of the quality of students’ progress
1	20	7	35%
2	20	9	45%
3	20	11	55%
4	20	9	45%
Total			45%

Table 2: Indexes of the quality of the learning progress of the 10 “B” class

Week number (lessons a week)	Respondents number	Respondents number who got excellent and good marks	% of the quality of students’ progress
1	20	11	55%
2	20	15	75%
3	20	14	80%
4	20	17	85&
Total			71%

The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experimental teaching with the use of computer dictionaries suggests that the time spent by the students of the experimental group on doing tasks is less than that of the control one. The speed of learning materials is higher in experimental group than in the control one, and the correctness of answers more often corresponds to the sample. The criteria of assessment allow judging a degree and quality of developed skills of the students. The use of the computer dictionary in educational process allows expanding the borders of the traditional lesson where the students are in direct contact with the teacher and get necessary support only from him, but also promotes to increase of the students’ interest to independent work with the language material. It is necessary to note the shortening of time in doing tasks, and also in deleting a gap between, so-called, “strong” and “weak” students. It was observed that there was a great interest of the weak students thanks to study with the use of computer dictionaries. It was found out that it reduced probability of duplication of students’ answers while translating and develops a language guess in selection of a suitable word equivalent. Thus, using of computer dictionaries at the foreign language lessons is one of the relatively new means of raising pupils’ motivation to foreign languages learning, developing of self-directed work of pupils and multilingual perception of language units.

The research on the determination of the role of Wikipedia has been realized with the same tenth grade students. The task given to the students, which was out of class activity, was to expanding the students’ knowledge in the frame of cultural aspect of foreign language learning. The lesson was organized in the form of the game and devoted to a theme “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. The analysis of work with Wikipedia in out-of-class activity allows defining the great role of Wikipedia materials, which are authentic, and that is highly important for language learning. During the activity there were being involved four language skills: listening and reading comprehension skills, speaking and writing skills as well. There were the following tasks with texts taken from the computer encyclopedia: finding the main idea, analysis, annotation, synthesis and compression of the information, development of grammatical terminology, translation of texts from English to Russian.

In the research the learning value of the electronic dictionaries and encyclopedias in ESL learning has been proved during experimental teaching and many advantages of ESL teaching with their use have become obvious. The use of the computer dictionaries and encyclopedias not only diversifies the educational process, it also opens great opportunities for expansion educational frames, bears significant -motivational potential, and promotes realization of individual teaching principles. It allows increasing of the amount of self-directed learning and individual correction in processes of skills formation that subsequently improves the quality of foreign language learning as a whole. Working with computer dictionaries school students -have an opportunity to

- increase a speed of unfamiliar word searching;

- search word-combinations, words with incorrect spelling;

- use the means of multimedia for vocabulary learning;

- use hyperlinks; track the actions.

Resources of the computer encyclopedias in teaching and learning process are considered to be useful topic-based language materials that are easy to include in out-of-class ESL activities. The results of our research demonstrated the fact that students have successfully developed the reading comprehension and writing skills as they have had access to up-to-dated and fresh topic-based materials for reading activities and producing a variety of written works. The doubtless advantage of information resources of electronic dictionaries and encyclopedias is the big emotional impact on students of high school.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Lew, Robert. ‘Online Dictionaries of English’ in Fuertes-Olivera, Pedro A. and Henning Bergenholtz (eds.), E-Lexicography: The Internet, Digital Initiatives and Lexicography. London/New York: Continuum, 2011.

2. Trap-Jensen, L., 'Access to Multiple Lexical Resources at a Stroke: Integrating Dictionary, Corpus and Wordnet Data', In Sylviane Granger, Magali Paquot (eds.), eLexicography in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Applications Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2010.

3. Perry, Brian C. (1998), "Interactive Exercises in Electronic Learners' Dictionaries", Teachers, Learners and Computers: Exploring Relationships in CALL, The Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) CALL N-Sig.

4. Rubin and Thompson (1994), "How to be a More Successful Language Learner", 2nd ed., Heinle and Heinle Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts.

5. Verhoeven, L. (1999). ‘Second language reading’ in D. Wagner, C. Venezky and B. V. Street (eds.) Literacy: An International Handbook. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.