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.

The topicality of work is in the fact that e-dictionary is used in every area by different kind of people, especially by young learners.

The aim of the research work is giving general characteristics to e-dictionary and defining the main ways of its using in developing four skills.

To achieve our aim we have to solve the following objectives:

1.    Define the functions of innovative technologies in teaching foreign language;

2.      Analyze a types of e-dictionaries;

 

The object of the work is e-dictionaries of the English language.

The subject is causes and tendencies of English language.

E-dictionaries are very wide theme to investigate; it has many types and tendencies for today. At our term paper the scientific novelty of the investigation is the use of e-dictionaries through teaching.

  The theoretical significance of the work is the usage of e-dictionaries in English language reveals its causes and tendencies.

The e-dictionaries is very useful in the society. We face to them on the mass media and of course at everyday communication.

The practical significance of the investigation is in the fact that this material can be recommended for widening vocabulary and development of speech and knowledge of English language.

The research work consists of introduction, theoretical and practical parts, conclusion, list of used literature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.                Innovative technologies in teaching Foreign Language

1.1 The concept of e-dictionary

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.

As technology has advanced, the number of features that are available in electronic dictionaries has also increased. Many models are equipped with text-to-speech and speech-to-text capabilities, interactive vocabulary games, calculators, and data transport. Most recently, electronic dictionaries have become available on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, although the features on these devices are not as varied or as complex as the features that are found on conventional handheld dictionaries and current software offerings [1, 39].

Until fairly recently, there were two kinds of electronic dictionary: small handheld devices with one or more dictionaries loaded on them, and optical disks (CD-ROMs and latterly DVD-ROMs) sold alongside the big (paper) learner's dictionaries like the Oxford Advanced Learner's and the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED). Handheld dictionaries - small devices about the size of a BlackBerry - have been around for many years: the Speak & Spell machine that ET cannibalized in order to phone home was an early and primitive example. This is the format of choice in Japan, and current models may include up to a hundred different dictionaries - monolingual, bilingual, general, specialized, you name it. Almost three million of these are sold annually in Japan alone, so it's a huge market. All the well-known learner's dictionaries appear on one or other of these devices, but the publishers make very little money from this kind of licensing - a fraction of what they would earn from selling a physical book. One can't help feeling this is a transitional technology (albeit one that has shown remarkable staying power): it's very hard to use these dictionaries effectively because their contents are so diverse, and minimally integrated. In any case, this ‘pile-it-high' model isn't well-adapted to the needs of language learners: a dictionary with two million terms on it may sound impressive, but who really needs it?

Longman's Interactive English Dictionary was the first learner's dictionary to appear in CD-ROM form, back in 1993 [8, 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. 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 [1, 87].

Gradually, these products improved as they began to exploit the opportunities of the medium more intelligently. The CD-ROM for the Macmillan English Dictionary, for example, includes an ‘advanced search' function that allows you to perform complex searches with minimum difficulty, by combining any number of features like register, frequency, and grammatical behavior, in a Boolean search [9, 213]. So if you want a list of all the high-frequency transitive verbs which are never - or almost always - used in the passive, this is easily done. Or you might be interested in all the words and phrases marked both ‘British' and ‘humorous'. Or a list of every entry that has the subject-label Cinema. These and other features - notably a thesaurus which provides near-synonyms for every word, phrase, and meaning in the dictionary - mean that the CD-ROM is not just an easily-searchable version of its paper counterpart, but a store of ‘new' information which simply wouldn't fit in a printed dictionary.

1.2 Classification and types of e-dictionaries

TYPES OF ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES

  Dictionary of simple words
  Phonological dictionaries
  Dictionary of compound terms
  Meaning
  Semantic markers

Dictionaries and grammars have been recognized as crucial components of most applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Numerous prototypes of language analyzers and generators have been built, but, practically none of these prototypes incorporate full scale dictionaries and grammars. This general situation has been dubbed: processing with "toy dictionaries" and "toy grammars".
Defining a full scale dictionary is already a problem in itself and this question must be addressed in several steps and constitutes in fact the core of the project [3, 25].

Dictionary of simple words

The first step is the level of graphically simple words, namely words as they appear as entries of commercial dictionaries. In order to match a dictionary of canonical entries with words as they are found in texts, entries must be inflected. The general inflection scheme consists in appending inflection codes to canonical entries in order to generate all inflected forms. This approach seems straightforward, and even well-prepared by existing material such as conjugation dictionaries built for pedagogical purposes [2, 96]. However, few such dictionaries exist to-day, either in academic or industrial environments. There are indeed various questions to be solved both at the practical and at the theoretical level, in order to reach an operational stage of coverage for a dictionary. The members of the RELEX group have all built such a dictionary (DELA) for their language. These dictionaries are to be completed by many derivatives and technical words [12, 36].

• derivational morphology is not accounted for in common dictionaries: because simple words such as:

unreusability, coprocessible

are easy to coin and to understand, they are not entered into commercial dictionaries, the reason is that morphological studies have shown that they are extremely numerous. The size of current dictionaries is about 100 000 canonical entries (to the extent that derived words can be listed), derived words increase the size of the lexicon by a factor one hundred at least;

• when a dictionary is applied to a text, many graphic words (i.e. sequences of ASCII characters bounded by consecutive separators) are not recognized. Proper names and numbers for example are not entries of current dictionaries.

At this point, a first definition of full scale dictionary can be given: A full coverage dictionary is a dictionary which recognizes all the ASCII sequences of a library of texts [4, 74].

 Phonological dictionaries

The morphological dictionaries DELA under construction by each partner can be adjoined a phonological component. In this domain it is not thinkable to use only a universal alphabet like the International Phonetic Alphabet: too many specialists disagree on the basic sounds. But national alphabets can be easily designed according to foreseen applications: phonetization of written texts, use in spelling correction, etc. Constructing a phonetic system is a two component task:

- First, all the entries of the component of simple words must be encoded. Then phonogical rules of inflection must be devised;

- second, a phonetization of corpora using the phonetic dictionary as well as general rules must be constructed;

- other components will be necessary, for example in French rules of 'liaison' and elision are necessary to generate the phonetic forms of compounds starting from simple words [5, 122].

The various teams have already acquired some experience in this area, in particular French and Italian have been partly described.

Dictionary of compound terms

The next step in complexity is the construction of dictionaries of compound terms. The participants of the project have adopted the classification of parts of speech used for simple terms:

• compound verbs: to look upon down, to feel free to, to take into account, etc.
• compound adjectives: free of charge, well done, well-to-do, tax-free, etc.
• compound adverb: from time to time, time and again, in fact, in order to, etc;
• compound nouns: sulfuric acid, border town, deed of gift, etc.
• other varied compounds, such as determiners (as many as, a handful of), conjunctions, (as soon as, to the extent that), etc.

Within each of these major categories, subclasses are defined in terms of the categories that make the compounds. From the point of view of the recognition of complex utterances in a text one will have to distinguish at least two main types of entries depending of the variability of the terms :

• totally frozen compounds, such as many adverbs, for example as a matter of fact, or for instance, where the nouns cannot be put in plural, nor modified by adjectives. The complex preposition in order to is not in this category because modifying insertions are possible as in in order presumably to (satisfy her). There are also many compound adjectives such as stiff necked.
• variable compounds: they range from nouns with a plural form, which are the simplest changing shapes, to discontinuous verbs, such as to take X into account where to take [7, 189].

Meaning

The DELA system common to 6 languages is the most elementary form of dictionary: a list of words, and attached to each word, the grammatical information needed to inflect it or to keep it invariable. For European languages, this information is limited to gender, number, case, tense, mood and person. There is no limit to the amount of information that one may want to attach to words: syntactic, semantic, phonetic, stylistic, historical, encyclopedic data can be introduced, depending on applications. Already, the minimal information previously required allows for some syntactic computations: rules that establish elementary agreement between the inflected words of a text, can be defined and used in a parser. Also this elementary information is used to represent certain ambiguities (i.e. called homographs at this level of description). [14, 47] For example, the French word voile can be:

• a masculine noun (veil),
• a feminine noun (sail),
• a verb (to veil) in the present tense of the indicative mood, 1st and 3rd person singular. It can also be a form in the subjunctive (1st and 3rd person singular) and in the imperative (2nd person singular).

Thus, at the descriptive level of the parts of speech, we have 3 homographs: 2 nouns, 1 verb. At the more precise level of inflected forms, we have 5 verbal forms, hence 7 homographic forms.

This level of description does not provide for semantic ambiguities. For example,

- the masculine noun voile can also mean "soft palate" (le voile du palais), a fabric (Swiss voile), difficulty in seeing (un voile devant les yeux), etc. - the verb can mean to veil a statue, but also to buckle a wheel, etc.

At this point, the list of words which must be built does not require any evaluation of the use of words, ancient or modern, hypercorrect or slang, etc. Hence, one does not have to sort out more or less obsolete words, as for example many found among the entries of a dictionary such as the Oxford English Dictionary.

With respect to these minimal demands, a superficial examination of the best available dictionaries shows that they are incomplete in many respects, and thus unfit as a basis for automatic analysis [13, 176].

Forms of Electronic Dictionaries

There are five main types of available electronic dictionaries. First, the most common form of an electronic dictionary is a standalone, handheld electronic device. CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs are also an available form of electronic dictionaries, and these are often included with the purchase of a conventional, printed dictionary. These programs can then be loaded onto personal computers. There are also some free or pay-for-use online dictionaries. Many of the more recent forms of technology, such as eReaders, tablet computers, and smartphones, now have electronic dictionary capabilities. The features sought by consumers may vary slightly depending on which type of electronic dictionary is chosen, but for the most part, they remain similar.

Important Features of an Electronic Dictionary

There are a number of features that are available on an electronic dictionary, and this guide will discuss the 10 features that buyers should look for in an electronic dictionary. However, in addition to these features, some other considerations when choosing an electronic dictionary should include the size of the device, whether it is a separate handheld dictionary, its required power source, the cost of the electronic dictionary, as well as its compatibility with any of the user's other devices such as PCs or mobile devices. Buyers should take these details into consideration, along with the following top 10 features to look for in an electronic dictionary [10, 269].

1. Type/Number of Dictionaries

There are a number of popular English dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Some electronic dictionaries will come with only one dictionary pre-loaded within its software, while others can offer several different dictionaries. The variety of dictionaries that is offered and the quality of the default dictionary can mean the difference between a casual user's ability to benefit from the dictionary versus the dictionary being able to be utilized for more rigorous academic use.

2. Translation Capability

Many electronic dictionary users are in the process of learning English as a second language. Having their native language available for translation is of great use to users in this situation. Additionally, travelers can greatly benefit from translator programs on electronic dictionaries. These compact devices (or programs for mobile devices) are beneficial when a user is in a foreign country and does not know the native language. For professional translators, some electronic dictionaries may also have storable vocabulary banks for quick reference. Depending on the level of their translation needs, purchasers should research the complexity of a specific electronic dictionary's translating capabilities.

3. Thesaurus

A thesaurus allows users to input a word and be given a list of possible alternatives to that word. Thesauruses are especially popular with students who need to elevate their vocabulary within assignments. This feature is available on many electronic dictionaries and is a beneficial one for many.

4. Pronunciation

For those users who would like to hear the correct pronunciation of vocabulary words, whether in English or in other languages, some electronic dictionaries come with speakers and with the ability to sound out the word for the user so that the proper pronunciation is conveyed. This can save the speaker any embarrassment that may result from mispronunciation.

5. Stylus

Some electronic dictionaries allow the user to write on a screen with a stylus implement and then have the dictionary find and define the word or symbol. These are especially useful in languages that utilize other symbols that may be unfamiliar to the user, such as Kanji (Japanese) or Hebrew letters.

6. Data Transport

Electronic dictionaries can come with USB storage capabilities that can be loaded onto other devices. The dictionary serves as a memory card of sorts, and this can be used to share specific vocabulary or translation lists with other devices.

7. Learning Programs

Another great feature of electronic dictionaries for students is the learning programs that are included on some models. These programs can include mini-lessons along with self-testing options to help the user improve their vocabulary knowledge. These programs are of great use for those who are preparing for standardized tests such as the SATs and ACTs.

8. Encyclopedia

Some electronic dictionaries come with encyclopedia information, which provides overviews of a variety of topics. While it may not be an entirely necessary function for some users, encyclopedias can also round out the context of dictionary definitions.

9. Built-in Camera

As one of the more unique features of an electronic dictionary, a built-in camera can be used to take a photograph of an unfamiliar word in a text, on a sign, or in any other print form, in order to search for and define the word. This definition can be in English or in another language, provided that the electronic dictionary also has that language available.

10. Added Features

Several extras that usually are available with electronic devices can include calculators, currency converters, and alarm clocks. Those who are looking to purchase an electronic dictionary should prioritize their own needs and find a device that best meets these individual needs [19, 217].

 

1.3 Teaching Young learners

Young children tend to change their mood every other minute, and they find it extremely difficult to sit still. On the other hand, they show a greater motivation than adults to do things that appeal to them. Since it is almost impossible to cater to the interests of about 25 young individuals, the teacher has to be inventive in selecting interesting activities, and must provide a great variety of them. My teaching approach is neither purely communicative nor audio-lingual (AL); it also involves features of total physical response (TPR), which is particularly appropriate for young children. I do not consider any of the abovementioned approaches sufficient of itself to bring about a high degree of language proficiency in the learner. The goal is to achieve communicative competence, but the manner of teaching includes audio-lingual features, such as choral/single drills, and activities deriving from TPR [21, 16].

The lesson I will describe is designed for eight- to ten-year-olds at the beginning level. The topic of the unit is Everyday Life. The learners must describe their day and what is going on at home at certain times. The grammatical focus is on the present tenses (simple and continuous). As the present continuous does not exist as a tense form in the students' native language (German), the teacher must make the time reference very clear to them. The present continuous has several functions, but, since the new form is challenging enough, we will stick to the present time reference and will focus only on action in process. The structural pattern of the verb is also new. In order to automatize it several drills are necessary. Having set up the lesson plan as shown on the next page, we can now discuss it step by step. The discussion follows the order of the lesson plan [18, 49].

Warm-up

This step is essential in preparing the learners for the lesson. Imagine that their previous lesson was mathematics or history, and how far away their thoughts may be from English. My experience shows that children respond enthusiastically to songs and welcome them as a warm-up activity. Using songs in the classroom has a whole range of advantages. Some of them are listed by Garcia-Saez , e.g., creating a positive feeling for language learning, awakening interest during the lesson, stimulating students to greater oral participation, and breaking the monotony of the day. The song chosen for this lesson ("Are you sleeping, are you sleeping...") has an additional function: when singing the song, the learners are using the new tense form subconsciously; thus, it breaks the ice in introducing difficult and strange grammar [15, 176].

Introduction

The purpose of the next step is to familiarize the students with the topic. Although to the learners switching to the picture (we chose one with a boy reading a book and dreaming of being the leading character) seems to be coincidental and only topic-related, the teacher has two other purposes: to introduce the idea of describing a picture, and to have the learners continue using the new grammatical form subconsciously. This step consists of informal teacher-learner talk and leads directly to the following stage. Goal Setting "There is an old rule in theatre that, when the house lights go down, the audience is never to be left in the dark for more than a brief moment. A ray of light is shown on the curtain even before it opens." These metaphoric words are used by Meyer and Sugg to explain the need of clear goal setting in a lesson. Students should always, at all stages, know what they are doing and why they are doing it. This is necessary not only so they will feel a certain satisfaction about their achievement at the end of the lesson, but also for good motivation throughout the lesson. Research has also shown that students are more attentive to their work if the teacher explains the goals of the lesson. The goal for this lesson is skill oriented, whereas the new grammar feature serves only as a means to achieve this goal. This communicative goal setting derived from my personal experience, as will be seen in the following stage [6, 247].

Presentation of the New Grammatical Item in Context

I still remember vividly my English teacher in high school destroying any motivation and enthusiasm I had by opening the lesson with the unforgettable phrase "Today we are dealing with grammar." The same unpleasant feeling came over me years later, when, as a young, inexperienced teacher, I was approached by one of my pupils, who shyly asked me "Machen wir heute etwa Grammatik?" ("Are we dealing with grammar today?"). It took a while to get rid of that feeling-not by making students get used to such phrases but by showing them a different, more integrated and communicative approach to grammar. I try to make the learner conscious of what s/he is already able to use sub/unconsciously. That means that the grammatical structures have already been used by the students (sometimes only in repeating the teacher's words) before they are explained. In the lesson I am describing, the learners had used the pres ent continuous in the song and in the t-l talk about the picture. For elicitation the teacher could use either his/her questions to the students (e.g., What is he reading?) or the students' (correct) answers. Of course, the teacher should always provide more than one or two examples.

Explanation

In the explanation phase students are forced to think about the elicited sentences and analyses them for themselves. The teacher's questions serve as hints or clues to point the learner in the right direction. I always prefer a cognitive, inductive approach, which involves the learners in analysing and explaining the use and form of a structure, because this supports their understanding of it. In this lesson, at this early stage of language learning, the teacher might be justified in switching to the mother tongue both to save time and to keep things from getting too complicated. The Natural Approach to language learning holds that only acquired (in contrast to learned) knowledge is effective in use, while knowledge of rules applies only to monitoring the language output; nevertheless, it is thought that familiarity with language rules and their automatisation will facilitate the language-learning process. In my experience, students do not hesitate to make use of structures they have learned once and automatised to such a degree that they are able to use them subconsciously. In learning the present continuous, German students are faced with an item that does not exist in their mother tongue. Contrastive Analysis would predict difficulty in acquiring and using this structure. In fact, I have never had problems in introducing the students to this tense form; it causes only minor difficulty as compared to other structures. Moreover, they tend to overuse it. We will now switch to the practice stage of the lesson. The view of practice I prefer can be adapted from the traditional one:

PRESENT ⇒ CONTROLLED PRACTICE ⇒ FREE PRACTICE into: SUBCONSCIOUS USE ⇒ ELICITATION ⇒ CONTROLLED PRACTICE ⇒ FREE PRACTICE

Littlewood divides activities into pre-communicative and communicative activities. Using his terminology we will start with purely pre-communicative activities.

Formal Drill

The controlled-practice phase of the lesson starts with a simple repetition of the new language feature in different variations. In order to distract the young learners from the "grammar" point, a jazz-chant variation is used as a first drill:

I'm saying: Hsh, Hsh. Tom 1 is sleeping. What are you saying? I'm saying: Hsh, hsh. Tom is sleeping. Who is sleeping? Tom is sleeping, he is sleeping. Is he sleeping? Yes, he is. Aaaaa...not any more.

Based on the work of Graham , this short jazz chant reinforces the present-continuous structure. As Graham points out, jazz chants are highly motivating because of their rhythms and humor. In addition, the young learners need not patiently remain in their seats. They can move, clap their hands, snap their fingers, or tap their feet; they are involved both mentally and physically. Songs, poems, chants, and similar activities reduce anxiety and increase the personal involvement of second-language learners. This kind of practice is certainly not a "formal drill" of the traditional stimulus-response kind.

Pair Work

So far, the learners have, for the most part, only had to respond to the teacher's stimuli. Now the mode is changing from teacher-centered to learner-centered. The learners depend more on each other and engage in interactive tasks. Certainly, the pair-work activity at this stage belongs to the pre-communicative activities in Littlewood's taxonomy. But even this kind of mini-dialogue can support the learners' speaking proficiency. The pattern that the teacher may introduce as a model to guide the students can, for example, have the following structure using appropriate flash cards:

What's going on here? They are speaking. What is she doing? She is singing. or by adding adverbs (if they are already known): How is he singing? He is singing loudly. or using yes/no questions: Is the sun shining? Yes, it's shining. / No it's raining.

         Some of the phrases have already been practiced in the jazz chant and the previous exercise. The illustrations on the flash cards serve two purposes. First of all, they "can be quite helpful in creating the motivating, game-like atmosphere so conducive to learning"), and secondly, they provide visual support for the speaking activity. Learners are expected to create a certain level of awareness when they perform, i.e., they have to consciously make use of the new structure, but they also have to focus on meaning and probably shift from "focus on form" to "focus on meaning" during the practice period. In exchanging the flash cards and performing dialogues with more than one exchange learners also get involved with such features of conversation as turn-taking. Because pair work is learner centered, the teacher's role is less dominant. The teacher must monitor the learners' performance in order to provide feedback and help where necessary. S/he can also take part in the conversation as a participant.

Group Work

The next stage of the lesson switches from oral activities to writing. For developing writing skills we use the process approach. This group activity presents the learners with a task that becomes gradually less difficult, preparing them for the more challenging goal at the end of the lesson. A cooperative (in contrast to competitive and individualistic) goal structure helps students achieve greater success in group-work activities , as well as educating children to be more cooperative. In our lesson the group must first discuss the appropriate time for each action and then write up the activities. Each group is given a different set of pictures and times, so that the ultimate success of the story depends on the participation of each group. As an outcome of the group work they write their sentences on an OHP foil, which makes the evaluation phase far easier and visible to the whole class. Following the sub processes of writing, this stage belongs to the prewriting phase. Several structural drills are demanded as a prewriting activity. The actual writing task at the lesson end is subdivided, too, as we will see.

 Writing

The first step is to re-introduce the picture. This re-introduction should achieve familiarity with the subject, i.e., the description of the picture. (We chose a picture showing a typical German family at the Sunday morning breakfast table.) The teacher should not use a formal expression like "Let's describe the picture now," but should use words that call attention to the content more than the form, e.g., "Look, what is going on one Sunday morning in this family? What can you see? First, let's find some names for the people...." Thus, the learners will focus more on the content of the picture. They may use words that don't go in the direction the teacher wants to lead them, but a friendly teacher-learner / learner-teacher talk can inspire motivation and the enthusiasm to communicate. For the prewriting phase many activities, such as exchange of experiences, thinking, remembering, talking, reading, or noting, are required. The students will not stick to using only the present continuous, but remember, it is only one means to achieve the goal.

The next step in this process could be the description of just one person, e.g., the boy. The learners have to do this in writing. One pupil could, for instance, write on the blackboard as an example for discussion afterwards. The teacher could then change the mode again and ask the students to describe orally either one more person or the whole picture, using their written notes as a beginning. Another possibility is to start with the beginning sentences from the blackboard and carry on, involving different students in a sequence. The teacher can collect catchwords from the students and note  continue this activity, depending on classroom circumstances and the particular learners. In any case it might be supportive for the learners to find some words or phrases to help them write it up. As we cannot expect, in a 45-50 minute lesson, to finish this work, the teacher should have the students complete it as homework. It might be a good start for the next lesson to compare the different stories that the pupils come up with. She can then go ahead with more authentic situations for using the present continuous, either in the form of dialogues or simply in describing different actions, e.g., "Look out of the window and tell me what's going on in the street."

Conclusion to the 1st chapter. In the 1st chapter we defined the term of e-dictionary, its types and history. We found scholars from different countries and studied their articles, books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.  ACTIVITIES USING E-DICTIONARIES

2.1  E-dictionaries for developing listening and speaking

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.

The results of the experimental teaching are reflected in Tables 1, 2 and show that the quality of learning with the use of computer dictionary "Lingo" is much high than the quality of learning with the use of traditional dictionaries, that is presented in the
Diagram B.

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%

Diagram B. Comparative analysis of the quality of learning in the group 10 "B" and group 10 "A"

 

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.

2.2 Activities using e-dictionary

This activities great for looking up words and you will use them to teach dictionary skills, but there are also other great things you can do with these rather large volumes of words. Here are just a few ideas.

	Activities	Explanation
1	Play Speed Word Search.	Give each student or pair of students a dictionary. When you call out a word, student must find the word as quickly as possible. The first person to call out the correct page number wins the round. This would be a good one to do in teams -everyone has his or her own dictionary, but the winner wins a point for the whole team rather than individually.
2	Play Mystery Word	1.     To play this game, give a series of clues. As students hear the clues, they look for the word in the dictionary until they have narrowed it down to just one. For Example: I begin with the fourth letter of the alphabet. My second letter is an "o." I am 3 syllables long. I come before "dog" in the dictionary. My last letter is "t."
3	Play Dictionary Dig	2.     This game is similar to Mystery Word in that you give clues and the students look for a word. The difference is that the clues are broader and many words could be a correct answer. This one is fun because students enjoy finding more than one word to fit the clues and sharing their words with each other. Example: Find a word that begins with "s," is two syllables long, has double letters, and is an adjective. You can get a set of 30 Dictionary Dig Task Cards here.
4	Collect New Words	Have each student keep a notebook of new words. This is a nice activity to do daily or a few times a week. It is also good for handwriting practice. Each day, each student finds a word in the dictionary that he does not know. She then writes the word, definition, and an original sentence using the word in her notebook. An illustration would also make a nice addition. Have students share their words with at least one other person.
5	Make up New Words	Ask each student make up a new word and definition. Have each student write his or her word and definition on a post it and put the post it in the appropriate place in the dictionary. Make a class list of the new words and their definitions. Challenge the class to use the words in everyday conversation.
6	Estimate and Measure	Have the students stack all of the dictionaries into  one tall tower. Invite each student to estimate how tall the tower is. Record guesses on the board. Measure the tower and see whose answer was the closest. You could also do a similar activity by lining them up end to end across the classroom.
7	Line Them Up Like Dominoes	3.     Probably not the best use for your classroom dictionaries...but it would be fun! There is probably some clever way to make it into a physics lesson.

 

2.3 An Experiment Using Electronic Dictionaries with EFL Students

The two outstanding differences between electronic dictionaries (EDs) and paper dictionaries (PDs) are size, weight and cost. For example, the Seiko TR-7700 ED contains the contents of the Kenkyusha New College English to Japanese and Japanese to English paper dictionaries. It weighs less than one eighth of its paper counterpart, and costs over 5 times as much. Do EDs have any other advantages that justify the extra cost? Should we recommend to students that they buy one?

An important factor for most learners is whether the dictionary is quick and easy to use. We set up a simple classroom experiment to compare the look-up speed of paper and electronic dictionaries.

Objective

The objective of the experiment was purely look-up speed; i.e. how quickly students could find the definition(s) of an unknown word. We took no account of the quality or number of definitions, nor even students' ability to read and comprehend them.

 

Method

We divided a first year English conversation class into two groups. We gave a paper bilingual dictionary to each student in the PD group and an electronic dictionary to each student in the ED group.

Three lists of ten words were prepared with each list containing words with the same initial letters and the same number of letters per word.

Table 1: The word lists.

 

List A	List B	List C
Cool	Cost	Chop
Fame	Feel	Fish
Peel	Pair	Page
Search	School	Screen
Coffee	Cookie	Copper
Ladder	Leader	Letter
Attitude	Argument	Approval
Ignorant	Illusion	Immature
Parallel	Paranoid	Parasite

 

         We gave students as much time as they needed to look up the words on List A. In practice, this was about ten minutes. This was to let students get used to the particular PD or ED they would use in the test. The actual test didn't begin until all students felt comfortable with their dictionary.

Then, we gave the PD students copies of List B and the ED students copies of List C, face down. At the start command, they turned over their papers and looked up each word in order. They were told not to take time to read any definitions. As each student finished the list, she raised her hand, and we recorded the time taken.

Finally, when all the students had finished, they changed places with a student in the other group, leaving the dictionaries and the word lists, face down, on their desks. They then looked up the ten words on the other list with the other type of dictionary.

The experiment was repeated with several first year English conversation classes.

Results

 

The average look-up time for ten words using a PD was 168 seconds (about 17 seconds per word); using an ED, 130 seconds (about 13 seconds per word) . In short, our students could look up words about 23% faster with an ED.

 

Objective and Method

 

Our show-of-hands survey of 781 students at Kyoritsu Women's University and College found that 88 (about 11%) owned an ED. We asked those students to complete a questionnaire (Appendix 1) there and then, in class.

The questionnaire asked students how often, where, and when they use their EDs, and whether for English to Japanese translation or vice versa. It also asked students for their attitude to their ED's features, specifically the pronunciation feature, if present. The answers to these questions were impressionistic; we did not ask respondents to observe their dictionary use quantitatively before completing the questionnaire.

When we designed the questionnaire we were not investigating a particular hypothesis; what follows emerged clearly from the data gathered.

Result and discussion

 

Six returns were invalid for various reasons; the results are based on the remaining 82 usable questionnaires.

 

Where?

Given that they are much smaller and lighter than content equivalent paper dictionaries (PDs), we were surprised to find that students rarely use their EDs on the move. Most students use them both at home and in the classroom, roughly 50% in each place. The heaviest users claim to use them slightly more at home. Over half of respondents claimed never to use their ED's while traveling. Well over half couldn't think of any other places they used them, with the most common exception (only 11 out of 82) being the library. Given the relatively high cost of EDs, it would be cheaper for most of our respondents to buy two PDs, and keep one at home and one in a locker at school. In hindsight, it would have been useful to know why these students own an ED - did they buy it themselves (why?) or was it an unsolicited gift?

 

When?

As our experiment demonstrated, EDs can be somewhat faster, but this small speed difference is probably not enough to justify their extra cost when looking up the words needed to understand an L2 reading passage or write a report in L2 for homework. However, it is for precisely these activities that most of our respondents use their EDs the most.

On the other hand, the 23% speed difference could be a decisive factor when trying to follow the content of a conversation, lecture or TV program. However, the questionnaire showed that almost none of our respondents takes advantage of her ED's superior look-up speed when speaking in or listening to the L2.

It is interesting to compare the rank order of students' ED usage, as revealed by the questionnaire, to what is generally considered to be the natural order of language acquisition, at least in children learning their L1. They are opposite (see Table 2).

Table 2: Natural Order of Acquisition vs. Student Usage of EDs

 

Rank Order	Natural Order of Acquisition	Student Usage of EDs
1	Listening	Reading
2	Speaking	Writing
3	Reading	Speaking
4	Writing	Listening

If learners are trying to master English for communicative purposes, as many claim to be, then using their ED's counter to the natural order of acquisition is like swimming upstream.

Why Do Our Students Make so Little Use of EDs When Listening?

 

The most obvious explanation is that they do very little listening anyhow. Although this is impossible to verify from our questionnaire results, we know that most of the respondents are literature or international studies majors, not conversation school students. Consequently, they are following curricula which require much more reading and writing than listening or speaking. Habits acquired in school would also tend to bias students towards a preference for reading and writing. Further, practical considerations (e.g., living in an L1 environment) minimize the need to deal with aural input.

A second explanation is that students do not trust their ability to catch correctly the words that they do hear; perhaps rightly so. For example:

• I say, "I feel empathy. "
• She hears, "I feel empty. "
• I offer, "Ice cream ? "
• She wonders, "I scream ? "

 

 

What Good Does It Do to Look Up an Unknown Word if the Word Itself is Misunderstood?

 

A third explanation involves the irrational English spelling system. Even if the listener hears the unknown word correctly, she cannot necessarily spell it correctly. This is less of an obstacle these days thanks to the error tolerant and similar input functions of modern EDs. These features allow the user to input her best guess as to a word's spelling, then choose the target word from a list of likely candidates displayed on the screen.

 

Pronunciation Function

 

Respondents' enthusiasm for hearing their ED pronounce words was not high. While a few felt this function was "very important", the vast majority felt it was only "somewhat important" or "not important", suggesting that few students have any intention of actually trying to say their newly acquired words.

 

Conclusion to the 1st chapter.

 A new technology tends to be used in the same way as the traditional technology it supersedes. For many years during the twenties and thirties, movies were vaudeville and stage shows on a big screen. The earliest computer assisted language learning packages were little more than textbooks on a small screen.

At present, electronic dictionaries are still fundamentally paper dictionaries on a microchip. They have certain unique functions, such as error tolerant input, cross-referencing (e.g. synonyms and antonyms), and word and spelling games, and they are probably faster to use. On the other hand, some people simply prefer the feel and legibility of paper. LCD can be hard to read in some lighting conditions, and it takes time to learn to use the functions of an ED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

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. Now with the full confidence it is necessary to say that this kind of computer technologies influences strongly on the whole educational process. As a result of the research aimed at determination of the role of computer dictionaries and encyclopedias, we offer following recommendations for the organization of in-class and out-of-class teaching and learning with the use of the computer dictionaries and encyclopedias: In order to bring the use of the computer dictionaries and encyclopedias to the level of free manipulation firstly teacher should give introduction course to students; In order to cover all vocabulary and save the time for searching the suitable equivalent teacher needs to create his own dictionary that includes the lexical units of the lesson; For the development of students' English learning autonomy based on the use of the computer dictionaries and encyclopedias teacher needs to present the language materials by using multimedia technologies in order to cover students' personal characteristics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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