According to Gettys, Imhof & Kautz (2001), an L1 gloss “represents a psychologically sound support system consistent with the actual needs of the learner when reading in a foreign language” (p. Nation (2001) claims that “Glossing provides minimal interruption of the reading process, especially if the glosses appear near the words being glossed” (p. Not only did readers not have to thumb through a dictionary, but in addition, they did not have to decide which of the dictionary definitions was suitable for their context. The glosses shortened the time-away-from-text by providing the meanings of the words in context, either in the margin or at the bottom of the page. As defined by Nation (2001), a gloss is a “brief definition or synonym, either in L1 (bilingual) or L2 (monolingual), which is provided with the text” (p. To facilitate the process of accessing meanings of words, some English as a Foreign Language (EFL) materials developers glossed the difficult words in texts. This process no doubt disrupts comprehension. So, rather than reading linearly, readers would read, stop to look up a word, and then return to an earlier point in the text. They would have to go back and reread at least from the beginning of the sentence to remind themselves of the content where they left off. Upon returning to the text, readers would not always be able to continue reading from where they stopped. Reading with such dictionaries could be tedious if readers needed to look up words frequently, since stopping to look up words in the dictionary and deciding which of the meanings suited the context of the text moved their attention away from the content of the text to the meaning of the words. In the past, when reading from a printed text, the only help second language readers could get was from monolingual or bilingual printed dictionaries. One of the challenges in reading in a second/foreign language is knowing the meaning of enough words to understand the ideas in the text. Dealing with these publications requires good reading comprehension skills. Nowadays, academic reading is mainly online (e.g., Dennis, 2011), and most academic publications are in English (Curry & Lillis, 2018 van Weijen, 2012). Based on the results, we believe language teachers should consider making students aware of the new tools available. Results show that students got higher grades using the bilingual dictionary tool and felt it was more helpful. Students used Reverso for one of the quizzes and Rewordify for the other and answered a short attitude questionnaire after each quiz.
The texts for the quizzes were approximately the same length and reading level, and the questions were objective and parallel.
#Monolingual dictionary online how to
The instructor taught students how to use the tools, and after a few practice sessions, two reading comprehension quizzes were administered. These tools allow for more immediacy and speed than previous dictionary tools. Two online dictionary tools were used: Reverso, a bilingual tool, and Rewordify, a monolingual tool. The study was conducted in an advanced English class for tertiary students of government.
The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of online monolingual and bilingual dictionary tools on reading comprehension in English and check student preference for one or the other tool. One of their main difficulties is understanding unfamiliar words. Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel & Tel Aviv University, Israelįor students of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), reading articles in their field of study in English is particularly challenging.