Impacts of the monolingual and bilingual dictionaries on the lexical errors committed by EFL learners in Hong Kong
a semantic analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40607-016-0024-0Keywords:
Lexical errors, Hong Kong EFL learners, Monolingual dictionaries, Bilingual dictionariesAbstract
Drawing upon semantic theories and concepts, including argument structure, componential analysis, descriptive meaning, and syntagmatic constraints, the present study analyses the four typical lexical errors committed by EFL learners in Hong Kong identified in a previous study conducted by Chan (TESOL Quarterly 44:295–319, 2010) and investigates whether the lexical information provided in
monolingual and bilingual dictionaries alleviates or aggravates those four errors, respectively. The lexical information in monolingual dictionaries has been discovered to be efficacious in filling the gaps in learners’ lexical knowledge and assisting them in alleviating those errors, whilst that in bilingual dictionaries has been found to be capable of alleviating only the types of errors not influenced by the learners’ L1 but aggravating the errors influenced by the L1. The current study has provided pedagogical implications for the instruction of English vocabulary in the context of Hong Kong, albeit learners’ comprehension of the dictionary entries has to be investigated in the future to verify the findings of the study.
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