On Arab EFL learners’ use of collocational information in electronic dictionaries

Abstract EN

Although research about the use of collocations is growing, there seems to be no single study, to the best of my knowledge, which addresses how electronic dictionaries impact users’ collocational thresholds.

This empirical study has been carried out to bridge this gap in the research literature and assess the collocational competence of Arabic-speaking learners of English.

The main focus is on their ability to judge the acceptability of verb-noun collocations using electronic dictionaries on CD-ROMs which are claimed to be much more than an ‘ordinary’ reference work.

The study meets a three-fold purpose and tackles the following issues: (a) how well can Arab learners judge verb-noun collocations, and more specifically whether they fare better with ‘real’ rather than ‘pseudocollocations’? (b) do dictionaries on CD-ROMs serve as satisfactory references to help judge verb-noun expressions? and (c) how do Arab learners handle collocational aspects in the dictionary? A 20-item test revealed that students possessed poor collocational knowledge; the scores on the pretest showed that their collocational knowledge was below average and those on the main test were again, as expected, so low that we could not claim that dictionaries were really helpful.

It is suggested that changes in content and design be brought in order to make dictionaries more effective and beneficial to their users.

Furthermore, dictionary users are still in dire need to acquire special skills to derive full benefit from the information EFL dictionaries on CDROMs contain.