Arab efl learners’ use of electronic dictionaries

Abstract EN

Modern educational and computer technology has greatly affected the design of electronic dictionaries.

Various types and sizes have been produced ranging from hand-held devices to multimedia dictionaries on CD-ROMs.

Unfortunately, little literature exists on their efficacy and the way these are used; therefore, there is now a pressing need for uncovering the way EFL learners use these tools.

This dictionary user profile, survey questionnaire, was constructed to fulfill this need and unearth the electronic dictionary-using habits of Arab EFL learners and underline the various facts about the names of the electronic dictionaries they owned, the reasons when, where, why and how dictionary users employed these dictionaries and whether there was any particular information they used more often.

Endeavour was made to pinpoint any difficulties in using any category of information and reveal participants’ look-up habits and attitudes towards dictionaries.

Although it is widely believed that electronic references are more useful than hard-copy references, findings from this research showed that electronic and print dictionaries were used similarly.

Disappointingly, users were not fully aware of the bulk of information and features offered by dictionaries.

More research remains to be carried out to reveal the image of electronic dictionaries among EFL learners and more specifically how real-world electronic look-ups are performed.