On Arab EFL Learners’ Use of Collocational Information in Electronic Dictionaries

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.

Arab EFL Learners’ Use of Electronic Dictionaries

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.