11.1 Learner's Dictionaries and Language Skills
Learner's dictionaries are relative latecomers in the history of dictionaries. The first true-blue learner's dictionary, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Horby Reference Yuan and Church2000), was not published until 1942. As language learners continue to proliferate around the world, dictionary publishers and academics are paying increasing attention to learner's dictionaries. However, there remain a number of unresolved issues concerning the organisation of such dictionaries and the type of information they should include.
In this chapter, we argue that learner's dictionaries should take into account the needs of the learner in developing proficiency in the four basic language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In addition, learner's dictionaries need to be informed by the needs of learners at different levels of proficiency. The following three key questions are addressed.
(1) What information should a learner's dictionary include in order to cater to the four language skills of learners?
(2) Do learners at different proficiency levels require the same kinds of information from a dictionary?
(3) How should a learner's dictionary be organised in order to address practical issues faced by learners at different levels of proficiency?
To attempt to answer these questions, this chapter considers how learners actually use dictionaries in the course of developing the four main language skills. This will allow us to propose an integrated framework for the compilation of learner's dictionaries in the future.
Since most of the current literature focuses on English dictionaries – and particularly monolingual English dictionaries – this chapter aims to fill a gap in the research by focusing on Chinese learner dictionaries. Chinese dictionaries are further complicated by a non-phonetic (or very marginally phonetic) writing system that encodes morphemes/syllables rather than words. It is hoped that this chapter will offer some guidance to compilers of future Chinese learner's dictionaries. For ease of reference, ‘learners’ in the context of this chapter refers to learners of the Chinese language whose first or dominant language is English.
11.2 Information in a Dictionary and the Four Language Skills
11.2.1 The Innate Relationship between the Four Language Skills
Language learning is usually discussed in terms of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, with instructional materials usually divided into those for oral (or conversational) skills – speaking and listening – and those for literary skills – reading and writing (in the sense of composition). With the advent of communicative language teaching in the 1980s there was a shift towards an integrative approach to developing the four language skills, with reading and writing often used in support of oral skills, or vice versa. It is worth noting, though, that most of these efforts tended to adopt a task-based or content-based approach (Brinton, Snow and Wesche Reference Brinton, Snow and Wesche1989, Willis Reference Willis1996).
From the perspective of information transmission, both listening and reading are receptive skills, while speaking and writing are productive skills. The process is different for second language learners than for native speakers of a language. For the latter, dictionaries serve to make transmission more precise by offering a repertoire of specialised words that may be unfamiliar from ordinary colloquial conversation. In the case of second language learners, however, transmission is to some degree mediated by their first language, with dictionaries often serving as a source for translation equivalents to first language words or usage. In other words, second language learners switch between languages when transmitting information, as shown in Table 11.1.
Table 11.1 The relationship between the four language skills in second language acquisition
| Receptive Skills | Productive Skills | |
|---|---|---|
| Spoken language | Listening | Speaking |
| Written language | Reading | Writing |
| Language switching | L2→L1 | L1→L2 |
In view of the proficiency gap between the first and second language of a learner, his ability to transmit information lags behind his cognitive processing. While the gap between first and second language proficiency can be closed, it takes a long period of time, and – at least in adulthood – can never be completely eliminated. In reality, learners rely on reference books, particularly dictionaries, to help them bridge the gap. One could say that learner's dictionaries serve to narrow the gap between the processing and transmission of language. In the next section, we will examine how dictionaries attempt to fill this information gap by considering each of the four language skills individually.
11.2.2 Information in a Dictionary and Development of the Four Language Skills
Dictionaries typically provide four types of information for the learner, viz. pronunciation, written representation, definitions (or other language equivalent) and usage information for each entry. However, learners use the information selectively, according to the language skill that they are focusing on. This section explains how the learner might make such a selection in the process of learning listening, speaking, reading and writing skills respectively.
11.2.2.1 Listening
The process of listening can be broken down into several stages: hearing the sound signal, abstracting syllables, words and phrases; activating appropriate knowledge schemata and inferring meaning from context; tracking it in short-term memory and ultimately storing an image of the text in long-term memory (Brown Reference Brown2001).
If the listener is unable to extract a coherent meaning from the sound signal, there will be gaps in processing and comprehension will fail. To overcome such problems – particularly when the oral input can be repeated – learners use dictionaries to ascertain the meaning or native-language equivalent of spoken words. If the word in question is marginal to the overall meaning of the text, looking it up in the dictionary is unlikely to enhance overall comprehension significantly. However, if the word recurs, and is central to the meaning of the text, looking it up can significantly enhance comprehension.
In addition, clarification of meaning can activate additional contextual knowledge, which will serve to clarify other parts of the text in a productive cycle. So in the case of listening, the most useful information for a particular entry is pronunciation (for word identification) and meaning (for textual interpretation).
11.2.2.2 Speaking
To express an utterance, speakers need to conceptualise a situational meaning, then go through a complex process of expressing it in sound. For all speakers, and in particular for advanced learners where expectations are higher, the process requires more than getting conceptual meaning – the semantics – correct; it requires organising the utterance pragmatically – with proper usage. Thus learners frequently need to select from a group of words that word that expresses the proper nuance in the context. In sum, for speaking skills, learners need information on pronunciation, meaning and usage from the dictionary.
11.2.2.3 Reading
Many learners begin using dictionaries with reading assignments. In some cases, novice learners reading any kind of authentic material have to look up almost every other word they come across, in a process of decoding the text rather than reading it. Nowadays, this procedure is made more feasible by the use of electronic dictionaries or applications that allow instant lookup.
The reading process involves both bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing involves the identification of particular words or phrases; top-down processing involves guessing meaning from context and genre. Looking a word up in a dictionary serves bottom-up processing primarily; but as more and more of the text becomes known the process of top-down ‘guessing’ becomes more successful. This is why teachers often tell their students not to obsessively look up every word they don't know, but to be selective and try to ‘read through’ gaps in the text.
11.2.2.4 Writing
The writing process is similar to speaking in the sense that it moves from a conceptual stage through a process of encoding – in this case, encoding as writing (characters in the case of Chinese). Writing – or rather, composition – is particularly challenging because it is (usually) distanced from its audience and, consequently, more prone to misinterpretation. Composition requires virtuoso control over tone and nuance, which is why even for native speakers it requires a long period of training.
For second language learners, composition often begins as a representation of speech, with the conventions of more formal styles being taught incrementally. In many cases, second language learners are asked to produce compositions before they have sufficient control of even spoken modes. In any case, they make use of dictionaries to check on written representation (spelling in English, character form in Chinese) and to find words with appropriate meanings. They often have to choose among synonyms to find words appropriate to the context and intent of the passage. Thus, the dictionary provides the written form, words of particular meaning and usage information for learners learning to write compositions.
11.2.2.5 Correlation between Types of Information in a Dictionary and the Four Language Skills
Types of information in the dictionary can be correlated with the development of the four language skills as set out in Table 11.2.
Table 11.2 Correlation between types of information in a dictionary and the four language skills
| Types of information | Listening | Speaking | Reading | Writing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Written representation | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Meaning | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Usage | ✓ | ✓ |
We have considered learners as a whole in this section. Table 11.2 shows all the possible ways learners may access information in a dictionary in terms of the four language skills. How they use a dictionary depends in part on their levels of proficiency. This brings us to the next section, where we will examine whether learner's dictionaries should be differentiated for learners of different levels.
11.3 Different Levels of Learner's Dictionaries
11.3.1 Learners with Different Levels of Proficiency
Language teachers and researchers usually classify learners into the three levels of basic (or ‘novice’), intermediate and advanced. However, the criteria for these divisions varies widely. In the case of Taiwan's Proficiency Test, the main criterion is the amount of time spent learning the language – so-called ‘seat time’. Candidates who have taken 360–480 course hours of Chinese are considered to be at basic level, those with 480–960 hours are intermediate and those with 960 hours or more are advanced. In other cases, it is the learner's range of vocabulary usage and grasp of grammar that are the key criteria. This is the case for the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK), used in China.
Here in Singapore, we follow the Chinese Proficiency Guidelines issued by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (1986), known by the acronym of ACTFL. The ACTFL criteria are based on the size of units that can be processed and on a general assessment of communicative abilities. The novice level presupposes limited use of words or phrases but hardly any communicative ability. The intermediate level presupposes sentence-level language, some ability to string sentences together coherently and some communicative ability for specific purposes, but with more facility in responding to than in initiating conversation. The advanced level presupposes the ability to use language at the discourse level so that responses are appropriate, discourse is not unduly hobbled by vocabulary limitations or unfamiliarity with grammatical structures and tasks can be carried out fairly effectively.
Proficiency is not always spread across all skills evenly. Students sometimes have stronger listening skills than speaking, stronger speaking skills than reading or stronger reading skills than writing, etc. For the purpose of this chapter, we focus as much as possible on balanced profiles rather than skewed ones.
11.3.2 What Learners at Different Levels Require from a Dictionary
Learners at different levels naturally seek different kinds of information from a dictionary. The needs of the novice are relatively straightforward. They are centred primarily on words. Novices' ability to listen and speak is constrained by their limited vocabulary and lack of syntactic knowledge and conversational pragmatics and styles. They can produce or interpret a few simple utterances, relying heavily on context rather than linguistic processing. Novice readers can pick out a few words or phrases in genres that are highly contextually dependent, such as advertisements, bus schedules, forms, labels and menus. Novice writers might be able to fill out the biographical parts of forms or make short lists. Writing by word processing, however, is more efficient as the writer can choose characters from a list of prompts after typing in the Hanyu Pinyin.
Typically, novice level learners refer to the dictionary for two purposes: to find the definition or function of a word whose pronunciation or written representation is already known; or, less often, to find out (or confirm) the pronunciation or the written representation of a word whose meaning is already known. (This is more common for Chinese, where pronunciation might be known, but not the form of the character.) Information on usage, which involves fitting a word or phrase to a context, can only be conveyed to novices in their native language.
The needs of intermediate and advanced learners are much more complex. They are able to process sentences and texts, and can manage a wider variety of communicative tasks in the second language. In addition to using a dictionary to look up pronunciation, written representation (in characters) or meaning or function (translation equivalent or definition), they may wish to know about collocations (e.g. ‘highly intelligent’ but not ‘highly smart’), and typical grammatical contexts. Advanced learners may also seek the ‘right word’ by browsing through a list of synonyms or looking at examples. Factoring these various needs into Table 11.2 gives us Table 11.3, which illustrates clearly the inter-relationships between the types of information in a dictionary and levels of language ability.
Table 11.3 Types of dictionary information accessed by novice, intermediate and advanced users
| Types of information | Listening | Speaking | Reading | Writing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation | Novice Intermediate Advanced |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
||
| Written representation |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
||
| Meaning | Novice Intermediate Advanced |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
Novice Intermediate Advanced |
| Usage | Intermediate Advanced |
Intermediate Advanced |
11.3.3 Choice of Language for Learner's Dictionaries
In addition to the type of information that should be provided by a dictionary, it is important to consider how that information is presented. For instance, word meaning can be presented by definition or by translation equivalent; pronunciation can be presented by phonetic symbols or by audio recording; information about etymology might be included, or synonyms and antonyms; illustrations might be provided for some entries; and so on.
The choice of language is, of course, particularly consequential. Learner's dictionaries can be monolingual or bilingual. The distinction has been widely discussed in academia (Underhill Reference Underhill and Ilson1985, Thompson Reference Thompson1987, Amritavalli Reference Amritavalli1999). Proponents of monolingual dictionaries have stressed the benefit of providing the learner with greater exposure to the second language and preventing the learner from forming simplistic equivalences between words and their translations. Proponents of bilingual dictionaries argue that they are more practicable for learners, especially at non-advanced levels. One critical point that has been neglected, however, is that dictionaries also need to be organised differently for learners at different levels. Definitional information, for example, needs to be presented differently to beginners than to more advanced students.
For bilingual dictionaries, the direction of lookup needs to be considered. It is often assumed that native speakers only need a foreign-to-native dictionary so they can look up words they encounter but do not know. For learners of Chinese, this would mean a Chinese-to-English dictionary that provides them with Chinese pronunciation and English meanings. In fact, such a dictionary is designed mainly to serve listening and reading – the receptive skills. For speaking and writing, the useful direction (again, for learners of Chinese) is English-to-Chinese, so English concepts can be translated into Chinese. However, many English-to-Chinese dictionaries provide English pronunciation rather than Chinese pronunciation, revealing themselves to be intended for learners of English rather than Chinese. There are far fewer English-to-Chinese dictionaries for learners of Chinese than Chinese-to-English – a revealing fact. For all four skills, the ideal learner's dictionary offers both directions in a single volume, though for more comprehensive coverage separate volumes are needed.
11.4 The Micro-Structure of a Chinese Learner's Dictionary
We have argued for a learner's dictionary that can serve different levels of proficiency and different language skills. We can consider the form of a Chinese learner's dictionary by examining a hypothetical entry for the word shengqi ‘angry’. For the purpose of this chapter, we shall focus on the most common definition of the word, i.e., ‘to be unhappy because of something unpleasant’ (Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan yuyan yanjiusuo cidian bianjishi 2009:1219).
As Table 11.3 shows, the novice's competence in all four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) is centred on words. Information on usage can be kept to a minimum. Ideally, each lexical entry should indicate pronunciation, written form, part-of-speech and meaning. Learners of Chinese can be assumed to have learned Hanyu Pinyin (the state sponsored system of Mandarin transcription). If they have done so, they can use alphabetical lookup functions for words whose pronunciation they know. Otherwise, to find entries headed by characters, they must use the traditional method of looking up a character by radical (or one of the other less commonly used methods based on form). In any case, a dictionary needs both Hanyu Pinyin and character representation.
For speaking or writing, the novice learner may search his limited learned repertoire for a Chinese word or expression that comes close to expressing the intended meaning. If he does so, there is often a need to check the pronunciation (especially the tone) of the word or the precise form of the character by which it is represented. This is often done with a Chinese-to-English dictionary, but even a novice can do the same with a Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary. However, for those productive skills, the novice will often turn to a dictionary with an English word in mind, in which case the direction of lookup is English-to-Chinese. For speech, Hanyu Pinyin provides the information; for writing, it is the form of the character. Using the word shengqi ‘angry’ as an example, the proposed micro-structure of a novice level learner's dictionary is set forth in Table 11.4.
Table 11.4 Proposed micro-structure of a novice level learner's dictionary
| Proficiency level | Receptive skills | Productive skills | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Reading | Speaking | Writing | |
| Novice level learner | shēngqì adj. = angry |
生气shēngqì adj. = angry |
angry adj. to be angry =shēngqì to be angry with sb = duì mŏurén shēngqì |
angry adj. to be angry= 生气 to be angry with sb = 对某人生气 |
| (Chinese-English novice level learner’s dictionary) | (English-Chinese novice level learner’s dictionary) | |||
| shēngqì 生气adj. = angry |
angry adj. to be angry =shēngqì 生气 to be angry with sb = duì mŏurén shēngqì 对某人生气 |
|||
The entry for shengqi ‘angry’ in Table 11.4 addresses the learning needs with respect to each of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing – further classified as receptive or productive. Both Chinese–English and English–Chinese subsections are included.
Intermediate level learners, who are able to listen, speak, read and write at the sentence and, to a degree, the paragraph level, already have some communicative abilities. Like their novice brethren, they also need to find out (or confirm) pronunciation, character form and definition from time to time. But more than that, they need to ascertain usage. So their dictionary should include notes on usage and examples; and because those are likely to be quite complicated, they would need to be in the users' native language – English in this case.
Thus, for listening and reading, in addition to the usual dictionary functions, a learner's dictionary will need fine-grained semantic information for receptive functions – listening and reading; and they will need collocational and usage functions for the productive skills of speaking and writing. These functions are illustrated in Table 11.5.
Table 11.5 Proposed micro-structure of an intermediate level learner's dictionary
| Proficiency level | Receptive skills | Productive skills | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Reading | Speaking | Writing | |
| Intermediate level learner | shēngqì 生气adj. = get angry; take offence 当你生气时，会感到很不高兴 |
生气shēngqì adj. = get angry; take offence 当你生气时，会感到很不高兴 |
angry adj. to be angry = shēngqì |
angry adj. to be angry = 生气 |
| 妈妈很生气 (Māma hěn shēngqì.) Mother is very angry. |
妈妈很生气 Mother is very angry. |
Mother is very angry. Māma hěn shēngqì. (妈妈很生气) |
Mother is very angry. (妈妈很生气) |
|
| 你在生谁的气? (Nǐ zài shēng shuí de qì?) Who are you angry with? |
你在生谁的气? Who are you angry with? |
to be angry with sb = shēng mŏurén de qì (生某人的气) |
to be angry with sb = 生某人的气 |
|
| Who are you angry with? Nǐ zài shēng shuí de qì? (你在生谁的气?) |
Who are you angry with? (你在生谁的气?) |
|||
| （Chinese-English intermediate level learner’s dictionary） | （English-Chinese intermediate level learner’s dictionary） | |||
| 生气shēngqì adj. = get angry; take offence 当你生气时，会感到很不高兴。 |
angry to be angry = 生气shēngqì, (adj.) |
|||
| 妈妈很生气 (Māma hěn shēngqì.) Mother is very angry. |
Mother is very angry. 妈妈很生气。 Māma hěn shēngqì. |
|||
| 你在生谁的气? (Nǐ zài shēng shuí de qì?) Who are you angry with? |
to be angry with sb = 生某人的气shēng mŏurén de qì Who are you angry with? 你在生谁的气? Nǐ zài shēng shuí de qì? |
|||
Advanced level learners have strong language skills and are able to initiate communication in authentic settings. However, they are not native speakers and do not have native speakers' intuitions about usage. So even an advanced learner's dictionary will not be the same as a dictionary for use by native speakers.
A native speaker will need to use a dictionary to check on the pronunciation, written representation or meaning of highly specialised language, whether it is lower register, such as slang or jargon, or higher register, such as formal or specialised language – rare words, archaic usage, etc.
The advanced learner, however, will need to check much more often, as his or her intuitions will be far less reliable. He or she will be uncertain about the connotations of a word, for example: is renao closer to ‘bustling’ or ‘noisy’? Is tiaopi ‘mischievous’ or ‘badly behaved’? Adjectives are particularly problematic in this regard. Educated speakers of Chinese will perceive the connotative value of these words fairly reliably; advanced learners, however, will frequently apply native language values to the target language word – renao is, literally ‘hot and noisy’ so renao is derogatory, etc.
A dictionary for advanced users will need to indicate connotative value (positive or negative), register (slang, formal) and genre (legal, business, economics, etc.). The same can be said for a dictionary for native speakers, but in the case of a learner's dictionary, the coverage needs to be extended into far more basic vocabulary.
In many respects, the same distinctions should be indicated even for intermediate level users. The difference is more quantitative than qualitative: assuming they are learning ‘at their level’, intermediate users should encounter a narrower range of words than advanced users. At any rate, in a dictionary geared to advanced levels, the entry for shengqi ‘angry’ would include the information shown in Table 11.6.
Table 11.6 Proposed micro-structure of an advanced level learner's dictionary
| Proficiency level | Receptive skills | Productive skills | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Reading | Speaking | Writing | |
| Advanced level learner | shēngqì 生气adj. 因不合心意而不愉快 |
生气shēngqì adj. 因不合心意而不愉快 |
angry adj. to be angry = 生气 |
angry adj. to be angry = 生气 |
| 妈妈很生气 | 妈妈很生气 | 妈妈生气/发火/发怒了 | 妈妈生气/发火/发怒了 妈妈很恼火/愤怒 妈妈勃然大怒 |
|
| 你在生谁的气? | 你在生谁的气? | 有什么好生气的？ | ||
| 有什么好生气的？ (You don’t have to care.) |
有什么好生气的？ (You don’t have to care.) |
to be angry with sb = 生某人的气 你在生谁的气? 你生得什么 （哪门子）气？ |
to be angry with sb = 生某人的气 你在生谁的气? 他对这件事大为恼火 对这件事，他颇为光火 |
|
| 你生得什么 （哪门子）气？ (It is none of your business.) |
你生得什么 （哪门子）气？ (It is none of your business.) |
|||
| （Chinese-English advanced level learner’s dictionary） | （English-Chinese advanced level learner’s dictionary） | |||
| 生气shēngqì adj. 因不合心意而不愉快 |
angry adj. to be angry = 生气 |
|||
| 妈妈很生气 | ||||
| 你在生谁的气? | 妈妈生气/发火/发怒了 有什么好生气的？ 妈妈很恼火/愤怒 |
|||
| 有什么好生气的？ (You don’t have to care.) |
妈妈勃然大怒 | |||
| 你生得什么（哪门子）气？ (It is none of your business.) |
to be angry with sb = 生某人的气 你在生谁的气? 你生得什么（哪门子）气？ 他对这件事大为恼火 对这件事，他颇为光火 |
|||
11.5 An Integrative Framework for a Learner's Dictionary Geared to the Development of the Four Language Skills
In this chapter, using the entry for shengqi ‘angry’ as an example, we have considered the compilation of a dictionary that serves learners at various levels of language proficiency (novice, intermediate and advanced) and acknowledges the different requirements of the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Table 11.7 summarises the points made and provides an additional framework for the proposed dictionary.
Table 11.7 An integrative framework for the compilation of learner's dictionaries and development of language skills
| Type of learner's dictionary | Receptive skills | Productive skills | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Reading | Speaking | Writing | |
| Novice level learner's dictionary | Lexical entry (Hanyu Pinyin), word class = English notes | Lexical entry (Chinese characters + Hanyu Pinyin), word class = English notes | Lexical entry (English), word class = Chinese notes (Chinese characters) | |
| Intermediate level learner's dictionary | Lexical entry (Hanyu Pinyin), word class = Chinese and English notes Chinese usage sentence example; Hanyu Pinyin sentence example; English translation of sentence example |
Lexical entry (English), word class = Chinese notes (Hanyu Pinyin) | Lexical entry (English), word class, usage = Chinese notes (Chinese characters) English usage sentence example; Chinese sentence example translation |
|
| Advanced level learner's dictionary | Lexical entry (Hanyu Pinyin), word class = Chinese notes Chinese usage sentence example; special usage sentence example + English translation |
Lexical entry (English), word class, usage = Chinese notes (Hanyu Pinyin) English usage sentence example; Pinyin sentence example translation; Chinese sentence example translation |
Lexical entry (English), word class = Chinese notes Synonymous usage comparison (oral form) |
Lexical entry (English), word class = Chinese notes Synonymous usage comparison (written form) |
The integrative approach summarised in Table 11.7 concurs with Svensen (Reference Svensen2009), who suggested that learner's dictionaries should be compiled in sets of four or even eight volumes, with each addressing specific learning tasks. Though there may be practical reasons for pursuing a less ambitious programme, the acknowledgement of the goals of the integrative framework will at least ensure that future dictionaries for learners serve the actual needs of their users.
