Discussion and Pedagogical Implications

Common findings can now be summarized about electronic lexicons from a broad reading ofresearch in the field by Kobayashi (33), Laufer and Hill (44), and Hill and Laufer (45), combined with the author’s findings as follows:

1. PEDs facilitate L2 learning rather than hindering it. Regardless of whether they are using electronic or print dictionaries, successful students use effective lexical processing strategies. Moreover, PEDs facilitate dictionary use. Therefore, the use of PEDs should not be discouraged.

2. Rather than discouraging the use ofPEDs, teachers could advise students to use a PED and a PD for different purposes.

Dictionary use and contextual guessing are not mutually exclusive. Successful learners use both dictionaries and contextual guessing more often than less successful learners. Dictionary use should not be frowned on for the reason that it hinders contextual guessing.

3. Many LPSs involving dictionary use and guessing are helpful for both vocabulary learning and reading. These strategies should be taught to students.

a. Teachers should give students instruction in how to use a dictionary effectively, particularly how to look for a variety of information and what dictionaries are available.

b. Guessing is also important for vocabulary learning and reading. Teachers should give students instruction in how to guess at word meaning using wider and immediate contexts.

c. The ability to use a dictionary selectively is also important. Teachers should instruct students when to use a dictionary and when to turn to other LPSs.

5. Some strategies are more important for vocabulary learning than reading comprehension, and some strategies are more important for reading comprehension than for vocabulary learning. These strategies should be taught considering the desired skills and purposes of a reader or language learner (29,33).

6. Successful language learners tend to use a much wider variety of effective lexical and text processing strategies than do less proficient, unsuccessful learners, regardless of whether they use electronic or print dictionaries.

7. Teachers often observe that the more frequently EDs are used in a consistent manner with regular archiving and activation of new word information, and the more systematically new vocabulary is used and reviewed, that retention results are better.

Quality and amount of review techniques or media functions used by a learner largely determine both their degree of retention and speed and percentage of retrieval of new target terms and language forms. Reaction and retrieval times can be improved by giving more recent and frequent encounters with target terms, helping to reactivate them by building further memory traces. Along with recycling and review techniques to improve recognition and prediction skills, reassessing of learning must be done regularly with frequent individual feedback to maximize motivation and acquisition. CALL should capitalize on these language learning insights to design maximally efficient vocabulary learning programs for use both online and with portable devices.

When constructing or using online vocabulary learning programs, these same crucial vocabulary learning steps and strategies need to be encouraged by specific questions in text and functions used by the programs. There should also be a tracking or feedback mechanism to help teachers monitor learning, and to guide and prompt learners not to forget to do any of these essential phases of lexical processing.