Książki/rozdziały (WA)
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Browsing Książki/rozdziały (WA) by Author "Dziemianko, Anna"
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Item Dictionary, lexicon, glossary, wordbook or thesaurus? The usefulness of OALDCE7 and OLT for choosing the right word(Afûk, 2010) Dziemianko, AnnaThe aim of the present study is to investigate the usefulness of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (7th edition, OALDCE7) and the Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus (OLT) for discriminating between synonyms. The paper is underpinned by empirical research, in which 73 advanced learners of English took part. In the experiment, words appropriate for given contexts had to be indicated in different synonym sets. The results reveal that neither dictionary significantly shortened the time needed to complete the task. Nonetheless, the use of OLT much more often resulted in successful synonym selection. Interestingly, synonym notes, present in both dictionaries, did not affect the subjects’ choices. Besides, different information was usually referred to in the two dictionaries. In OALDCE7 the subjects paid attention most often to definitions, while in OLT – to examples. The results of the supplementary questionnaire suggest that the students’ familiarity with the two dictionary types could not have affected their performance. They were nonetheless more satisfied with their results when they had OLT at their disposal rather than OALDCE7. Yet, they were critical of the arrangement of synonyms in the OLT synonym clusters, where the alphabetical order, rather than frequency, would be a better solution.Item Noun and verb codes in English monolingual dictionaries for foreign learners: A study of usefulness in the Polish context(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012-09) Dziemianko, AnnaThe book is devoted to noun and verb coding systems in monolingual dictionaries for foreign learners of English. It opens with an overview of noun and verb codes in learners’ dictionaries published in the years 1938–2010. Tracing the evolution of coding systems for the two parts of speech throughout the history of English pedagogical lexicography leads to the identification of two approaches to coding the syntax of nouns and verbs. Mainstream and alternative coding systems are distinguished, and it is they that inspired the empirical study presented in the next part of the book. Around 900 native speakers of Polish took part in the experiment conducted to assess the usefulness of the identified systems of codes. Besides the subjects’ proficiency in English, the following variables were included: degree of syntactic congruence between English and Polish lexical items, presence of codes, form of codes and part of speech. The participants were given a test in which they had to complete partial English translations of 12 Polish sentences using specific nouns and verbs in appropriate syntactic constructions. The nouns and verbs were headwords of dictionary entries compiled for the purpose of the study and manipulated accordingly. The obtained results make it possible to judge whether syntactic codes in learners’ dictionaries are necessary, how their user-friendliness is affected by the selected variables and whether the global character of pedagogical dictionaries of English should be changed, considering syntactic anisomorphism between English and users’ native language. Apart from codes, attention is paid to examples, the other vehicle for syntactic information in the supplied entries.Item Noun and verb codes in pedagogical dictionaries of English: User-friendliness revisited(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2008) Dziemianko, AnnaThe aim of the present paper is to assess the user-friendliness of noun and verb coding systems in pedagogical dictionaries of English, measured by the frequency with which relevant information properly used in a productive task is located in codes. The influence of the following independent variables on the user-friendliness of codes is studied: the degree of syntactic congruity between Polish lexical items and English headwords, the form of codes, the grammatical category of headwords and the level of dictionary users’ proficiency in English. To investigate the influence of the form of codes on their user-friendliness, codes in noun and verb entries were divided into mainstream – referring to formal categories, transparent and prevalent in pedagogical dictionaries, and alternative – which, used very sparingly in today’s dictionaries, include reference to sentence functions (verbs) or many quite opaque symbols (nouns).Conclusions are drawn on the basis of an experiment in which almost 900 Polish subjects, advanced and intermediate in English, were involved in a translation task in which they had to use English noun and verb entries compiled for the purpose of the study. The results show that differences in grammar between Polish and English did not affect the consultation of either noun or verb codes. Strangely enough, alternative, and seemingly more demanding codes were strongly favored by the intermediate subjects, and – in the case of verbs – also the advanced ones. The part of speech played a very significant role at the higher level of proficiency, but was not important for the reference to codes by the less advanced. Finally, the higher level of proficiency in English made the subjects appreciate codes more fully, which may be seen as an argument for maintaining the over 70-year tradition of encoding syntactic information in pedagogical dictionaries of English.Item On the non-Africanness of 'A Dictionary of South African English'(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2007) Dziemianko, AnnaItem Research into dictionary use by Polish learners of English: Some methodological considerations(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2006) Dziemianko, Anna; Lew, RobertItem Single-clause when-definitions: Take three(Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, 2012-08) Lew, Robert; Dziemianko, AnnaIn our EURALEX 2006 contribution (Dziemianko and Lew 2006), we focused on the practice of defining certain abstract nouns by means of a when-clause, which seems to have gained much popularity in recent years in some major monolingual English learners’ dictionaries. We tested the hypothesis that a definition of this format would fare worse than the classic analytical definition in terms of conveying information on the syntactic class of the lemma. Experiments with Polish high-intermediate and advanced learners of English provided strong empirical support for this hypothesis. However, the testing instruments employed in the 2006 study used a relatively restricted microstructure, with just headwords and definitions. In the present follow-up study, we attempt to verify the results using a more complete microstructure to assess the strength of the effect of single-clause when-definitions on syntactic class identification in the presence of other potential indicators of syntactic class. Below we summarize the findings of the whole series of studies of this contentious defining format.Item Item When you are explaining the meaning of a word: The effect of abstract noun definition format on syntactic class identification(Edizioni dell'Orso, 2006) Dziemianko, Anna; Lew, RobertRecently, a new defining format has been gaining in popularity in abstract noun entries of monolingual English learners’ dictionaries: a single-clause when-definition. The present study attempts to investigate the role of the definition of this format, placed in a complete microstructure, in conveying information on the syntactic class of nominal headwords. To achieve this aim, tests were designed and run on several groups of Polish learners of English at the intermediate level. Balanced parallel forms were employed, where single-clause when-definitions were contrasted with their closest analytical analogs in full dictionary entries. It was found that both the new and the classical definition formats resulted in comparably frequent correct POS identification of the headword nouns. This is in stark contrast to the results yielded by Lew and Dziemianko’s research (in press), which has inspired the present analysis, where the definition formats were investigated in isolation from other components of the microstructure.