Wydział Anglistyki (WA)/ Faculty of English
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Browsing Wydział Anglistyki (WA)/ Faculty of English by Subject "access"
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Item Dictionary users in the digital revolution(2014-08-30) Lew, Robert; De Schryver, Gilles-MauriceThis contribution examines the digital revolution in lexicography from the perspective of the dictionary user. We begin with an observation that in the information age the status of the dictionary is changing, and so are patterns of user behaviour, with general internet search engines encroaching on the grounds traditionally reserved for lexicographic queries. Clearly, we need to know more about user behaviour in the digital environment, and for this we need to harness user research, to find out how the increasingly flexible and adaptive lexical reference tools of the future need to behave to best accommodate user needs. We summarize the existing findings and show in what ways digital dictionaries are already able to serve users better than their paper predecessors. The challenge to produce efficient and effective dictionaries is best seen in the context of dictionary users’ reference skills, which now tend to overlap with digital literacy. We conclude with a possible vision of the future.Item How can we make electronic dictionaries more effective?(Oxford University Press, 2012) Lew, RobertThis chapter examines some of the ways in which electronic dictionaries of today can be further improved so as to serve human users better. The focus is on two major areas: effective access to lexicographic data and novel types of data. In terms of access, I consider how electronic dictionaries can help in situations when users are unsure about the spelling of the word they want o lookup. Two further issues discussed are efficient entry navigation and access to multi-word expressions. In the second part of the chapter I discuss the degree to which the use of multimedia can benefit electronic dictionaries. This includes audio (recorded or synthesized), static pictorials, as well as animations and videos. Preliminary research indicates that not all of the above may be equally useful for dictionary users.Item How Helpful Are Online English Learners' Dictionaries in Dealing with Misspellings?(2012-07-11T10:01:02Z) Lew, Robert; Mitton, RogerThis study looks at how well the leading monolingual English learners’ dictionaries in their online versions cope with misspelled words as search terms. Seven such dictionaries (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, free online version; Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, premium subscription version; Merriam-Webster's English Learner's Online Dictionary; Macmillan English Dictionary Online; Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary; Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary; and Google English Dictionary) are tested on a corpus of misspellings produced by Polish, Japanese, and Finnish learners of English. The performance of the dictionaries varies widely, but is in general disappointing. In a large proportion of cases, the dictionaries fail to supply the intended word, and when they do, they do not place it at the top of the list of suggested alternatives. Results are then compared with those from one year ago for the same dictionaries and the same misspellings. A detailed analysis follows, identifying some of the mechanisms behind the failures in identifying and correcting misspellings. The success rates of the dictionaries are compared with that of an experimental context-free spellchecker developed by the second author, and the spellchecker is found to be markedly superior. The data are subjected to a cluster analysis to see if the dictionaries can be grouped based solely on their performance. The article concludes with suggestions on how to improve the performance of the spellchecking facilities in online dictionaries.Item Not the word I wanted? How online English learners' dictionaries deal with misspelled words(Trojina, Institute for Applied Slovene Studies, 2011-11) Lew, Robert; Mitton, RogerThis study looks at how well the leading monolingual English learners’ dictionaries in their online versions cope with misspelled words as search terms. Six such dictionaries are tested on a corpus of misspellings produced by Polish, Japanese, and Finnish learners of English. The performance of the dictionaries varies widely, but is in general poor. For a large proportion of cases, dictionaries fail to supply the intended word, and when they do, they do not place it at the top of the list of suggested alternatives. We attempt to identify some of the mechanisms behind the failures and make further suggestions that might improve the success rate of dictionary interfaces when identifying and correcting misspellings. To see whether it is possible to do better than the dictionaries tested, we compare the success rates of the dictionaries with that of an experimental context-free spellchecker developed by the second author, and find the latter to be markedly superior.Item The Web as corpus versus traditional corpora: Their relative utility for linguists and language learners(continuum, 2009) Lew, RobertThe paper compares systematically the utility of specially-made text corpora and the textual resources of the World Wide Web for linguists and language learners. Different modes of access are discussed, including via dedicated concordancing software, web-concordancing and the universal search engine.Item Why one and two do not make three: Dictionary form revisited(2012-11) Dziemianko, Anna