Jordanian EFL Teachers’ Attitudes towards Dictionaries and their Use in EFL Classrooms

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to investigate EFL university teachers' attitudes about the importance of the dictionary as an effective learning tool. It also aims at identifying the type of dictionaries preferred by teachers and the types of skills that EFL learners can be improved by the use of the dictionary. Forty EFL teachers responded to a written questionnaire, which included 22 statements. The findings generally revealed that participants do have positive attitudes towards the dictionary as a learning aid. Moreover, the findings revealed that electronic dictionaries are preferred over paper-based ones. However, contrary to our expectations, the findings revealed that although EFL university teachers appreciate the importance of the dictionary, they do not pass this positivity to their students and that they believe using a dictionary is the students' responsibility. The study concluded that by incorporating dictionary usage into classroom practice regularly, EFL teachers will raise their students' awareness of the type of information they can find in the dictionary, how they can use it to serve academic purposes, and become more autonomous learners.

Keywords: Communication, dictionary, EFL teachers, pedagogy.

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-26-07

Publication date:September 30^th 2020