Dictionary Use as Word Solving Strategy (WSS)

Abstract

L2 learners may try to pick up the unknown word’s meaning from a dictionary. Many different factors, such as how important the meaning of the word is in the passage, the number of unknown words, and the reason the students are working on it, etc., affect the frequency of the student’s use of the dictionary for help. However, trying to guess the meaning of the unknown word from the context before consulting a dictionary is more beneficial since this may help the learners to pick the correct meaning relevant to the text. Using a dictionary should be limited to those unguessable words whose meanings can hinder the learner’s understanding.