THE OPINIONS OF MIDDLE SCHOOL 8TH GRADERS ABOUT ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY USAGE

• Main Authors: Tuba KAPLAN, Fatma YILDIZ
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sada Institute of Art and Language Studies 2018-01-01
• Series: Ulakbilge: Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi
• Subjects: Vocabulary Knowledge; Electronic Dictionary; Hard Copy Dictionary.
• Online Access: http://www.ulakbilge.com/makale/pdf/1512646343.pdf

Nowadays, technology has become a part of education life and has been often used along with the proliferation of computers and the Internet. One of the reflections of technology in education life is electronic dictionaries. Students are in need of looking up the words that they do not know the meaning of or can not make out from the context. Electronic dictionaries step in at this point. The aim of this research is to reveal the opinions of 8th graders about electronic dictionary usage. 35 students participated in the research. Phenomology was applied as a qualitative research pattern in the research. The data of the research was collected via semi-structured interview form. Content analysis was used in order to analyze the obtained data. First the data was coded and then categories which explain the data broadly were composed. According to the results of the research, students find electronic dictionary usage faster and more practical than the hard copy ones and think that electronic dictionaries contain more words than the hard copy ones. On the other hand, some participants prefer hard copy dictionaries to electronic ones because of their cheapness, practicality and easiness to carry. Besides, let alone using electronic dictionaries, it was confirmed that there are some students who have never heard of that device before.