On Pictorial Illustrations Of Verbs In English-Chinese Learner's Dictionaries

Recently, a wide diversity of pictorial illustrations has been found in more and more English monolingual learner's dictionaries, and this new design feature has been welcomed by native dictionary users and EFL learners alike. However, unfortunately, the significance of pictorial illustrations has not been fully realized by bilingual lexicographers, as most of the bilingual dictionaries do not contain pictorial illustrations. Against this background, this thesis aims to study the necessity of including pictorial illustrations in bilingual learner's dictionaries and then explore the general guidelines governing the design of pictorial illustrations, especially those of verbs.This thesis approaches the first research goal by seeking both conceptual rationales as well as empirical evidence for the inclusion of pictorial illustrations in English-Chinese learner's dictionaries. For theoretical support, the author resorts to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) to elucidate the cognitive mechanism of pictures and texts in the human mind. The research findings show that pictures do help to increase learners'overall understanding.In order to obtain empirical data, the author conducted a questionnaire survey and a vocabulary test which involved 121 subjects with intermediate level of English proficiency. The questionnaire survey mainly investigated the subjects'experience, beliefs, consulting habits and preferences concerning pictorial illustrations of verbs in bilingual learner's dictionaries. In the vocabulary test, the subjects were divided into two groups and were given a vocabulary test of English verbs. They could answer the questions using only the mini-dictionaries specially prepared by the author. One group was offered a mini-dictionary that contained pictorial illustrations, whereas the other group was offered another version of the mini-dictionary that contained only words. The test results revealed that the former subject group significantly outperformed the other one. This empirical evidence proves that learners can master verbs better with the help of pictorial illustrations.Then, the author proceeds to explore the principles for designing pictorial illustrations that can help learners better understand the meanings and usages of English verbs. By studying the cognitive components of verbs and taking into account EFL learners'preferences and expectations, the author put forward several guidelines pertaining to the form and content of pictorial illustrations of verbs.As regards the form of pictorial illustrations of verbs, the author proposes the following three suggestions:1) The use of group, captioned and scenic illustrations should be encouraged in bilingual learner's dictionaries;2) Pictorial illustrations are better placed next to the corresponding dictionary entries;3) The coloring of the pictorial illustrations is not as important as their graphic design.Concerning the content of pictorial illustrations of verbs, the author proposes the following three suggestions:1) Pictorial illustrations of verbs should serve to display macro-events;2) Pictorial illustrations of verbs should exclude extraneous information;3) Pictorial illustrations of verbs should add cues to highlight certain semantic components.This research has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it is an attempt at integrating the CTML into the making of pedagogical dictionaries, providing a new perspective on improving the informativity of such dictionaries. Also, cognitive semantics is also introduced into this thesis as an important framework for deciding what kinds of semantic components should be included in the pictorial illustrations for verbs, and how they should be presented. Practically, this thesis proposes a set of basic guidelines for the design of pictorial illustrations of verbs, thus ensuring the quality of such pictorial illustrations so that they can better serve the purpose of assisting the learning of English verbs.