Assessing The Effectiveness Of Two Definition Styles (PD & SD) On The Comprehension And Use Of New Words

As the most common type of reference works, dictionaries are books that describe meanings of words or phrases. In other words, the essential function of dictionaries is giving definitions. Depending on the nature, scope and intended users of different kinds of dictionaries, definitions are formulated in different styles, that is, by taking different approaches and choosing different types of languages. Apparently, different definition styles lead to different influences to the effect of definitions on dictionaries and further on language learners. Research on choosing appropriate definition styles for dictionaries and the effect of different definition styles on language learners is, therefore, of indispensable value to lexicographical theories.The present thesis is an empirical study assessing the effect of two definition styles, i.e., phrasal definitions (PD) and sentence definitions (SD), on the comprehension and use of new words, with special reference to English learner's dictionaries and English majors in China. Comparing the two definition styles, the thesis elaborates their main features and concludes the following with authentic examples from dictionaries:The main strengths of PD are substitutability and conciseness and they also have weaknesses such as user-unfriendliness and inadequate information about contexts.As for SD, the main strengths are easy availability of contextual information, good comprehensibility of defining text, naturalness and informality of defining language. Their main weaknesses are verbosity of defining formulations, communication barriers created by the explanatory jargon and over-restriction. Furthermore, the thesis touches upon the influence of SD on traditional dictionaries.The thesis reports a comparative evaluation of PD of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) and SD of Collins COBUILD Learner's Dictionary (COBUILD). Fifty-three intermediate to advanced learners of EFL saw single unfamiliar words and a definition for each of these unfamiliar words in one and the other style and performed the tasks of comprehension and production. The results of the experiment suggest that SD helped more than PD in comprehension and production, especially much more in production and the combination of PD and SD helped much more than PD alone, but just slightly more than SD alone.