The Effectiveness Of Thesaurus For Production In Chinese EFL Learners' English Learning

Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners are always confronted with such difficulties in their producing of English as following: (1) They are trapped by a certain word for which they could not find appropriate expression to match and only have a L1 concept; (2) Or for the L1 concept, although an alternative is conjured up, but it is not the perfect choice. For example, when learners want to find an exact word to describe Chinese expression "大摇大摆地走", but only with a Chinese concept "走" without an equivalent English word or with an English word such as "walk" in brain, how can they settle the problem? Under these situations, several word-finding methods are under choice—a thesaurus, a synonym dictionary and a Chinese-English dictionary (CED) are all our consulting reference works.The thesis intends to investigate the effectiveness of thesaurus for production in Chinese EFL learners' English learning. Based on the research results, an improved thesaurus model, which fits the need of Chinese EFL learners, is proposed. It attempts to find the answers to the following questions: (1) Which type's dictionary is more useful for English learners' production task? (2) To what extent three types dictionaries can help English learners with their production task? (3) Do students prefer one type of dictionaries over others for written production?In order to fulfill the above-mentioned aims, the thesis deals with the research from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In addition, an empirical study (a translation test) is conducted with three different levels of Chinese learners as its subjects, with these three different dictionaries as the research targets, (a) Longman Language Activator (LLA); (b) A New Age Chinese-English Dictionary (ANACED); (c) Cassells Modern English-Chinese Dictionary of Synonyms & Related Words (CMECDOSRW), to compare the usefulness of three types of dictionaries by Chinese EFL learners in translating Chinese into English. The results are analyzed according to the correct translations scores and the ratings of participants for these three dictionaries. The main findings are summarized as follows:Firstly, from the results obtained from our empirical study, it was proved that thesauri play a role that cannot be substituted for by the other two types of dictionaries for production. It proved itself to be effective in overall correct translation and in 'complex' words. But the statistics achieved were not high enough as anticipated.Secondly, the correlation analysis indicated that although the effectiveness of three dictionaries for production can be ranked as the following sequence (from the most useful to the least useful): thesaurus, CED, and synonym dictionary, no significant statistics are found between the scores and three dictionaries. Therefore, each dictionary has its own limits in helping Chinese EFL learners with their English production.Thirdly, as for the preferences of the subjects for three dictionaries, thesaurus was evaluated as the most useful. But it wasn't as popular among elementary proficiency level's learners as among intermediated and advanced proficiency level. The results revealed that learners from different levels display different preferences for these three dictionaries.Lastly, the results revealed that there are still some limitations existing in present learners' thesauri. It can be concluded that the thesauri needs improvement. Based on the above results, an improved model of thesaurus, which fits Chinese English learners, was proposed. An entry in such a model would include the following elements:(1) It should be bilingual, including L2-L1 translations;(2) Information such as pronunciation, definitions, examples, collocation, etc. about each translation option should be offered;(3) It should include such simple words as Laufer called, which actually are the most difficult words for they are rarely used in daily life;(4) Additional L1 meanings of L2 translations;(5) For the limit of space, an electronic version is needed.