Learners dictionary for Spanish as a foreign language from the teachers’ perspective

Abstract

The monolingual learner's dictionary is a vocabulary-teaching tool in a foreign language. Through it, students can learn not only the words of a language but also everything they entail: meaning, written form, and grammar information, as well as syntactic, pragmatic, and cultural aspects. The aim of the study was to identify the use of these dictionaries and the perception that teachers of Spanish as a foreign language have of their utility in teaching. Through a questionnaire administered to 152 teachers and interviews held with 14, it was found that although teachers consider the dictionary as a useful tool, they do not use it frequently in the classroom. Dictionary consultations primarily focus on meaning or spelling, neglecting important information such as pragmatic, cultural, and grammatical information, among others. Moreover, the most used monolingual dictionaries are not learner's dictionaries, but general ones, which are not entirely suitable for non-native speakers. The study concludes by recommending more training for teachers on the effective use of dictionaries in the ELE classroom.