"Paper dictionaries are sooo outdated!!!" - A study on Norwegian pupils' look-up strategies in the English subject

Abstract

This study investigates Norwegian pupils’ choice of look-up strategies in the English subject, and why they use these specific strategies. Additional questions are: -Do the pupils use the same strategies at home, as they do in school? -Where have they obtained/learned these strategies? -Are the pupils competent enough to evaluate the quality of the results generated from the strategies? Our methods of data collection were interviews and a questionnaire. 21 informants participated in our study; one class of 20 pupils in a lower secondary school in Tromsø and their English teacher. All 20 pupils participated in our questionnaire, while only four of them were singled out for interviewing. The teacher were also interviewed. Through our research methods we found that Google Search Engine and Google Translate are the dominant look-up strategies amongst the pupils, and that the main reasons for using these specific strategies are their ability to be 1) fast, 2) effective and 3) generate quality results. The results show that the strategies are mostly self-obtained, even though several pupils state that they have learned them from the teacher/school. The results both from our interviews and from our questionnaire indicate that the pupils’ ability to evaluate the quality of the strategies varies within the class. It is argued in compliance with relevant theory and the results that the ability to evaluate the quality of the results generated from the strategies is dependent on the individual pupil’s proficiency level in the English language. Results indicate that the pupils with a high proficiency level are more capable of verifying quality compared to pupils with mediocre or a lesser proficiency level. Our findings are not transferable to the whole population of Norwegian pupils, but we have received valuable insight in the researched area and found tendencies which can be discussed in correlation with bigger populations. However, we argue that the results from our questionnaire can be transferred to the rest of the classes in the same lower secondary school, as one whole class participated in this method.