Acceso usuarios
, Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas (secret.) , María Dolores Fernández de la Torre Madueño (voc.) , Francisco Sánchez Benedito (voc.) , Arsenio Jesús Moya Guijarro (voc.) Esta tesis parte del hecho comprobado de que los alumnos españoles que están cursando la asignatura de lengua inglesa en la Educación Secundaria adolecen de una gran falta de rigor en la realización de sus trabajos escritos. Entre los recursos de que disponen y utilizan para su elaboración se encuentra el diccionario bilingüe. Sin embargo, advertimos que el uso que los estudiantes realizan de los mismos no repercute de manera adecuada/supone-se traduce en una mejora en dichas producciones escritas. A través de la administración de diferentes pruebas para recoger datos sobre sus habilidades de uso, hemos constatado que los alumnos no utilizan adecuadamente la información contenida en el diccionario. Una de las principales razones es debido a su falta de conocimiento de dicha herramienta, puesto que ignoran gran parte de la información y en qué medida les puede ser de utilidad. Por tanto, la hipótesis que proponemos en este trabajo es la siguiente: si los alumnos reciben instrucción sistemática en el uso del diccionario bilingüe, se beneficiarán de la ayuda que éste les puede proporcionar, concretamente en cuanto al aprendizaje y ampliación de su vocabulario, la realización de las tareas escritas y la contribución a la mejora general de su competencia lingüística. Además, el uso progresivo del diccionario en las tareas de aprendizaje fomentará la autonomía en el aprendizaje. Pretendemos comprobar, pues, el efecto del uso del diccionario bilingüe en las redacciones de los alumnos, tanto para la elaboración como para la posterior revisión y corrección de las mismas. Para comprobar dicho objetivo, a los estudiantes se les asignó la realización de redacciones de forma regular, que debían ser revisadas y corregidas utilizando el diccionario bilingüe. Además, se les proporcionó entrenamiento adicional a través de hojas de actividades para completar haciendo uso del diccionario. Los resultados confirman que los estudiantes no utilizan adecuadamente el diccionario para sus tareas escritas porque no entienden la información que éste les proporciona. El acceso regular a estas obras de referencia es necesario, junto a un adecuado entrenamiento, si queremos formar a usuarios competentes y autónomos que sepan utilizar los recursos disponibles para mejorar la competencia lingüística general. Una de las principales conclusiones de esta investigación es la necesidad de integrar el diccionario bilingüe en el aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, incorporándolo en los materiales de enseñanza y que se convierta, de este modo, en una herramienta de aprendizaje más incluida en el currículo del curso, adquiriendo su importancia dentro de los programas de enseñanza de lengua extranjera, dejando de ser un mero libro de consulta esporádica. Finalmente, hemos diseñado una propuesta didáctica, completamente integrada en el currículo actual para la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera en la etapa de Educación Secundaria, con el fin de que ayude a los estudiantes a desarrollar las habilidades de uso del diccionario conjuntamente con el aprendizaje de la lengua, ofreciendo al mismo tiempo orientaciones a los profesores sobre cómo incluirlo en su práctica docente.
My work as a teacher of English in the pre-university stages has led me to find ways to improve my teaching practice. The resources that learners have at hand are not always fully exploited, mainly due to their lack of knowledge. One of these resources is the bilingual learners’ dictionary, a rich source of material which, if sensibly used, can be a great help to our students. Previous studies on the use of the bilingual dictionary for different tasks carried out by secondary students have shown that, unfortunately, this is not always the case. Particularly striking is in the students’ written work. We have noticed that when students write their compositions, they all use their dictionaries, but they do not make the most out of them, there is a large amount of information that is ignored. Starting from this assumption, we believe that if students are systematically trained in the use of the dictionary, they will benefit of the help that it can provide, specifically as to the learning and expansion of vocabulary, the help with their written production, and their overall L2 language competence. Also, the progressive use of the dictionary in the learning tasks will contribute to make them more and more autonomous learners. To test this hypothesis, we have conducted a case study with Secondary Education Spanish students who are learning English as a foreign language, within the natural environment where real tuition takes place, and who have received systematic training along the whole academic year.
The study consists of two stages: In the first one, through the use of questionnaires and tests, we carried out a reference needs and a reference skills analysis, with students from 3rd and 4th year of Secondary Education, in order to check, on the one hand, what type of dictionaries our students use and what for; and on the other hand, their abilities when confronted with tasks requiring its use. This first step was followed by a series of worksheets to train students in different and varied aspects of dictionary use.
This first stage yielded some results that confirmed our assumption:
1. Students make very little use of dictionaries and when they do, they look mainly for translations. They ignore any further information, and so they rarely use it.
2. At the end of the year, students had gained confidence in the use of the dictionary and had improved their performance.
The second stage focuses on the effect of the use of the bilingual dictionary for the students’ written work, both for the elaboration and the subsequent revision and correction process. We concentrated on three main areas, the crucial skills for the encoding needs of the learners:
a. Using the contextual information to make the appropriate lexical choices.
b. Using the grammatical and syntactic information that will help them to use words correctly.
c. Identifying and using the lexical combinations of the English language.
During the whole academic year, students were assigned regular written work that had to be revised and corrected using the bilingual dictionary. In addition, worksheets including the areas mentioned above, with activities based on the errors of the students’ compositions, and contents included in the course syllabus were prepared and completed in class every term. Observation of the process proved to be another valuable method of data collecting. The results confirm that students do not use their dictionaries properly for their writing tasks because they don’t understand most of the information provided. Regular training and frequent access to the works of reference is vital if we want to make our students skilful users as a means to enhance their competence in L2, and the earlier we start the better. One of the main conclusions drawn from the experimental part of the research is the need to integrate this essential resource in the learning of a foreign language, in the real teaching situation, as the best way to turn the practice into a good habit. Incorporating the dictionary in the teaching materials is one way to highlight its importance as a learning tool. Bearing this idea in mind, we analysed the curriculum for the English language and how it is implemented in the textbooks as a previous step to designing a didactic proposal to help develop reference skills and language learning, offering guidance for teachers on how to include it in their daily work.
