Vocabulary Search Strategies and Japanese Dictionary Use Problems of Students at the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study the strateies of Japanese vocabulary search in dictionary and to examine the usage problems of dictionaries digital dictionaries and dictionaries online and mobile application dictionaries, particularly in students who study the Japanese language at Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University. Asurvey using on online questionnaire was conducted on 284 students studying Japanese from first to fourth years at the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University during Semester 2, 2017. A quantitative analysis of the data including percentage and mean will play the important role in the data analysis from the survey. The results of the study are as follows; 1) 62.68 percentage of participants group were not trained how to use a Japanese dictionary; whereas only 21.83 percentage were superficially trained about Japanese dictionary use. Regarding the teaching to improve Japanese dictionary use skills, the majority of the participants (66.20%) agreed on the high level until highest level that Japanese dictionary skills should be taught.  2) The Strategies of Vocabulary Search in Japanese Dictionaries; In case of searching Japanese vocabulary to Thai meaning, a greater number of the sample will search the vocabulary in a Japanese-Thai Dictionary and then choose one of the most appropriate meanings of the given context themselves. In the situation of vocabulary search from Thai to Japanese words, the students considerably prefer to look up the words in a Thai-Japanese dictionary. After that, one of Japanese vocabularies found in this dictionary will be looked up using Google to find out how to use this word in a Japanese's sentence. If the students cannot find the required vocabularies by using those preferable strategies, they have a high tendency to solve the problem by using other sources of dictionary but stick to either Japanese-Thai or Thai-Japanese dictionaries.  3) The Problems of Japanese Dictionary Use in the Sample Group; The problems can be divided into 3 types such as problems from a Japanese dictionary itself, lack of Japanese dictionary use skills and unique problem when using each dictionary type. The first problem is generally are due to unavailable sentence example and no grammar explanation. The lack of Japanese dictionary use skills problem is mostly results from the inability to the appropriate meaning from Thai to Japanese context when several meanings are defined. The final problem focus on the convenience to use a dictionary that is not easily portable and time-consuming.