Abstract This study compared the effectiveness of a widely used AI chatbot (ChatGPT) and an online dictionary (Cambridge Dictionary) in enhancing L2 vocabulary learning during word lookup. Ninety-three Saudi university students from various academic disciplines and institutions nationwide were assigned to three groups: ChatGPT, dictionary, and control. The ChatGPT and dictionary groups participated in an intervention where they looked up twenty lower-frequency words, while the control group received no treatment. Immediately afterward, all groups took posttests, and delayed posttests were administered one week later. Quantitative results showed no significant differences between the ChatGPT and dictionary groups on either outcome at either posttest. Although previous research has reported advantages for ChatGPT in lexical task performance, much of that work has focused on immediate outcomes rather than longer-term retention. Th findings of the present study suggest that both tools may provide sufficiently rich lexical input to support vocabulary learning. Overall, well-designed learner dictionaries remain pedagogically robust resources and continue to serve as a useful benchmark for evaluating emerging AI technologies.
Albalawi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.