A Peek into What Today's Language Learners as Researchers Actually Do

Language learners today have a much wider choice of reference materials than in the past. In addition to dictionaries, grammar books and encyclopaedias, nowadays it is also possible for students to look things up on the Internet, in term banks and in corpora. Much of the literature on the pedagogical value of these resources focuses on what each of them can achieve separately. However, little has been said about how learners as researchers actually cope with all of it together. Modelling itself on Varantola's (1998) analysis of how translators use dictionaries, the aim of this study was to find out more about how a group of advanced learners of English were grappling with the use of paper references and new technology together. The results indicate that while there was no clear competition between paper and digital references, there was a marked preference for bilingual over monolingual support, for materials mediated by terminologists and lexicographers over ones requiring more autonomous user interpretation, and for more prestigious over lesser-known resources. The study also made it clear that more resources does not necessarily mean better research, and that in addition to training learners to use separate resources, it is essential to teach them how to integrate their skills at using them together, particularly with respect to combining bilingual with monolingual research.