Developing Dictionary Skills in English Language Learners (Polysemy, Conversion)

The paper presents the results of a study, conducted at one of the public schools in Tbilisi which aimed to reveal the efficiency of specially tailored exercises for developing dictionary skills in students at schools. In particular, the experiment concentrated on two lexical issues, polysemy and conversion and tested the ability of students to recognize the contextual meaning of a polysemous word, as well as its part of speech meaning with the help of dictionaries. The research question was how these skills could be improved with the help of special exercises designed for this purpose. 50 students, participating in the study, were divided into 2 groups, group A and group B. Group A students had special training in polysemy and conversion with exercises, while the second group did not undergo such training. At the second stage of the experiment both groups were given the same tasks in order to test their ability in guessing the contextual meaning as well as the part of speech meaning of test words and the results of both groups were compared and evaluated.