The computer user as toolsmith: the use, reuse, and organization of computer-based tools
The computer user as toolsmith: the use, reuse, and organization of computer-based tools
Characterizing browsing strategies in the World-Wide Web
Proceedings of the Third International World-Wide Web conference on Technology, tools and applications
How people revisit web pages: empirical findings and implications for the design of history systems
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies - Special issue: World Wide Web usability
Stuff I've seen: a system for personal information retrieval and re-use
Proceedings of the 26th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in informaion retrieval
Word Sense Disambiguation for Vocabulary Learning
ITS '08 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems
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Dictionary use can improve reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning. Nevertheless, great extraneous cognitive load imposed by the search process may reduce or even prevent the improvement. With the help of technology, dictionary users can now instantly access the meaning list of a searched word using a mouse click. However, they must spend great cognitive effort identifying the most appropriate meaning for a given context, contributing to the disruption of the flow of reading and decreasing the positive effect of dictionary use. Furthermore, dictionary users face difficulty in exploiting accumulative illustrations from multiple contexts to understand obscure words whose appropriate meanings are not in the dictionary or are difficult to identify. To address these issues and to offer language learners, especially lifelong learners, effective support for incremental and incidental learning of vocabulary through reading, this research proposes a dictionary interface named RoLo (RemindonLookup). Each time an unfamiliar word is re-looked up, RoLo reminds users about contextual information and word knowledge learned in previous encounters of the word in an appropriate manner. Two studies were conducted to evaluate RoLo. The first study, with 34 participants, examined the effect of RoLo use on incidental vocabulary learning. The second examination, involving 43 participants who used the prototype of RoLo for one month, investigated dictionary users' evaluation of RoLo. The results show that RoLo helps dictionary users enhance vocabulary learning and text comprehension and search for unfamiliar words more easily and faster.