An Empirical Study of the Co-relations Between Dictionary Use and Vocabulary Acquisition

In second language learning, vocabulary is the most important part. Without vocabulary, reading, listening, speaking and writing all are attics in air. There are many ways to acquire vocabulary knowledge, and using dictionaries is one of the most important ways. The students’ dictionary use strategies and opinions are collected through a questionnaire. A vocabulary test is designed to show the students’ vocabulary proficiency. This paper aims to reveal the relations between dictionary use and vocabulary acquisition by conducting a questionnaire and vocabulary test with the help of the statistical tool SPSS. By this empirical study, we found dictionary using strategies have effects on learners’ vocabulary knowledge. There are positive correlations between the strategy of looking up frequently appearing words and the vocabulary knowledge.