Microsoft Word - 47-SSMI2170排版367-376.docx BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 367 Investigation into the Effective Use of Dictionaries in Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition Wen Sun School of Foreign Languages, China West Normal University, Nanchong, China. 2823901160@qq.com Abstract. Words lay in the core position in language acquisition, however, acquiring a word is far more than its meaning acquisition. Aiming at helping foreign language learners who want to become good language learners or native-like learners through the word (or vocabulary) acquisition, the goal of becoming high intake generators at vocabulary acquisition is targeted and the learning method concerning the effective use of a carefully selected dictionary is explored. How to select a desirable dictionary and how to effectively use the carefully selected dictionary are the two main aspects to be investigated. The essence of the two investigation aspects is to guarantee the optimal input and strategically maximized intake developed from the input. Based on the analyses of the required functions and components of dictionary, it is investigated thoroughly that an optimal monolingual foreign dictionary is selected out, with the optimal input including a desirable type of meaning definitions, corresponding pictures to vocabulary items and “complete knowledge”. Next, effective learning strategies when using the selected dictionary are explored to realize learners’ strategically maximization of language intake from the input, which includes the adaption to the monolingual model, the applications of transfer, note-taking, effective mnemonic strategies and the psychological preparations. Keywords: foreign language vocabulary acquisition; dictionary; learning strategies; high intake generator. 1. Introduction Besides morphemes, words are the smallest semantic units, thus they are evidently concerned with meaning. One of the reasons why words have a vital position in any language is that they play an extremely important role in transmitting meanings of words themselves, sentences and texts. And according to a group of linguists (Geeraerts et al., 2006, p.3), “language is all about meaning”. Therefore, from this certain perspective, language is all constructed based on words (or vocabulary), and vocabulary acquisition is principal and crucial. However, given the principal and crucial position, vocabulary acquisition in one language is not all about meaning. That is to say, vocabulary acquisition means an acquisition covered with various aspects of words such as grammatical properties, lexical properties, meanings and so on. Schmitt (1997) found that concerned with gaining a word’s meaning, the dictionary was the ubiquitous source used by people. In quite a lot of people’s mind, the role of a dictionary is simply the language sourcing tool for meanings, well, which is considered to be a pretty immature and ignorant idea according to this paper. Therefore, the way of using dictionaries is very popular and widely-seen, however, quite random, mainly due to most people’s viewing it as an simply assisting tool in Foreign Language Acquisition (FLA) process. In other words, the use of dictionaries exists in the everyday life of a Foreign Language Learner (FLL), while dictionaries always receive the taken- for-granted attitude with the little attachment of attention and the little awareness of what a massive and effective role they can be in the FLA process. Many people have never thought about this aspect and have never imagined how it would be if FLLs can actually make full and effective use of dictionaries. To a certain extent, the use of a dictionary can be the most popular way and also the most effective way. While, the effective use of a carefully selected dictionary can be a vital necessity of Foreign Language (FL) vocabulary acquisition not only in meanings, but also in many various aspects as mentioned above. Yes, after FLLs finishing reading this paper, they would suddenly realize how BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 368 prominent and penetrating influences the effective use of dictionaries can bring to FLA process. What profound influences and changes can the effective use of dictionaries make may seem very unclear and abstract at the present situation, but with the statements in this paper gradually and sequentially made, everything is emerging to be clear and concrete. As a FLL, if you want to be a Good Language Learner (GLL) or even be close to a native speaker in language capacity level, the learning strategy concerning the effective use of a carefully selected dictionary in FL vocabulary acquisition is highly recommended. 2. Definitions relating to crucial terms Clarifying the distinction and relation between input and intake is of great importance. And the definitions of High Intake Generator (HIG) and Low Intake Generator (LIG) need to be made out of the consideration of individual learning differences. Around the term HIG, the connection with GLL or FL level being close to native speakers from the perspective of FL vocabulary acquisition is stated. And in this section, the main aim is expressed concerning the term HIG. 2.1 Input and intake Scholars have defined input in different ways out of different considerations. Some scholars emphasize the importance of the input to be various comprehensible language materials. A scholar Brown (2001, p.281) gave an ambiguous statement about input: “reading a book, listening to a conversation, or watching a movie - in any language. This is your input.” Therefore, based on Brown’s implicit idea, here I define input as all the language information the language learner gets from the outside. And this paper adopts my definition. As for the definition of intake, this paper adopts Brown’s (2001, p.281): intake “is the subset of all input that actually gets assigned to our long-term memory store.” In Brown’s mind, a FLL’s intake is just a proportion developed from the vast amount of input. Yes, there is one conversion process from input to intake and only a proportion of input can be converted to intake. However, the proportion is different from individual to individual, that is to say, individual differences exist in the input-to-intake conversion process. Therefore, below are two concepts related to the individual differences -- HIG and LIG. 2.2 HIG and LIG When it comes to the conversion process, individual differences ubiquitously exist, because of both input differences and intake differences. HIGs are learners who positively generate input for themselves from the outer world and strategically and efficiently convert as much generated input as possible into intake. LIGs are learners who negatively generate input for themselves from the outside and are at a low efficiency and with a low productivity in the conversion from the generated input to intake. And one extremely important and essential step of being GLLs or even being close to native speakers in the FL capacity level is to be HIGs instead of LIGs. Since this paper is mainly about the effective use of carefully selected dictionaries in FL vocabulary acquisition, it focuses on the strategies to be HIGs at vocabulary acquisition in the dictionary use. Thus, in a concise and complete expression, this paper is aiming at helping FLLs who want to become GLLs or close to native speakers in FL capacity level to become HIGs at vocabulary acquisition by effectively using a selected dictionary. 3. The selection of an optimal dictionary To be a HIG, as the first step is positively generating input for themselves from the outer world, the initial caution is to look for the desirable learning sources to be the input. There would always be optimal learning sources based on your different needs and requirements. But the precondition of BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 369 finding your optimal dictionary is that you are aware of what aspects should be considered and what standards should be met. 3.1 A monolingual dictionary versus a translation dictionary The monolingual and translation dictionaries are the most common dictionary types in our daily life. And the choice between the two versions is the very basic step to be a HIG at FL vocabulary acquisition. A monolingual FL dictionary is suggested to be chosen attributed to the following considerations. During your FLA process, many acquisition barriers are along your way, a conspicuous one of which is no enough constant interaction experiences. As Brown (2001, p.183) mentioned that “words shape our lives.” Words are related almost to every aspect of our lives: we listen to words, we speak in words, we read by words... Frequently exposed to words of one particular language, we can foster its acquisition. However, most of FLLs can’t have FL communicative environments because they don’t live in the countries or areas where the target languages are used in daily life. Therefore they are not frequently exposed to words of their target languages, or even some of them are scarcely exposed. Since your final ambition is to be a GLL or a native-like FLL, it is important to create the monolingual model in your learning. You can’t change your daily communicative environment into the target language, while at least you can change all your FL learning materials into the monolingual model of your target language. In this way, whenever you are dealing with your FLA, you are getting constant interactions, which covers the integrated aspects such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and so on. In her book Second Language Learning and Language Teaching, cook (2011) put forward a theory about different ways of storing the vocabulary of two languages in the mind by using the examples of “free” in English and “libre” in French which share the same meaning. The theory can be suitable not only in Second Language Acquisition, but also in any FLA. As stated above, out of the first consideration, the monolingual language model is necessary in order to get the constant interactions of the target language. Therefore, here I hold the view that vocabulary storage of different languages is kept in the “Separate stores” model among Cook’s four ways of storing the vocabulary. Please see the storing model in the following Figure 1. Figure 1. Separate stores As Cook (2011) noted, choose monolingual dictionaries since you accept the “separate stores” model. Based on what is stated above, this is the first reason that you should choose a monolingual dictionary rather than a translation one. One of the most important usages of languages is to express either in spoken form or written form, and the basic step of which is to select the words you decide to express. After you decide what notion to express, the key step is to select a word corresponding to the chosen concept. And there is a selecting process as the Chinese scholar Hu (2017) described, items that are suitable to express the notion are conjured up at the same time. In other words, one word can have several synonyms. And cases like this are rather common and are frequently run into by language users. Therefore, in order to select one accurate word in one certain situation among all the synonyms, we need to know the distinctions. The most effective and accurate way to know the distinctions is to use the monolingual dictionary rather than the translation one. It is commonly held that the distinctions between a set of synonyms are often related to the special usages, contexts or particular situations. As stated by Hu (2017), the application of integrated mono-lingual knowledge is needed for the expression of sentences, let alone for the constructing component of sentences — words. Therefore, obviously, to BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 370 truly understand and use one of the synonyms in language expressions needs to be dependent on the language environment. The language environment can only be constructed by the units in the same language, which cannot be built on the foundation of translation. To make it simpler, through translation, we can’t really get the accurate distinctions because of different language environments in each single language, thus there would be deviations at different degrees while in different expressions. Out of the considerations demonstrated above, now primarily, a monolingual dictionary for FLLs is selected. 3.2 A dictionary with a desirable type of meaning definitions What does a desirable type of meaning definitions refer to? Just as you choose your imitating pronunciation object, choose the one that benefits you to the largest degree(Cook, 2010). For instance, if you are a student or scholar in medical fields, and you need to do your study or work using not only your native language but also an officially assigned FL in your profession; in this situation, you should choose one FL dictionary that provides accurate medical definitions. A dictionary that would define a word like “lung” from a professional perspective, is your primary choice. However, one defining it in a more common and easy-to-understand way is more suitable and desirable for a layman’s understanding and then acquisition. According to your occupational identity and personal needs, there is one particular dictionary for you with the most desirable type of meaning definitions. Because this paper aims at helping FLLs to become HIGs at FL vocabulary acquisition in the general sense, the profession-oriented defining types are filtered out; the type providing generally understandable definitions is the desirable one. 3.3 A dictionary with corresponding pictures to vocabulary items This sub-section advocates that meanings should be related to the corresponding real items, which can be conveyed through pictures. The popular Referential Theory “relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for” (Hu, 2017). But it is pointed out that concept influences the connection between a word and a thing it represents by two researchers (Ogden & Richards, 1923), demonstrating through a diagram of a triangle. The relation is represented in the following Figure 2. Figure 2. The connection etween aword and represents We can tell from Figure 2, although a word can somehow represent a thing, the connection between them is not direct but actually indirect. For example, when there is a corresponding picture besides the definition of “rose” in a dictionary, it doesn’t mean a rose must be of the particular hybrid, color and shape it shows in the picture. But the truth is that the picture can show the general common features defined in the dictionary of “rose”. The main aim of this is to use the picture of a particular rose as an example of the general ones, which relates the abstract meaning with the concrete eye- seeing thing. Of course, this relation is indirect, but it can reinforce the concept of “rose” in your mind because the cognitive block is activated with the visual experience. Our language storage then is connected with the concrete item in reality but not just the abstract written definition. Therefore, this could also be counted into the interaction between language and the outer existing world. Substantially, “cognitive linguistics is based on human experiences of the world and the way they perceive and conceptualize the world”（Hu, 2017, p.123). Hence, this kind of reinforcement of words’ concept definitions on the cognitive level is beneficial for you to be a HIG at vocabulary acquisition. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 371 3.4 A dictionary with various aspects of “complete knowledge” in FLA 3.4.1 With phonemic transcriptions and pronunciation audios Four aspects including listening, speaking, reading and writing are widely accepted to be the most basic and important in any language acquisition. Somehow, the listening and speaking parts are regarded to be far more difficult than the other two. And there are quite a lot of FLLs, who can be pretty good and fluent in written expressions, doing extremely bad at oral expressions with all kinds of pronunciation errors. Cases of this kind is not rare. Searching for the deepest and initial reason, the low requirement of single word pronunciations is the root. As Hu (2017) noted, words “are the very basic units of language” (p.47), all languages are constructed on words, which means words is the foundation either in written or oral forms. If a FLL is very good at speaking this particular language, he or she must also be very good at pronouncing every single word correctly. The same rule is for listening: if you can’t know the correct pronunciations of words, it can be confusing and very tough to understand people’s talk. The reason for those listening and speaking problems can be attributed to “cross-linguistic transfer: a person who knows two languages transfers some aspect from one language to another” (Cook, 2010, p.76). The pronunciation rules of one language can be transfered to affect another, causing both inteferences to listening and speaking. If without distinguishing the different pronunciation rules in different languages, natural tendency would be very likely to foster the “cross-linguistic transfer” in the aspect of pronunciation. Other than the reason puts forward by Cook, the wrong or ambiguous storage of pronunciations is another reason. The “integrated pronunciation teaching” (Kenworthy, 1987) is adopted by most teachers , in which they teach pronunciation as a part subordinated to other types of language acquisition. And many teachers also apply subordinated correction to correct students’ mis-pronounced words during the teaching and learning process. Such teaching ways as well as learning ways can indirectly help students or learners to be more aware of the existence of pronunciation as a part of language, but they cannot directly concentrate on every single phoneme and on pronunciation itself. Therefore, the root problems are found, the solution is to be cautious and strict with the pronunciation of every single word that you learn at the first time. As a first and necessary resort, a dictionary with standardized word pronunciations should be used in the vocabulary acquisition process because it’s the first resource for people to learn words. If using one without such a function, you will ignore the pronunciations in the learning process much less the correctness. Therefore, a dictionary with standardized pronunciations is selected for you, which should contain the written phonemic transcriptions and the correct and standardized pronunciation audios. The written phonemic transcriptions are used to inform you about the pronouncing rules of the words that are correct and standardized. With the information, you “know” how to pronounce them, while in fact, many times, you can actually produce sounds wrongly. Knowing the oral rules doesn’t mean producing sounds just correct. There is no doubt that you must have experiences of this kind on your own, as things like this occur to literally anybody! When you actually try to “say” a language, you know that you need a lot of practice; while the thing you may not know is that this kind of practice is based on the foundation of imitating the correct oral output. Only through the imitating- based practice, can you produce the correct oral output, because only in this way can you know how native speakers actually “say” the language. When you can produce correct oral output, of course there would be no barrier in your understanding of listening. Therefore, with the pronunciation audios, you can imitate them to practice and then to normalize your oral output. Spoken this way, you should go for an electronic dictionary with the two functions because traditional printed ones can’t provide audios. 3.4.2 With complete meaning usages It’s common to see many kinds and versions of dictionaries, one of the noticeable distinctions of which is the difference of contents. Many dictionaries have extracted the same words, although the number of each word’s meaning entities can vary to a large extent. Some would only extract the key and commonly-seen usages in their contents, which means the meaning usages of words in them are BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 372 not complete. Other special and less-used entities can also appear anytime and anywhere in language application, such as one news broadcast, a piece of magazine reading material, etc. Using a dictionary like this, the vocabulary input concerning meaning entities is incomplete at the first place. “Language is all about meaning (Geeraerts et al., 2006, p.3)”, and the blank of those meaning entities can directly lead to the poor understanding of the language involved. Acquiring a word’s meaning means that you know its exact meaning in whatever contexts but not just the so-called key usages. Therefore, you have to guarantee the completeness of the entities covered in a dictionary. For this, you are supposed to select an authoritative one with the official guarantee to cover each word’s complete meaning usages in its content. 3.4.3 With specific meaning-based examples in language application The multiple sentence examples based on different meanings can build conforming micro language environments. On the one hand, the dictionary provides more explicit illustrations about how words are actually and flexibly used in various situations. Since the meaning of a sentence is not only conveyed by the simple combination of every individual word, but more importantly by the whole construction. It’s better for you to understand and then later use either the connotations or the denotations of each word. The whole construction as a sentence contains the employment of connotations and denotations of each word, which matters in the process of meaning conveying. On the other hand, it can enrich the monolingual language units with not just the units on the word level but also on the sentence or even context level to be input in you FLA process. Just as stated by Tomlinson (1998), the various language aspects and language features representing genuine contexts should be contained in the target language input. The levels on the word units, sentence units and context units are all covered, which enriches the contents of the target language input. In this way, with specific meaning-based examples, the monolingual language environment you’re in can better form the thinking patterns as well as improve other various aspects of language learning in your target language. 3.4.4 With common related words Firstly, the words shared with the same basic root, but with different affixes, should be mastered altogether, such as “creative” and “creativity”. And one word has different word forms in different language voices and tenses, which also needs acquiring at the same time, such as “go”, “went”, “gone” and “goes”. With this kind of acquisition of a particular word, you can apply any certain one word form in no natter what contexts with different word categories and meanings. What’s more, the commonly-seen synonyms and antonyms should be included, by which you can broaden your lexicon in mind in a better mnemonic way because their meanings and usages are related. GLLs can organize language information in a well-carried way, the method of grouping can be adopted in the process. And also the understanding of them can be more penetrating as your cognition be strengthened by adding a group of similar, opposite, or other closely-related usages. There’s one thing to be emphasized: the distinctions and different usage examples among all the synonyms need to be stated clearly. 3.4.5 With complete collocations The related word groups, phrases and idioms make up the complete collocations. As GLLs learn large quantities of language materials as a whole acquisition (Rubin & Thompson, 1982), the mastery of those collocations contributes to the whole acquisition. The word groups show you how the word combined with other word items is applied in different and particular situations. Especially speaking with verbs, based on the meaning of the core verbs, the verbal phrases can have various but very different meanings from verbs themselves much less from each other. With every different particle, the meaning of one verbal phrase would vary from another. In the term of idioms, it’s clear that they’re forms of expressions natural to a language or a group of people. Therefore, the acquisition of each word’s idioms plays a crucial role in being a GLL, largely due to their long formed and natural expressions in one language. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 373 4. Strategies in effectively using the selected dictionary Your optimal dictionary is now carefully selected out, therefore, optimal input is checked and guaranteed. The next big step is to strategically and effectively convert the input into intake. The proportion of input converted into intake has individual differences because there are HIGs and LIGs mentioned in Section 2.2. Your aim is to be a HIG at FL vocabulary acquisition, therefore, applying effective strategies to make your intake maximized is the core in the use of the dictionary. The ideas of transfer, note-taking, imagery and grouping are derived from some scholars’ learning strategies (O’Malley et al., 1985), which are expanded and deepened at some points through my statements. 4.1 Adapting to the monolingual model Now that your dictionary is all written in your target language, which means all the input you touch is in a monolingual model, the primary action is to adapt to it and then form your native-like FL model in your cognition. When you acquire the definitions of words, you’d better pay attention to the way how words are defined at the same time. Learn how they are explained in the same language. Although, the explaining way you learn is based on word level, other language units are made up of word sets so that the universal rule could work at a certain point. Just as G. Leech (1981, p.23) defined that the “conceptual meaning: logical, cognitive, or denotative content”, through the definitions of words, you can observe so many language features in different aspects. The key elements in the word meanings and the patterns they’re explained are both acquired, you would gradually know how to explain the language units in a natural and delicate tongue using the information from the exact same language. This kind of effective monolingual explanations you employ in understanding language materials is crucial, which can help you to analyze them explicitly and thoroughly. Get familiar with the example sentence. Many example sentences showing how each word is applied are provided in the dictionary. Based on your common sense and the former researches, people speaking a particular language have their particular patterns of thinking and expressing, which is regarded as the differences of cultures and language customs among various languages. In languages, those differences are reflected as the different language phenomena. But the native language plays some certain role in the FLA, which can be showed in the existence of language transfer. “Transfer is a general term describing the carryover of previous performance or knowledge to subsequent learning.” (Brown, 2001, p90). The already acquired knowledge from one language can affect the learning process of another language. For example, the expression “We were the champion of last year’s competition” in English, when converted to Chinese, it becomes “我们是去 年比赛的冠军”. The distinction here is the arrangement sequence of the language units. If this grammatical rule transfers from Chinese to English, errors are created. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, about the different language phenomena. Language phenomena reveal the language application habits and thinking patterns in one particular language. The process of language learning includes habits- forming (Gass & Selinker, 2001). Application habits in different languages vary a lot and FLLs should attach great importance to the application habits-forming in the FLA process. Therefore, through the learning of these provided sentence expressions, you should get quite familiar with the target language phenomena, in the process of which you know how the natives perceive the world and how they express in their language. Always doing the two things put forward in the above when you use your dictionary, you would get accustomed to the monolingual model and continuously and gradually form your native-like FL model. This would show positive effects in every aspect of your target language, making you get closer and closer to the native level. 4.2 The application of Language Transfer Transfer means “the carryover of the previous performance or knowledge to subsequent learning” (Brown, 2001, p.90). There are two types of transfers: positive transfer and negative transfer. Brown BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 374 (2001) concludes that “positive transfer occurs when the prior knowledge benefits the task”(p.90); later learning are interfered by previous acquisition, causing the negative transfer. Some usages, particular collocations and some idioms of words you encounter in your dictionary are already stored in your brain by your previous learning experiences. When you acquire the systematic knowledge from the dictionary, the previous learned stuff would help to foster the process, which is the positive transfer. There are also interferences from your stored knowledge, which will have negative impacts on your new acquisition. Some words have close pronunciations or spelling forms to others, but with very different meanings. Also, the phenomenon of homophones is not rare. As well, it is possible that you’ve known some synonyms of the new word but are not familiar with their distinctions, therefore, you can’t apply them in right situations. All those circumstances would bring negative transfers to your new acquisition. According to Gass and Selinker, the negative transfer should be attached great importance to in order to find and correct “errors” (2001). However, there is one magic thing you can do to eliminate all the interferences: convert the negative transfer into the positive transfer. Instead of focusing on the errors producing by the negative transfer, you change the essence. The solution is: use enough time and energy to compare and distinguish all the language units causing interferences with the new acquisition. Old storage is reviewed and new acquisition is strengthened, which also weaves a relation net in your mind. And now the negative transfer is successfully converted to the positive transfer. Your main task is to retrieve all the previous language storage in your mind related to the new acquisition. Only when you assemble all the connected information and later through the process of penetration, comparison and contrast, can you realize the transfers, either the positive or the conversion from negative to positive. This is how the application of language transfer going to work. 4.3 The application of note-taking From the last sub-section, you know that the application of language transfer is suggested to be used together with your new acquisition. The process of penetration, comparison and contrast cannot be carrying out just in your mind or by verbal generation, which is invisible and abstract. The strategy should be: first change the previous storage in mind into the concrete and visible learning materials, by taking notes. According to Hu (2017), “writing differs from speaking in that writers often have more time available for conceptual preparation and planning” (p.123), so that the effects of monitoring and revising is better. Therefore, comparing to thinking or speaking, writing is far more effective. Note-taking is to supplement the dictionary. Write down all the connected language knowledge in your previous storage which is not contained in the dictionary, as mentioned in the last sub-section, including the positive and the negative-to-positive transfer. Prepare a notebook for this special use, and use your dictionary and notebook cooperatively. 4.4 The application of effective mnemonic strategies The memory plays an extremely important role in absorbing any information or knowledge from outside into your cognition and mind. The success conversion to intake means that the acquisition of knowledge is turned into the long-term storage in your memory. The following mnemonic strategies help you succeed. 4.4.1 Imagery According to the familiarity and connections, “retrievable” “visual concepts” should be connected with the newly learned materials (O’Malley et al., 1985). The pictures provided in your electronic dictionary is one part of this imagery, and other more is your previous visual experiences such as scenes, locations, etc. Retrieve your previous visual experiences connected to the pictures, for instance, the action of “swop”. According to Hu (2017), “language is symbolic” (p.123), the using ways in our actual life mould language. Knowledge would be reinforced because the cognitive block in brain is activated by your visual experiences. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 375 4.4.2 Grouping When tidying the information from your dictionary and written notebook, organize the materials according to some certain attributes. The similarity and relevance within the materials you group together help a lot to foster the acquisition process. And plus, the information you put in mind is placed by group, which is easier for you to turn it to long-term storage and later to retrieve. This is how GLLs organize information about language, as also mentioned in 3.4.4. 4.4.3 Constant repetitions and revisions Not all people can remember something after the first few sights, well in fact the vast majority of people cannot. Therefore, the traditional and practical way is to repeat the information in mind again and again until it is actually stored in your brain. However, we all know that memories decline as time goes, therefore, most of the storage from the initial acquisition would be forgotten if there are no subsequent revisions to be stimuli. For the stable acquisition in mind, revisions for particular several times are essential. The time to do these revisions should conform to scientific facts. And the Forgetting Curve presented by Ebbinghaus (1964) hypothesizes the memory decline law. According to Ebbinghaus’ research, we can tell that memory after initial acquisition in the first two days falls dramatically; but after the third day, the declining degree is much more stable, and after the fifth day, the memory stays almost the same without any noticeable decline. Thus, in the first two days after initial acquisition, revise fully once every day; in the fourth day, revise fully once; and after the sixth day, that is the seventh day, revise the last time. There is one tip for you: during these revisions, the forgotten points or points that you are not quite familiar with need paying more attention to. 4.5 The psychological preparations Consciousness and psychological state can directly affect a person, determining how he or she behave in everyday life. And having what kind of psychological preparations before you do every task affects at what efficiency and how well you do them. This kind of preparations is considered as human personality as well as “affectivity”. Hilgard noted, “purely cognitive theories of learning will be rejected unless a role is assigned to affectivity” (qtd in Brown, 2001, p.134). Before applying learning theories, “affectivity” should be paid attention to in the prior position. If you have good and aimed preparations along with your effective practical actions, you would finish your task with a high efficiency and good result. Therefore, the preparations can also be perceived as psychological strategies in effectively using your dictionary. 4.5.1 Awareness of enough investigation in time and energy The information in dictionary is quite a lot especially meeting the words with many meaning items, usages and all kinds of collocations. And there are also supplements you write in the notebook. Many effective strategies in acquiring the knowledge are suggested in the former sections, while applying those to acquire the vast knowledge in your dictionary and notebook needs much investment of your time and energy. According to Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia, “persons must be aware of the surrounding environment around them” and “be willing to receive” (qtd in Brown, 2001, p. 135). Enough time and energy is the precondition for acquisition, therefore, you’re supposed to have that caution in mind and positively receive the condition. Without this preparation in mind, you may want to cut down the supposed amount of time and energy, which leads to a weaker acquisition. 4.5.2 Awareness of integrated acquisition As said in the introduction of this paper, many people regard a dictionary as a tool to check word meanings, which far less value the importance of a dictionary. And after all the thorough statements, you’ve known what you can do using a dictionary. The cultivation of your target language’s monolingual model, the complete knowledge covering pronunciation, meaning usages, example sentences, related words and collocations, are the two aspects required in your acquisition. Also, you are supposed to be aware of and receive the situation. Your caution here is to attach equal attention to the acquisition of each part as this is an integrated acquisition covering the improvements in the basic aspects of listening, speaking, reading and writing. BCP Social Sciences & Humanities SSMI 2022 Volume 17 (2022) 376 4.5.3 Facilitative anxiety It’s true that either too much or too little anxiety have negative effects on FLA process. But anxiety is not always a bad thing. In fact, the “facilitative anxiety is that some concern — some apprehension — over a task to be accomplished is a positive factor” (Brown, 2001, p.142). This anxiety is just like enough tension to keep you poised and alert to get your job well done. If lacking the “facilitative anxiety”, with too little anxiety, you would feel too relaxed; with too much anxiety, you would feel too stressed. Always keep enough tension. In your process of acquiring the language materials in your dictionary and notebook, maintain the “facilitative anxiety”. 5. Conclusion This paper explores a new learning way in the FL vocabulary acquisition by using a dictionary. This is appropriate for the FLLs who want to be GLLs or native-like learners in their target languages. The new learning way put forward in this paper is the effective use of dictionaries in FL vocabulary acquisition. And at the same time, the whole essential learning process on the cognitive level is about language input, the conversion from input to intake and how to be a HIG. The effective use consists of two main aspects: the selection of an optimal dictionary and the strategies employed in the use of the selected dictionary. How to choose your optimal dictionary is discussed. Is it a monolingual one or translation one? What other qualities should it have? The answers are given through the investigation statements. How you should use the selected dictionary is later explored. A few learning strategies are borrowed from other scholars but most of them are first proposed by this paper. Carefully choose your dictionary and then carefully use it for your effective FL vocabulary acquisition. 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