CLB's dictionary survey

[Mai Kuha]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Lynne Murphy observed, among other things:

> Tracking could consist of having a set of volunteers (perhaps households)
> keep a record of when/why/how they use a dictionary over the course of,
> say, a year.  They could, for instance, be given a worksheet to keep with
> their dictionary, in which they note the date, the word, what part of the
> entry they were looking for (definition, pronunciation),how satisfactory
> they found the information and how easily they found it on a scale of 1-5.

It occurs to me this might be relatively easy to set up in conjunction
with one of those web-based online dictionaries. Words searched for could
be tracked automatically, so human beings would be asked to provide just
introspective information (a usefulness rating, a few "think-aloud"
comments in a text box) ??

-Mai
_____________________________________________
Mai Kuha                  mkuha at bsuvc.bsu.edu
Department of English     (765) 285-8410
Ball State University