Article                    : One Benefit of Monolingual Dictionaries in the Writing Classroom

The writer              : Randall Martin

The one benefit of monolingual dictionaries in the writing classroom’s article is an academic essay. The writer explained about some facts that he had found when he worked at two different language schools. In which, the administrators had an unwritten policy of banning bilingual dictionaries from the classroom. The essay is educational and intellectual enough for the readers. The writer conducted a research about the benefit of using monolingual dictionaries in writing class. He also gave some proves to the reader about the survey. The contents of the writing were also in good order. For example, he decided who would help his survey, then he conducted the research, and then described about the result. Next, the writer gave his own opinion and continued by giving conclusion. Using formal language is also done by the writer well. Therefore, it makes the essay looked academic.

After the writer conducted and finished his research about the one benefit of monolingual dictionaries in the writing classroom, the writer elaborated the result by giving explanation about the topics. Next, he analyzed the topic by giving some proves in thesis statements. For example in the first paragraph, he had a topic “the advantage of monolingual dictionaries over bilingual dictionaries.” Some of the thesis statements are “I come to agree with the policy and believe that bilingual dictionaries are more of a hindrance-at least to intermediate or advance students-than a help to second language learners”, “I found new studies to prove any advantage of using monolingual dictionaries” and “it points to at least one area in which monolingual dictionaries are more helpful than bilingual dictionaries as it is based on the hypothesis that training in the use of monolingual dictionaries will improve students’ ability to write, specifically to create acceptable written English when dealing with transitive and intransitive verbs”. Then, after he created a hypothesis, the next step was he conducted the research with twenty native Chinese speakers studying at the University of Central
Oklahoma as the sample. The writer developed his research by explaining the facts and his conclusion about the topic research.

            In the survey, the writer wrote clearly the percentage of the result. For example, “eighty-five percent said they seldom or never used one of dictionaries”, “eighty percent also said that they did not own an English-English dictionary”, etc. the explanation made the reader understand the research easily. The writer also attached the table about Number of times the translating dictionary was consulted and results of those times (group 1) and (group 2).

After Randall showed the tables and the result, he clarified his writing with the conclusion in the last paragraphs. He also added a quote from McCarty 1990. “McCarthy suggested that bilingual dictionaries are important, but they are also limited tools. Given the fact that a group of learners with a lower average TOEFL score used verbs correctly a higher percentage of the time when using a monolingual dictionary than those who used a bilingual dictionary.”

In references part, the writer attached the source that he used for improving the fact in the research. The sources also helped him to make the writing accurate enough. So, the One Benefit of Monolingual Dictionaries in the Writing Classroom’s article is an academic writing because it was elaborated in order and has the elements of academic writing.