(Hur) använder du ordböcker? En undersökning bland svensklärarstuderande och svensklärare

Abstract

(How) do you use dictionaries? A survey among teacher students and teachers of Swedish.
This article is based on an essay written during the autumn semester in 2004 at Uppsala
University. The essay has a lexicographic approach and the purpose is to examine the use of
dictionaries among the category of student teachers and teachers of Swedish. Age and education
were presumed to affect their use. A questionnaire was handed out to the informants. The most
important results show that the majority of the informants, especially teachers, use dictionaries,
but almost exclusively printed editions. Although the informants claim to look up word explanations
for the most part, it is still dictionaries that focus on grammar that are actually used.
More than half of the informants said they had not had any form of education in dictionary use,
but experienced a positive attitude towards the subject. An interesting question is why they have
not been taught to use dictionaries and what the attitude of other kinds of teachers, for example
teachers of Swedish as a second language education, is.