O n f e r e n c e

Abstract 
ICT are nowadays a ubiquitous ingredient, but at the same time a very diverse 
instrument in the languages classroom, as its role depends on the skills and/or content 
aimed at, the teacher, the audience and the course. Digital dictionaries seem to be the 
perfect tool for enhancing learner autonomy, one of the purposes of modern language 
teaching. Nevertheless, they are not used sufficiently nor adequately due to factors such 
as time, insecurity and lack of knowledge of the possibilities. Moreover, the information 
contained in the dictionaries can be limited or inadequate (Nomdedeu, 2009). Today, 
given the current state of technology, it is useful to investigate which technical and 
content-related innovations we can reasonably expect to find in modern electronic data 
driven dictionaries (or “dictionary
-
featured corpora”?), and given its omnipresence we 
are especially interested in web 2.0/3.0 instruments such as Linguee, Glosbe, Babla, etc. 
In this study our research questions are whether such data driven dictionaries (1) can 
increase user-friendliness and usability, (2) enhance further more certain skills and 
attitudes of learning such as empowerment, discovery and student autonomy, as well as 
(3) improve the correct identification and use of lexico-grammatical patterns. Therefore, 
after outlining the current context of teaching (Spanish) writing, we will examine the role 
ICT can play as a writing assistance expert by presenting the qualitative and quantitative 
data of a series of experiments carried out between 2003 and 2014 in order to measure 
the effect of such dictionaries and corpora (and the combination of these two types of 
tools). We will conclude by proposing, based on our findings, additional pedagogical and 
technological interventions in order to obtain even higher satisfaction and efficiency 
levels. 

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2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be