Exploring teachers' oral explanations of new English lexical items in a Chinese university: Comparisons with dictionary information

We investigated three university teachers' oral explanations of unfamiliar lexical items in a Chinese university English as a foreign language (L2) context. Previous research on explanation of lexis has focused on the amount or functions of teachers' first language (L1) use, or in the field of glossing in written texts. In this exploratory research we compared teacher oral explanations to the information provided by dictionaries, examined whether the teachers provided information in L1 or L2 or both, and explored the type of information they provided. We did this comparison not to evaluate the teachers' competence but to gain insights into the challenges teachers face when putting across the meaning of words which may or may not have direct equivalence in both languages. Greater awareness of these challenges might inform teacher education programmes. Our findings suggest both close comparisons between teacher and dictionary information and interesting divergences. Further research resulting from this exploratory study is suggested.