Effects of the Use of Bilingual Dictionary and Machine Translation on EFL Students English Proficiency

and machine translation on Korean EFL students English speaking and writing proficiency. Participants in the present study were 44 Korean college students. The participants were third- or fourth-year students who enrolled in an English speaking and writing class. Divided into two experimental groups, bilingual dictionary group (n=24) and machine translation group (n=20), all participants engaged in the 16-week experiment. To examine the effectiveness of two different tools, pre- and post-tests were performed based on ACTFL tests. A perception survey was also conducted to explore the participants attitudes toward English learning. For data analysis, paired samples t-tests were administered to compare the pre- and post-test scores. Independent t-tests were run to compare the group difference. Findings indicate that participants in both the bilingual dictionary and machine translation groups significantly improved their speaking and writing proficiency. No group difference was observed, indicating that the two tools are equally effective for EFL learning. The survey results revealed that the bilingual dictionary group had more positive attitudes toward English learning than the machine translation group. Implications and suggestions are made at the end.