Language Learners Select Dictionaries or AI Tools Depending on the Task

Abstract

The present study revisits the impact of the introduction of AI tools on dictionary use, aiming to further explore which lexical resources English majors tend to use for a broader range of language-related tasks. From April to June 2025, 179 students from two large public Polish universities, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn and University of Gdańsk, were asked to complete 30 language-based activities and report what specific language tools they had used for each task. Available data suggest that Polish students of English rely on AI chatbots for a variety of linguistic purposes, including writing assistance, sentence translation and formation, sense selection, collocation identification, specialized (legal) translation, and phrasal verb consultation. In their efforts to locate appropriate synonyms and antonyms, students tend to use diverse tools, including AI tools, but also thesauri, monolingual learners’ dictionaries, and online search engines like Google. AI chatbots and monolingual learners’ dictionaries appear to be the preferred sources for grammar support, spelling verification, and acquiring information about idioms. For pronunciation support and defining, students favour monolingual learners’ dictionaries, whereas bilingual dictionaries are their top choice for direct word-for-word translation. When it comes to devices used to access lexical resources, our findings confirm the growing preference for the smartphone.