When to Results and Discussion

As our experiment demonstrated, EDs can be somewhat faster, but this small speed difference is probably not enough to justify their extra cost when looking up the words needed to understand an L2 reading passage or write a report in L2 for homework. However, it is for precisely these activities that most of our respondents use their EDs the most.

On the other hand, the 23% speed difference could be a decisive factor when trying to follow the content of a conversation, lecture or TV program. However, the questionnaire showed that almost none of our respondents takes advantage of her ED's superior look-up speed when speaking in or listening to the L2.