Looking Up Words in a Dictionary

W.H.D. Rouse, Lucian's Dialogues Prepared for Schools with Short Notes in Greek (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. iv-v:

Many teachers believe that looking up words in a dictionary is good for the learner; these also will be able to use this book. It may not be out of place, however, to ask those who believe this whether they have any reason for their belief. I do not know that any one has made any systematic inquiry into the use of the dictionary, to find out how long it takes beginners to look up words and what their minds are doing while they are looking them up. I cannot pretend to have done this systematically; but the few inquiries we have made in this school, go to show that to look up words takes a very long time for the beginner, even when he has not a dictionary with many meanings to the word, but a special vocabulary with only one or two meanings. It certainly distracts his attention, and he has to resume the thread of his thought before he can fit in his new word, which also takes time. My own state of mind in looking up new words is quite clear to me: it is a blank, out of which emerges now a word expressive of exasperation, now the address of a friend forgotten and puzzled over, or other flotsam of the subconsciousness. If it were so that all this time the new word should be impressing itself on the memory, well and good; but it does not seem to be so, and if not, here is another of the time-wasting devices which have become sacred in schools.