English Dictionaries For Foreign Learners

This is the first history of dictionaries of English for foreign learners, from their beginnings in Japan and East Asia in the 1920s to the present day. Anthony Cowie describes the evolution of the major titles, and their fight for dominance of what soon became an enormous market. He shows how developments in lexical and grammatical theory crucially affected the content and structure of ELT dictionaries.

A constructive evaluation of the state-of-the-art reference works in book form and on CD-ROM

Designed to help advance students master spoken and written English as it is actually used, this groundbreaking new dictionary provides in-depth and up-to-date coverage of basic English vocabulary, grammar, and usage. Outstanding features include nearly 100,000 words and phrases, more than 160,000 usage examples, more than 22,000 idioms, verbal collocations, and commonly used phrases, and more than 1,000 original drawings--including 16 pages of full color art. Abundant supplemental information includes 25 pages of grammar.

The Workbook helps students get the most out of the Dictionary.

Lexicographica. Series Maior features monographs and edited volumes on the topics of lexicography and meta-lexicography. Works from the broader domain of lexicology are also included, provided they strengthen the theoretical, methodological and empirical basis of lexicography and meta-lexicography. The almost 150 books published in the series since its founding in 1984 clearly reflect the main themes and developments of the field. The publications focus on aspects of lexicography such as micro- and macrostructure, typology, history of the discipline, and application-oriented lexicographical documentation.

A collection of articles on dictionaries for advanced second language learners includes essays on the past, present, and future of learners' dictionaries; alternative dictionaries; dictionary construction; and dictionaries and their users. Titles include: "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; or Vaticinations on the Learners' Dictionary" (Ladislav Zgusta); "Recent Developments in EFL Dictionaires" (Gabriele Stein); "Learners' Dictionaries--Recent Advances and Developments" (A.P. Cowie); "The Background and Nature of ELT Learners' Dictionaries" (Tom McArthur); "Dictionaries and Language Learning" (Paul Nation); "Monolingual and Bilingual Dictionaries: Fundamental Differences" (Tadeusz Piotrowski); "The Collocational Dictionary and the Advanced Learner" (Morton Benson); "Grammar in Dictionaries" (Thomas Herbst); "The Treatment of Pronunciation in Some Monolingual General Dictionaries Used by Learners of English" (W.R. Lee); "How Many Words Is a Picture Worth? A Review of Illustrations in Dictionaries" (Hilary Nesi); "Uncommonly Common Words" (John M. Sinclair); "A Vocabulary for Writing Dictionaries" (Gwyneth Fox); "Vocabulary, Culture, and the Dictionary" (Hilary Bool, Ronald Carter); "Which Dictionaries and Why? Exploring Some Options" (Makhan L. Tickoo); "How to Use a Dictionary?" (Soekemi); and What We (Don't) Know about the English Language Learner as a Dictionary User: A Critical Select Bibliography" (R.R.K. Hartmann). (MSE).

This book provides an in-depth analysis of what happens when intermediate level learners of a foreign language use a bilingual dictionary when writing. Dictionaries are frequently promoted to people learning a foreign language. Nevertheless, teachers often talk about their students’ inability to use dictionaries properly, especially when they write, and this can be problematic. This book paints a comprehensive picture of the differences a dictionary makes and brings out the implications for language learning, teaching, and testing practices. It draws on research in which participants in three studies took writing tests in two test conditions – with and without a dictionary. They were also asked what they thought about the two test types. Their performances and opinions were analyzed in a variety of ways. Conclusions from the data highlight some of the practical issues to be kept in mind if we want to help foreign language learners to use bilingual dictionaries effectively when writing.

The purpose of this book is to conceptualise the research on dictionary use within a more general overview of language learning. It brings together some of the findings of studies on dictionary users and uses and shows how research into dictionary use can contribute to the improvement of dictionary design and the clarification of issues in language learning. The book also provides reports on a series of empirical studies on dictionary use in decoding activities (reading comprehension and L2/L1 translation) , which will shed some light on the nature of the issues discussed throughout the book. The book falls into two parts. Part I, »Research on Dictionary Use - State of the Art« is, as its title suggests, a summary of previous studies to tease out relevant issues in each area of inquiry. Part 2, »Empirical Studies« reports on a series of studies the author has conducted in the past 15 years. The first three studies (Chapter 5, 6, and 7) investigate dictionary use in the broader context of language learning. The next four studies (Chapter 8, 9, 10 and 11) report on a series of controlled experiments on the relationship between the macro- and microstructure of the dictionary and reference skills. Finally, the last two chapters (Chapter 12 and 13) report the use of learner language data for a better lexicographical output.