 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Macmillan Essential Dictionary for Learners of English Review
published in SATEFL Newsletter Vol. 23 No. 1 (Autumn 2003) Editor-in-Chief:
Michael Rundell (Macmillan) Macmillan
is the newest arrival in the present baby boom of dictionaries based on
computerised corpora.
Their intermediate learners' dictionary should certainly be added
to our list of suggestions for students. It
boasts "more entries than any other", but the use of coloured
thumb tabs to indicate each change of initial letter allows for speedy
word-searching.
The 3,500 most common words are highlighted in red, with an
additional star system to indicate their frequency.
Having recently encountered an eager beaver who was determined
that the way to improve his vocabulary was to memorise the dictionary
page by page, this would certainly make his task easier – and maybe,
given a few years, achievable. The
defining vocabulary is helpfully restricted to 2,300 words, thus
avoiding the exasperating need for further searching in order to
understand the first word the student has looked up.
Colour highlights within the entries provide extra information on
grammar, collocations, common errors, related vocabulary and,
particularly useful for CAE, word families.
This can lead to lengthy entries for simple words -
"go", for example, runs to three densely-packed pages - and
might be off-putting for an intermediate level learner. The
sixteen colour plates illustrate subjects ranging from the house and the
office to fruit and vegetables.
The text also includes occasional line drawings and cartoons. A
detailed central section on language study covers topic vocabulary,
collocation, pronunciation, register, etc with contributions from
well-respected ELT authors. Despite
its detailed entries and supplementary sections, this is not a huge or
heavy tome, and one which we could reasonably expect students to carry
with them – thereby avoiding the need to provide a class set? Margaret Wyllie
|
||||||
|
