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History
 OVER 50 YEARS AGO, English learners around the world were given the first advanced dictionary that responded to their special language needs. Published by Oxford University Press, it was a ground-breaking development, and one that has influenced all ELT dictionaries to date. It was called A Learner's Dictionary of Current English - since renamed the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary - and the author was one of the greatest pioneers of language teaching, A S Hornby. As a teacher of English in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, Hornby became acutely aware that existing dictionaries failed to meet the needs of his students. On the one hand, bilingual dictionaries restricted their progress, and led to problems of inaccurate translation. On the other, monolingual dictionaries for native speakers were often confusing because they assumed too great a knowledge of the English language. What Hornby and his students needed was a dictionary that would explain language comprehensively in clear, understandable English. This is what Hornby set out to produce: a real learner's dictionary, which dealt fully with the typical problems of learning a second language. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Hornby's
dictionary in the history and development of English
language teaching. It established the principle that
a work for learners of English needs to demonstrate
how the language is actually used and how grammar, syntax
and vocabulary function within it. Today the dictionary incorporates Hornby's initial
work on language patterns and usage, as well as all
the features made possible by recent developments in
dictionary pedagogy, design and technology to further
its overall aim of teaching English as effectively as
possible. Throughout the years the Oxford Advanced
Learner's Dictionary has always maintained its reputation
for reliability and learner-friendliness. The second is the British National Corpus, a massive
database of over 100 million words of written and spoken
English assembled to present a representative cross-section
of contemporary British English. The These two corpora ensure that the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary is truly up-to-date in its vocabulary range, that the meanings of words appear in order of frequency, and that examples provide students with genuine contemporary models to follow. Since 1995 the dictionary has been available in a Cornelsen & Oxford
edition especially designed to meet needs of
the native German speaker of English. This edition provides
the learner with a detailed map of German-speaking countries
enabling student's to discover the English equivalents
for both major cities and all federal states. All headwords
are in bold blue so as to facilitate word searches.
The
OALD on CD-ROM |
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British
National Corpus
