Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,
I need your advice: why are learners' dictionaries important in teaching and learning processes? Why is monolingual lexicography growing in importance? I have to write the introduccion to my dissertation and I wonder if you could hepl me to find ideas.
Thank you in advance.
Bye

Recent monolingual learner dictionaries (MLDs) are valuable distillations of the corpora from which they are drawn: they thus provide readily accessible snapshots of the language (a more diachronic perspective can be had by expanding the size of the dictionary to include older forms - see e.g. the OALD7). It's obviously easier to consult a dictionary as far as basics/established regularities are concerned than to trawl concordance lines to arrive at the same conclusions yourself; there's now a wealth of linguistic information at one's fingertips that was scarcely possible just a few decades ago. (Doubt if my crap writing here is giving you many angles LOL).

The careful and considered procedures used in producing MLDs also help to provide databases for NLP, automated translation etc.

I'll try to get back to you with more thoughts soon, Elena!

Excellent ideas!
Thank you very much, fluffyhamster! You're a lifesaver!

Definitions composed from controlled/limited defining vocabularies, especially when the definitions use and illustrate a natural phrasing and highlight collocates, are believed to aid students' acquisition - yet another way the dictionary reflects the language and condenses so many contexts, phrases and functions. Somewhat in contrast:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 7726#17726