Effective look-up techniques to approach a Monolingual dictionary

Abstract

A dictionary is (a) learning tool that can help the language learner in acquiring great knowledge of and about a foreign language. Almost all language learners buy or at least possess, at one time, a monolingual or bilingual dictionary, to which the learner may refer to look up the meaning of words. Unfortunately, using dictionary to look up the meaning of words seems to be the most important service, which a dictionary is expected to provide to language learners. In fact, a dictionary provides much data about language to its readers such as telling them about: the word spelling, phonology, phonetics, etymology, stylistics and definitions among other aspects. This paper sheds light on how the dictionary can teach its readers with special focus on monolingual dictionary. Hence, the discussion of this paper will centre on how dictionaries can teach students rather than on how students can learn from them.