Better Words: Evaluating EFL Dictionaries

Better Words provides an introduction to EFL lexicography and an insight into its fundamental issues and problems. It describes in detail the major changes that have occurred in the production of EFL dictionaries over recent decades and will help teachers and their students to assess the description of the word stock on offer and to decide which EFL dictionary is the most adequate for their specific purposes. During the last twenty-five years lexicographers and their publishers have experimented with new ways of describing and presenting the words included in their EFL dictionaries to make them more accessible to users. This book compares these dictionaries and critically reviews the lexicographal achievements in the description and presentation of word meanings, registers, exemplification, cultural contexts and pictorial illustrations. It also examines the advantages and disadvantages of using a bilingual and a monolingual EFL dictionary. Better Words is a companion volume to Chosen Words: Past and Present Problems for Dictionary Makers by Noel Osselton (1995) and Living Words: Language, Lexicography and the Knowledge Revolution by Tom McArthur (1998). Both are published by University of Exeter Press in the series Exeter Language and Lexicography. The general editors of this series are Reinhard Hartmann and Tom McArthur.