Solonko Irina's Dictionary

People, who are learning foreign languages, use different sources to learn much more new words and their meanings. The most popular, convenient, and available way of learning new words is looking the word up in the dictionary. Although one can speak of a purpose of any dictionary, it must be realized that every dictionary is compiled with a particular set of users in mind. There are a lot of kinds of different dictionaries, such as an electronic dictionary, which contains several languages, not a very large number of linguistic units, phrasal verbs, and statements, an on-line dictionary on the Internet, where one may find the meaning of the word and its pronunciation, and a book format dictionary. There is no doubt, that each of these dictionaries has its advantages and disadvantages, but I prefer the last one – a dictionary as a book. My choice is a Dictionary of Contemporary English is published by Longman. This dictionary is easy in usage, and it also contains a lot of illustrative materials, which help to learn the information in visual form. Authors of the dictionary give in the article several meanings of a word with simble examples. It makes the usage not only available; it helps to find definitions between synonyms and other linguistic units. There are also some the most famous abbreviations and etymological characteristics of words, famous geographical names with transcriptions, and a few maps are given in the dictionary. One more thing, which attracts me in the dictionary, is the CD-ROM version of the book edition. I can use an electronic version instead of book one, but it’s not always very convenient, especially if I don’t have an opportunity to use notebook. The only thing, which does not attracts me in the Longman dictionary, is its large size. The book is rather heavy and big, so I cannot take it anywhere. I think the Longman Dictionary Of Contemporary English is one of the best dictionaries, although there are a large number others, which are worse neither in usage nor in contents of linguistic units.