What are the main characteristics of a learners dictionary?

Nowadays practical and theoretical learner’s lexicography is given great attention to, especially in our country. Lexicographers, linguists and methods specialists discuss such problems as the classification of learner' s dictionaries, the scope of the word-list for learners at different stages of advancement, the principles of word selection, etc.

In the broad sense of the word term L’s D might be applied to any word-book designed as an aid to various users, both native and foreign, studying a language from various angles. (Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon by Н. Sweet) By tradition the term is confined to dictionaries specially compiled to meet the demands of the learners for whom English is not their mother tongue.

These dictionaries differ essentially from ordinary academic dictionaries and from word-books compiled specially for English and American schoolchildren and college students.

Though foreign language learners and children speaking the same language as their mother tongue have both imperfect command of English, it is obvious that the needs and problems of the two groups of dictionary users are altogether different. А foreign adult student of English even at а moderately advanced stage of learning will have pitfalls and needs of his own: among the other things he may have difficulties with the use of the most "simple" words (such as play, wipe), he may not know the names for commonest things in everyday life (such as oatmeal, towel, rug) and he will experience in this or that degree interference of his mother tongue.

On the one hand, we have users who for the most part have command of the language, who have fluent speech habits, since this language is their mother tongue; they need guidance as to which of the usage they come across is correct. On the other hand, we have users that have а limited vocabulary and nо speech habits or very weak ones and who have stable speech habits in another language which is their native tongue and these native speech habits interfere with the foreign ones. That is why these users must be given thorough instruction in how the words are to be used and this instruction must be given against the background of the learners' native language.

That is why the word-lists and the sort of directions for use for the benefit of the foreign adult learners of English must differ very widely from those given to English or American schoolchildren.

The word-books of this group are characterized by the following features:

1)by their strictly limited word-list, the selection of which is based on carefully thought over scientific principles;

2) the great attention given to the functioning of lexical units in speech;

3) а strong prescriptive, normative character;

4) by their compilation with the native linguistic background in view.

Learner’s dic-ry can be classified in accordance with different principles, the main are the scope of the word list(1) and the nature of information it contains(2).

(1) fall into 2 groups: all lexical units that the prospective user may need and the most essential and important words are selected.

(2) includes a group of dictionaries presenting different aspects of the voc-ry: showing mainly the semantic structure of words (explanatory), presenting the syntagmatic relations between words (dictionaries of collocations), providing information about the word's structure (derivational), supplying synonymous and antonymous words, etc.

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