Most students who study English as a second language have an English dictionary. Those who live in the U.S. or another English-speaking country could even carry it at all times, ready to look up any unfamiliar word they come across in class, while doing homework, at work, or in stores and other public places.
Your dictionary is really a useful tool as you learn English, and should you check a bookstore, you will find lots of choices available. How do you determine which one is best for you? Listed below are a few features to contemplate.
-- Convenient format - This is mainly a question of personal taste. Do you need a big, comprehensive dictionary to keep at your desk? A medium-sized dictionary to take in your backpack? A little dictionary that will fit in your own pocket or bag? Also be sure the kind is easy to read. Maybe you would prefer an electronic dictionary. Select one that you love using.
-- Pronunciation guide - A superb kamus inggris will tell you how to pronounce every word. It may use IPA (international phonetic alphabet) or yet another set of symbols to represent different sounds. There are over 40 sounds in English, and it's not always simple to find out pronunciation from how a word is spelled.
-- Example sentences - Many dictionaries provide a sentence using each word to assist you understand how a word is used.
-- Associated words - Enlarge your vocabulary with a kamus that provides other sorts of the word. For example, if you look up the verb conserve, you can also see the noun conservation and also the adjective conservative. Now you have learned three words in the place of only one.
-- Synonyms - You can also find synonyms in a different reference book known as a thesaurus.
The most obvious use is to look up the meanings of words. To improve your learning experience, first try to guess exactly what the word means from context. As an example, in the sentence, "He paddled down the river in a coracle," you can guess that the coracle is probably a small boat. Afterward you can use the dictionary to understand specifically what sort of boat a coracle is.
Sometimes a word is really not as simple to guess. In the novel Mansfield Park, as an example, the characters look out over, and are constrained by, a "ha-ha." From context, a reader could assemble only that the ha-ha forms some sort of obstacle. Turning towards the dictionary, we find that the ha-ha is actually a sunken fence. With that specific knowledge, the passage now is reasonable.
Dictionaries will also be helpful for spelling. This seems strange initially. How will you research a word should you not yet understand how to spell it? The dictionary lets you to really monitor your guesses. As an example, many spellers are certain that an eating establishment starts together with the letters R-E-S-T, but get lost from then on. Starting by finding out about R-E-S-T-A will swiftly bring you to the proper spelling, R-E-S-T-A-U-R-A-N-T.
A dictionary also help us in order to avoid using the wrong homonym in a sentence. In case a writer is unsure when the driver stops a car with breaks or brakes, looking up both words steers the user from errors Click This Link.
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