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Hilary Nesd Introduction One of the distinguishing features of learners' dictionaries is an abundance of illustrative examples, and lexicographers and reviewers write convincingly of the value of dictionary examples as aids to successful language production. Cowie (1989), for example, claims that a wellconstructed example in a learners' dictionary can show the learnerwriter acceptable complementation patterns, collocations, and native stylistic norms. Other lexicographers, such as Landau (1984, 166), Marello (1987, 226-27) , Creamer (1987, 243) and Drysdale (1987) extol the value of examples in a similar vein, implying that, without the benefit of dictionary examples, learner-writers would make many more mistakes. Studies show, however, that learners' dictionaries often fail to provide the information that learners need to avoid producing errors (Huang [1985], Nesi [1987], Meara and English [1988]). Learners have also been found to seriously misinterpret the grammatical, collocational and semantic information learners' dictionaries do provide (Nesi and Meara [1993]). Perhaps the lexicographers' views derive from a consideration of what should happen when a skilled dictionary user consults a skillfully chosen example. Such views may not take into account what does happen when ordinary dictionary users, with a tendency to misread dictionary entries, consult examples that do not adequately
Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America – Dictionary Society of North America
Published: Apr 4, 1996
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