Comparison between Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary
and Longman Dictionary of American English
李稚君
As for macrostructure, Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary provides
phonetic symbols in the 1st page, involving pronunciation of vowels and
consonants, followed by examples. Then it gives a name-list of working
staff and shows the contents in the next page. After that, its preface is
expressed both in English and Chinese, “Guide to the use of the use of the
dictionary” in the following step. Note on trademarks and propriety status
is the last part of front matter. The words in the paperback Oxford
English-Chinese Dictionary are arranged in alphabetic order with
appendices at the end composed of countries of the world, famous people,
alphabets, science, time and date, animal and collective nouns as well as
architecture.
The preface in Longman Dictionary of American English is in
Chinese, followed by the table of contents. The next page introduces
short forms used in the dictionary, then grammar codes, guide to the
dictionary for five pages. The last section of front matter is dictionary
skills workbook. The Longman Dictionary of American English is also in
alphabetic order. After the vital important part of the dictionary---the
dictionary A-Z, we come into back matter, where the dictionary supplies
us study notes, answer key, wording building, list of irregular verbs and
pronunciation table.
In terms of microstructure, the Paper Oxford English-Chinese
Dictionary is designed as the order of headword spelling, pronunciation,
part of speech, verb in flections, clear and simple explanation, example of
use, phrases and idioms, derivatives, word origin, usage note, even with
encyclopedic entries of necessary. As for Longman Dictionary of
American English, besides what I mentioned above, it also contains the
difference in spelling or pronunciation of a certain word English and
American, provides synonyms and opposites, and even list the related
words which are easy to confuse.