The Study in Efficiency of Arabic Dictionaries for Non-native Speakers (A Sample Study of Al-Maajam al-Wasseet)

The current research is based on comprehensive studies in the field of Arabic dictionaries compilations as well as experiences of authors in imparting the Arabic language education in Iran for years. As any language learning requires a dictionary, and since researchers in the area of second language teaching always suggest using monolingual dictionaries, it seems necessary to discuss the merits of this type of dictionaries for teaching and learning the Arabic language to non-nativespeakers. The present study, therefore, is aimed at investigating through (Al-Ma''ajam al-Wasseet) for its special status within the scientific and cultural community and as one of the most important references in Iran. It is found that the aforementioned dictionary, despite its scientific merit and lexicon richness, is unable to fulfill the complete needs of the non-nativelearners. This study also makes some systematic linguistic observations about other dictionaries that undoubtedly would be helpful for dictionary compilations.