English Learner’s Dictionaries as A British Tradition: History, Defining Characteristics and Prominent Instances

Generally speaking, dictionaries are still the only most valued tool for language learners. More specifically, the monolingual learners’ dictionaries (MLD), as a variety of dictionary dedicated to meet the needs of non-native language learners, are an authoritative source for learners of English. In fact, the foundations of the MLD were laid down in the 1920s and 1930s by some British academics; thus it is above all a British phenomenon. Random House Webster’s Advanced English Dictionary (RWAED) is “the first Webster's dictionary truly written for advanced learners of English”. The present article aims to explore English leaner’s dictionaries, to present the evolution of such dictionaries through history, and to introduce their defining characteristics in detail through examining the best known and most influential instances of such a trend. In doing so, two well-established and frequently used British learner’s dictionaries; namely, Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) along with RWAED are introduced and compared in terms of their macrostructures, mediostructures, and microstructures, as well as textual structures, addressing structures and metalexicographic methods. More specifically, the front materials, the dictionary body, the back materials and the accompanying resources were all assessed in terms of format and content.