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Oxford Wordpower Dictionary | |
Publisher: Oxford University Press
€28.00
ISBN 978-3-464-24524-8
Whatever other books an English student has on the bookshelf, one that will almost certainly be there is a dictionary. Given that dictionaries are available in all sizes and prices, why should you consider this offering, especially as it is neither particularly large, or particularly cheap? Certainly we would not recommend that you throw away your current dictionary and get this one, but if you need a dictionary anyway, this one has several things to recommend it. Firstly, as you can see from the cover, the publishers have tried painfully hard to get the dictionary up to date with the latest changes in the language by including words like 'blog' and 'life coach', and 'text' as a verb. Also, the dictionary has a huge number of images, and there are indeed times when a picture is worth a thousand words.
There are 546 pages in this solid little paperback. The main body of the dictionary is standard - tens of thousands of words, followed by the phonetic spelling, the definition and a phrase demonstrating its use. Sometimes opposites and synonyms are included as well. There are also two or three little blue boxes on every page giving little tips of how to handle problem usages. This is an example of how Oxford have tried hard to move this dictionary beyond a standard collection of words and definitions. In fact they have so many idea of what you can do with this dictionary that they have included a 23 page section of instructions on how to get the best from the dictionary, and a grammar workout to test your usage of the words you have found. We found these sections to be the least useful part of the dictionary, as things like the 'example informal phone conversation' really belong in a textbook rather than a dictionary - there is for example, no corresponding 'formal phone conversation'. Keeping with the up-to-the-minute theme of this book, there is also a selection of 'txtspk' messages at the back, for those people who do not know what messages such as 'b4n' (Bye for now) mean when received on their mobile phone.
Who is this book for? An academic will not find this book as useful as a teenager looking to keep up to date with the rapidly-changing English language. Its efforts to keep up to date make this book a useful addition to a school library, but purchasers should be aware that nothing ages faster than trendy language, and some of the expressions here might seem painfully out of date in a decade. Overall, if you have the money it is worth getting this dictionary - but only because of the huge collection of black and white and colour images it contains.
Verdict: 411 but not TMI ('Information, but not too much' fif you prefer English to txtspk).
Assessment 7/10