A dictionary of Academic English: A further resource for students in higher education

The focal point of this article is the ‘Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English’ (OLDAE) published in 2014. The main purpose of the article is to describe the dictionary in some detail, especially since it represents a new type of learner’s dictionary: OLDAE was designed for a specific user group, described by the dictionary’s chief editor as ‘non-native-English-speaking students who are studying academic subjects at tertiary level through the medium of English’. It is especially, though not exclusively, designed to help students produce appropriate and natural sounding written English, and to that end, it was compiled with reference to a specifically designed corpus of academic writing. The article is divided into seven sections. The first four deal with, respectively: the field of English for Academic Purposes; the compilation and coverage of OLDAE; lexical entries in the print dictionary; the CD-ROM. Thereafter, shorter sections deal with guidance on how to use the dictionary, and ‘non-lexical’ data in the dictionary. Lastly, there is an evaluative summary, followed by a series of more general points relating to OLDAE’s place in the evolving field of monolingual pedagogical lexicography.