| User-friendly dictionaries are defined as the ones that provide the intended dictionary users with information that they need in the easiest way and in the most readable format in this thesis. This thesis is an attempt to discuss issues of user-friendliness in the Chinese-English dictionary for advanced EFL users.In order to know better the user's needs, the present author did a small-scale user-related research, and at the same time cited the findings of He Jianing (2003) and some other researchers. This thesis summarizes the inadequacies in current Chinese-English dictionaries as well as their successful practices from the outside matter, macrostructure and microstructure before putting forward some suggestions for further improvement in terms of user-friendliness.The content in the outside matter of the Chinese-English dictionary for advanced EFL users is usually neglected by the user, so the compiler should adopt some measures to catch the user's attention, such as subheadings, bold face, full color, shaded areas, graphics, etc. As far as macrostructure is concerned, a user-friendly Chinese-English dictionary for advanced EFL users should include biographical and geographical terms with more care, include more new words and new meanings, and order the senses of headwords on the basis of frequency and logical factors. Information categories in the microstructure need to be treated with more care as well. To be more exact, the decision on whether pronunciation should be provided in a user-friendly Chinese-English dictionary for advanced EFL users should be based on the level of the dictionary user; the equivalents should be abundant and the quality of equivalents is also critical; sentence examples and phrase examples should be properly combined; the part of speech of the Chinese headword should be notated while its English equivalents should be notated selectively; the labels adopted should be simple and easy to understand.
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