A Research On The Effectiveness Of Examples Of The Collins Cobuild Advanced English Learner’s Dictionary(5^th Edition)

This thesis is a lexicographical research on the effectiveness of the examples in the Collins Cobuild Advanced English Learner’s Dictionary(5th Edition)(abbr. CCALED). It is based on the lexicographical theories from the book Research on the Design Features of Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary (Tian Bing, Chen Guohua2009)(abbr. RDFALED) and The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography (B. T Sue Atkins, Michael Rundell2008)(abbr. OGPL). It has a review of the previous studies related to the dictionary examples and proposes a framework for the case studies of this research. The case studies are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the examples from their features, source and selection. A questionnaire survey and a collection of users’ comments are also conducted to evaluate the encoding and decoding functions of CCALED’s examples. The conclusion shows that the examples of CCALED are contemporary, international, multivariate, natural, typical, thought-provoking, intelligible and informative but not interesting; examples in oral form and phrase examples are comparatively few; for some common words and for the pre-intermediate and intermediate English learners, the CCALED’s examples are less effective than the corresponding ones of The Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(4th Edition)(abbr. OALECD) on the decoding and encoding functions.This research makes an overall analysis on the effectiveness of the examples of CCALED. It aims at evaluating the features and functions of the CCALED’s examples according to the theories and criteria of OGPL and RDFALED. Specifically, the evaluation will be done in the aspects of the classification, effects, and criteria for good examples, the design features of the dictionary, and the source and selection of the examples. The studies are carried out not only on the cases of several individual examples but also on the decoding and encoding functions of the examples. The significance of this research mainly lies in two aspects-one as a reference on whether the CCALED’s examples are effective for advanced English learners in China; the other one as a useful resource for the research of practical lexicography.There are five chapters:Chapter One-Introduction, Chapter Two-Literature Review, Chapter Three-Case Studies on Examples in CCALED, Chapter Four-An Empirical Study of Examples of CCALED and Chapter Five-Conclusion. Chapter One states the motivation, significance and organization of the thesis. Chapter Two is a comprehensive review of the previous studies related to the examples of learner’s English dictionaries. In this chapter, the theoretical frame for this research is also proposed. Chapter Three is about the case studies on the examples of CCALED by evaluating their design features, source and selection. The merits and demerits of some individual examples of CCALED according to the lexicographical theories are summarized. Chapter Four is an empirical study by doing a questionnaire and collecting comments from users of CCALED. This part accomplishes the evaluation of CCALED’s examples from the perspective of users.The conclusions of this research are as follows:Speaking from the design feature, the CCALED’s examples are authentic ones from corpus with occasional minor modification. Thus, they are contemporary, international and multivariate. Specifically, the examples go well with other content information, especially the definitions. For the form of examples, most CCALED’s examples are sentence examples, so CCALED may achieve greater effectiveness and save more space by increasing the number of phrase examples.From the functions, CCALED puts emphasis on the encoding functions of examples, thus it focuses on the contextual, syntactic and collocation information; some potential functions are also realized, such as to strengthen and clarify the information given by other parts and to provide new information for certain usage; the empirical study shows that CCALED’s examples of some frequent-used words are less suitable than OALECD for pre-intermediate and intermediate English learners on the encoding and decoding functions, but they are practical and idiomatic for advanced learners in China.From the source of examples, it has achieved great effectiveness by using the authentic examples selected from corpus with occasional minor modification. A limitation of examples which inherits from the corpus is that they are mostly in written form while examples in spoken English are comparatively few. Nevertheless, this weakness can be compensated by the intelligible and colloquial definitions.From the selection of examples, it has realized the Cobuild’s purposes of being natural, typical, thought-provoking, and has focused on the contextual, syntactic, collocation and cultural information.Almost all the criteria for good examples are fulfilled:the language being contemporary and international, the source multivariate, the content intelligible and informative; the examples coordinate well with other content information, especially with the definitions; however, most CCALED’s examples do not fulfill the criterion of being interesting in that they are of politics or economy in content, distancing themselves from everyday communication. On the contrary, they are somewhat serious.