What is the difference?

A monolingual dictionary is an English-English dictionary.

A bilingual dictionary translates between English and another language.

 

The best language learners use both to their advantage.

 

Which should I use for writing?

Many people use both. If you do not know a particular word in English, use a bilingual dictionary first.  However, to use the English word correctly, you may need to look it up in a monolingual (English-English) dictionary.

 

The advantage of monolingual dictionaries is that they usually provide much more information about the word - for example, if it is formal or informal, positive or negative in attitude, dated or in frequent use today.  Best of all, a monolingual dictionary will often show you how to use the word in a sentence. For example, it might tell you useful collocations (=words that go together) and the grammatical structure that you need to follow.

 

As, a result, looking up a word in a monolingual dictionary can greatly help your writing even if you already know the meaning of the word.

 

What about for reading?

For reading, a bilingual dictionary is quicker, but a monolingual dictionary helps you to keep your concentration in English.

 

 

What's the difference?

Native speaker dictionaries usually just give a definition of a word, whereas monolingual dictionaries for learners of English often provide useful information about how to use a word in speaking and writing.

 

For example, there may be information about what prepositions you need after the word, or about collocations (words that go together well).  Also, the definitions are in easier English, and you may be given example sentences too.

 

 

When will I need a thesaurus?

A thesaurus is a dictionary of synonyms. In writing, it is important to avoid repeating vocabulary, so it can be very useful to search a thesaurus for words with the same or similar meaning. 

 

Are they easy to use?

When you see your list of synonyms, you must choose carefully. Make sure you know if the words are formal or informal, positive or negative, or if there are other small differences. Check a dictionary to find out.

 

 

Are Online Translators Better for Reading or Writing?

We recommend using online translators for reading only.

 

They can be a great time-saving reading tool. If there are many words that you don't understand, it will probably be much quicker to translate the text online than to look up words in a dictionary.

 

The translation will probably not be perfect in terms of language, but it should be good enough to understand. For this reason, translators work much better as reading tools, rather than tools for writing or speaking. Grammar is so complex that even high quality translation software can have difficulty making perfect sentences.