The weekly column
Article 75, September 2001
A New and Efficient Tool to Consult English Dictionaries
By Guo Shesen
Internet is changing all aspects of life and work and also is impacting traditional method of acquiring knowledge of the English language.
For centuries printed books and dictionaries have been the most important tools for non native English speakers to learn the language, which have been the main sources of reference when they had difficulties doing problems by themselves. Generally they would have several dictionaries on hand for consultation. All of us know the limitations of this method - the consulting speed, unsatisfactory consulting results and limited resources as we do not have all dictionaries of all fields.
As Internet grows rapidly and tremendously more and more on line dictionary websites come out and provide services 24 hours a day such as Wordsmyth and Lexical FreeNet and so on. More influential and traditional dictionary publishers are joining in this mainstream such as Cambridge International Dictionary of English and The American Heritage Dictionary. These on line dictionaries greatly enrich resources on the net and allow all people including native and non native English speakers to have free and easy access to them for reference through Internet. The opportunities for the English learners to acquire info and data all over the world are open and equal. This greatly pushes English study forward and accelerates the exchange and spread of the English language.
However, as we are surfing on Internet and enjoying free resources of learning English we also feel its inconvenience which really prevents searching efficiency. For example, if you want to consult an English word on the website of Yahoo or Cambridge International Dictionary of English, you must first log in to the homepage of the search engine of these two websites and fill the keywords in the searching box and then click the search button, after that you can get the search result within seconds. When you want to search keywords on Alta Vista, again you have to visit the search page of Alta Vista and re-enter the keywords in the search box and click the search button to show the search result. Even if you open several windows simultaneouly at the cost of speed and system resource it is terribly troublesome to switch between windows.
I thought over the inconvenience and studied the markers of some well known and powerful search engines including some English dictionary search engines and began my project.
After collecting markers of search engines, I integrated them into the project and built a browser in the program---including functions of editing and navigation. A new and efficient Internet searching and browsing tool, especially for the English learners, was created. I named it Findictionary, which embeds search markers of the following categories:
- General Dictionaries - including 9 important dictionaries such as Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Collegiate Thesaurus, Collegiate Dictionary and so on.
- English Study - including 6 famous and commonly used dictionaries such as Acronyms/Abbreviations Search, Audible Webster Dictionary, The Biographical Dictionary and so on.
- Encyclopedia - including Encyclopedia Britannica and TechEncyclopedia.
- Search Engines - including 7 powerful search engines such as Yahoo, Excite and so on.
- Medical Dictionaries - including 5 influential medical search engines such as Medical References, Index for Medical Dictionary and so on.
- Law Dictionaries - including 5 important law dictionary engines such as Webster's Dictionary of Legal, Lawful Terms, International Law Dictionary and so on.
Findictionary supports locally direct keywords search---that is, instead of logging in the search page of the above mentioned dictionary you just fill the keywords you want to search in the local program and select from the list of dictionaries. The searching result will be directly shown in the browser.
Of course you can perform functions of navigation such Prev, Next…as in Internet Explorer and Netscape. Findictionary really raises the efficiency of searching on Internet, especially to those who are studying or teaching English.
Findictionary is free and I write this article not for any commercial purposes. Suggestions and reports on bugs are welcome. Those who are interested in the program or codes or downloading may visit the following for more details:
http://www.netshareware.com/cgi-bin/displayshare.cgi?comint154
http://www.ezsoft.net/apps/showapp.asp?AppId=5109
Findictionary Screenshot:
About the author
Guo Shesen (guoshesen@21cn.com ) is an English teacher in the English Department, Luoyang University, Henan Province, P.R China. For more information about Guo and his works, please visit his websites:
Homepage: http://guoshesen.533.net
Guestbook: http://guoshesen.abc.yesite.com
Also: http://enlforum.51.net
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