Diploma Thesis from the year 2005 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1, 00, PH Oberoesterreich, language: English, abstract: This paper aims at raising the reader's awareness for the complexity of dictionaries and is meant to convey lots of additional information on dictionaries as such and also on how to use them, especially with young learners of English in the classroom.

The majority of dictionary owners are not aware of the huge source of knowledge they could have access to if they had learned how to use a dictionary properly and therefore actually will not profit from their purchase.

The first thing most adults do when they start to learn a new language is to buy a dictionary, because this seems to be the first step to successful language acquisition to them. This might be true for some people who really know how to appropriate the multifarious information provided by their dictionaries.