Many students who learn English in their home country before coming to the United States use bilingual dictionaries, which list words in English with native-language translations or vice versa. By now, you have probably noticed that some words in these dictionaries have conversational translations that are not appropriate for academic work. While the dictionaries can help you understand what you read and may help beginning writers, they are not always the best resource for college writing.

For help with understanding and using college-level vocabulary, consider investing in an English-English dictionary that is designed for multilingual writers. These dictionaries typically provide both definitions and sample sentences for each word. Many also provide information that is not in dictionaries for native speakers. For example, they usually note whether a noun is count, noncount, or both, and they often provide information about a word’s level of formality. The following are some dictionaries and thesauri (books that provide lists of synonyms, words with similar meanings) designed for multilingual writers.

dictionaries

thesauri