Macmillan Collocations Dictionary (review)

Introduction

This new academic dictionary for intermediate and advanced students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is easy to use and easy to navigate, and likely will improve the fluency and natural sound of their developing English. Its strengths include its inclusive coverage of vocabulary items, its concise definitions and guiding terms, and its consistent treatment of collocations. It is 8.25 inches long, 5.75 inches wide, and almost two inches thick. It is not too thick to be held in one hand. Its 911 pages open easily and stay open with a helping hand. The easy-to-read entries, set off with bright red headwords, are not illustrated, but they have multiple example sentences.

EFL students at the secondary level, still building up their vocabulary, will tend to make errors in the ways they combine words when speaking and writing, producing, for example, "feelings spread high" instead of "feelings ran high." This dictionary is an encoding dictionary for writers and speakers; the introductory essays make clear that the aim is to improve the active usage of vocabulary. The back cover states: "Specially created to help upper intermediate to advanced students write more natural and accurate English." It might also be used for decoding certain phrases that a student may read, since its coverage of word combinations goes beyond that of most EFL dictionaries. This review is organized into three areas: microstructure and grammatical coding, vocabulary coverage, and minor problems.

Microstructure and grammatical coding

The entries are well laid out, easy to read, and grammatically ordered. A generously sized bright red headword on its own line is followed by a brief definition and the collocations with guide terms ordered by parts of speech: adjective plus noun, verb plus noun, and noun plus verb. The entry for generic follows:

generic ADJ
suitable for a range of similar things

• • ADJ + n word description, name, term, title, word This is a generic term that is used to refer to both groups.

• ◆ skill competency, skill Many generic skills can be developed through working in the leisure industry.

• ◆ method approach, method, principle, solution We are developing a generic approach to data-transfer between the different government departments.

• ◆ product drug, medicine, model, package, software, version Generic software is available which can run on a variety of computers.

The defining style used for all of the entries appears to be a shortened form of the Macmillan School Dictionary (2004) entry. Its entry for generic reads as follows: relating to, or suitable for, a particular group of similar things. The shortened style, deleting the first three words and substituting range should not present any problems for the advanced EFL students who are likely to buy this dictionary. I found that the single-word guides to the subsenses—word, skill, method, and product, (for generic)—were very helpful in my searches testing the coverage of 200 collocations and phrasal verbs.

For a longer one-column entry, such as heat, the grammatical categories consistently order the entry. The order for heat [noun] is "adjective plus noun," extreme heat, searing heat; "verb plus noun," radiate heat, reflect heat; "noun plus verb," heat radiates from, heat subsides; and "verb plus noun" turn down, turn up, turn off the heat. This second [V + N] set has transitive verbs and heat as the direct object. This ordering based on grammar is extended in some entries with "noun plus noun," (laser beam, infrared beam); "noun of noun," (cause of the trouble); and "noun and/or noun" (help and advice, bias or prejudice).

Coverage

I tested the coverage of vocabulary combinations using an article by Pätzold (1994) that addresses collocations and syntactic combinations. Pätzold used a list of 100 collocations and 100 "syntax items," in addition to sets of 50 items each in five subject fields such as computer science and environmental science, in order to compare the coverage of English-German bilingual dictionaries. In this review I used his 100 collocations, with a few omitted and a few added...