Since dictionary becomes an important thing for everyone who studies language, people try to look for the best dictionary they could use. As an example, I myself who study in English Department need a good dictionary. It helps me a lot whenever I study in the class or do my assignment. Considering the popularity, there are two English dictionaries which are mostly used by the students in my college and the quality are doubtless. Those are Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary. Due to their similar quality, students feel doubt whether to choose Longman or Oxford for them to be used everyday. Even though both of the dictionaries have a good quality, they are contrast in price, language used, and the content of the electronic dictionary. It really influences the students to make decision toward the dictionaries.
First of all, Longman and Oxford have a contrast price for the big and also the pocket size dictionary. Every year, both Longman and Oxford’s price change based on the fluctuation and the improvement of the dictionary’s content. As we can find the illegal copy for Longman pocket dictionary, Oxford big and pocket size dictionary in many book stores. I want to notify the contrastive of the present price for the original copy. Longman big size dictionary costs about 350.000 rupiahs whereas Oxford costs about 300.000 rupiahs. For the pocket dictionary, Longman costs about 165.000 while Oxford costs about 63.000. As the result, Longman is more expensive than Oxford.
Another different aspect between Longman and Oxford is the usage of language. Both Longman and Oxford use different English language in explaining every word in the dictionary. Longman uses American English while Oxford uses British English. The usage of American English makes some people understand the meaning of every word in the dictionary easily. Many students in my college also said that Longman is easier to be understood than Oxford. Though Longman gives longer explanation for every meaning of the word, but the explanation is clearer. As an example, Longman’s explanation about the word “tea” is a hot brown drink made by pouring boiled water onto the dried leaves from particular Asian bush; while Oxford gives shorter explanation which is the dried leaves of the tea bush. Of course there are still many other explanations which are written after the main explanation. Nevertheless, from the example above I conclude that Longman’s explanation is clearer than Oxford.
The differences between Longman and Oxford do not end with price and language used. Both Longman and Oxford are completed by electronic dictionary which is different from each other. Longman and Oxford differ in respect to the disks they used. Longman uses DVD-room but Oxford uses CD-room for the electronic dictionary. Though Longman uses DVD-room, it is a bit complicated to install. We still need a computer cracker after the installation so that we do not need to insert the disk anymore whenever we want to open the application. Unlike Longman, we just simply install the Oxford’s CD-room and we can open the dictionary application every time without the computer cracker and also insert the disk first. Beside the installation of the disk, Longman and Oxford electronic dictionary have their own special features. The special feature of Longman electronic dictionary which does not exist in Oxford is the “activator”. It is a unique tool to help you choose the best word or phrase to express your ideas when you are writing or speaking. Different from Longman, the special feature of Oxford is the “know-how”. Actually, this program is not a grammar checker when you are writing. However, it will give you three suggestions of correct formed examples if you type a wrong sentence. So that, we may know particular problems on writing and the “know-how” gives the ways of solving them.
Every student in my college has their own point of view about Longman and Oxford dictionary. They deserve to choose their own dictionary and I think they do not need to be so confused about which dictionary is the best to be used by considering the price, language, and the electronic dictionary. I conclude that both of the dictionaries are good for students and I think both Longman and Oxford can support each other.
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