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The 7th Edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary has hit the shelves, and in the back is a CD-ROM called the Oxford Advanced Learner's Compass. It contains not only the OALD but also the Wordfinder Dictionary and the Guide to British and American Culture. Wordfinder helps students study words in meaningful groups. It contains 630 keywords, related by meaning and use.
Of interest to the Business English student are, of course, the exciting features of any multimedia dictionary, such as the opportunity to listen to the words in the dictionary and to practise pronouncing them. The inclusion of the popular Oxford Genie allows learners to look up the meaning of words directly from a web page.
The Advanced search feature is worth investigating. This allows the user to perform complex searches. Looking up a word such as "marketing" gives four headwords: marketing, direct marketing, marketing mix and viral marketing; a "structures" section which includes useful collocations; and "Examples", which provides a large number of sentences with the target word in context.
Another feature of the dictionary and CD-ROM is the Oxford 3000™ - a list of keywords selected by language experts and teachers. The selection is based on criteria such as frequency and range - words used across a number of text types. Of interest is a list of the 250 most common business and finance words, apart from the Oxford 3000. This list could help learners focus their efforts in expanding their vocabulary. Typical words include agenda, audit, bond, redundancy and turnover.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Compass (OUP)