This updated Scholastic Children's Dictionary still contains the essential elements that made the original edition a big hit. Pronunciations are spelled phonetically. Sample sentences and cross-references facilitate word comprehension and usage. Full-color illustrations provide additional important information.
The book contains braille, sign language, a map of the United States, the Presidents, facts on all fifty states and current technology words. Each word is presented with the structural sentence component: i.e. noun, pronoun, verb, or adverb
Alternative forms of a word are provided by the authors. In addition, each word is used in a model sentence to illustrate how the word fits within the context of daily usage. This is perhaps the most helpful use of the book since English language learners often struggle to place a word in the proper context within a sentence.
Some parents object to the presentation of words phonetically. The reason is that children may come to believe that the phonetic spelling of a word is the same as the actual spelling.
The phonetic interpretation is provided so that students see a slight alteration of the word that better represents the actual spoken language. Besides, children don't read dictionaries for pleasure. They read books and refer to a dictionary in order to establish word utilization in the context of reading a specific book.
Scholastic Children's Dictionary is a fairly complete rendition which presents word definitions in an understandable format with a sample sentence accompanying each definition. As such, the dictionary provides useful data for assisting English language learners and other strategic constituencies to learn the language more comprehensively.
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