Review of Oxford Primary Dictionary

Abstract

Even though English pedagogical lexicography has been essentially focused on dictionaries to non-native speakers (the so-called learner's dictionaries), it is possible to find a very restricted group of pedagogical reference works concerned with the teaching of English to young native speakers, known as school dictionaries. This review evaluates one of those rare works-the Oxford Primary Dictionary (OPD, 2011), an English dictionary compiled to primary school students aged nine or more. This analysis contemplates the four component parts of any semasiological dictionary: the outside matter, the macrostructure, the mediostructure and the microstructure (Landau, 2001; Hartmann & James, 2002). The first component part to be analysed is the outside matter. This component consists of external texts which do not belong to dictionary entries. The outside matter can be divided into three different parts according to its position in the dictionaryfront matter, middle matter and back matter.