Explicitly designed for the International or second-language speaker, this site allows users to search -- but not browse -- Cambridge's Dictionary of American English, International Dictionary of English, International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs, and International Dictionary of Idioms. Entries have value-added, second-language instructional items such as the identification of "false friends" (i.e., false cognates), simple codes that "demonstrate all the important grammatical patterns of a word," and a limited defining vocabulary that minimizes the need for students to look up the definition of a definition. Both the phrasal verb dictionary and the dictionary of idioms will be helpful to ESL students as the search engine returns a number of similarly worded entries to a student's possibly imprecise query. Note: users cannot search all four volumes at once, and we found the International Dictionary more helpful than the Dictionary of American English for basic definitions and breadth of coverage.
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