How to use a dictionary

A dictionary is a very important tool for anyone who is learning a new language. With a good dictionary you can look up the meaning of an English word you see or hear, find the English translation of a word in your language, check the spelling of a word, check the plural of a noun or past tense of a verb, find out other grammatical information about a word etc. All words in a dictionary are listed in alphabetical order. That means all words that start with A are in the front of the book and words that start with Z are in the back of the book. Proceed to the letter of the alphabet that your word begins with. For example, "dog" begins with "d". Check for the guide words. These are located in the upper corner of each page and give you an indication of how close you are to locating your word, speeding up the process of going through the pages. The first guide word is the first main entry on the page. The second word is the last main entry on the page. Use the second letter of your word to run down the page and locate your word. For example, if you were looking for the word "futile", "u" is the second letter. Once you've located the word, there are several useful elements that you can discover about the word from the dictionary entry. Like- spelling, pronunciation, meaning, parts of speech of the word etc. Like this way we can use a dictionary to explore new words and learn more about them.