A+ English Usage Dictionary

As an ESL student, are you frustrated with comprehension exams?

In my experience teaching IELTS in the UAE, students are capable, clever, and can handle complex subjects—when the vocabulary is clear.

For example, in the first two paragraphs of a university-level comprehension test, my students identified 99 unknown English words. How can you correctly answer questions on a subject when you have to guess what it’s about? These students had finished their coursework in business, nursing, and engineering; they were smart. What they lacked was extra work on English vocabulary.

This dictionary is specially designed for you. Use this resource to:

• study definitions of words that commonly appear on English competency exams
• learn how parts of speech are used
• memorize phrases that help you speak

The sentences include quotations marks, questions, as well as verbs in the present, past, and future tenses so you can improve your grammar game, too.

This is not a complete dictionary; it contains the most difficult, unknown words from higher-level English courses. Many of the words are repeated throughout so you can read them in different contexts.

Please make this resource your own. Write in it. Add pictures. Highlight the words you look up so you know which ones are giving you trouble. Circle things, add links, underline in colour, doodle in the margins.

Make this book work for you.