Dictionaries can not help everything for languages.

In my point of view, dictionaries can not help everything for foreign languages. Before think about dictionaries, we should consider that why we should use dictionaries. Now we are studying English so that we need to find the meaning of the word we don’t know when we meet them. However, when we use our native language, we don’t often use any dictionaries even if some words are news to us because we can guess from the conversation or sentences. It means we would not need to use dictionary if we can understand foreign language as well as natives. In my case, I use an electronic dictionary because it is easy to bring and it is more quickly to find the word than book dictionaries. And also I use only English-English dictionary in order to understand new word in English because, in my opinion, the process of translating to our native language in my brain is not necessary when we study foreign language. Moreover, we can find how to use the words appropriately by referring the examples in an English- English dictionary. However, as Steven Pinker mentioned on his lecture “The stuff of thought”, in youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQM8PzCEY0), the meaning of the words would be changed in the situation. It means, even though we can know the definition or how to use the words appropriately, dictionaries can not help the implicated meanings on a conversation or sentences. Furthermore, the words, such as slung are created new meaning day by day, then dictionaries can’t catch up their meanings as long as we don’t change to use new dictionary. In conclusion, if we want to use foreign language as well as natives, we should be used to using foreign language by talking with native speaker, watching the foreign movies or TV programs, or reading a lot of novels, newspapers, or magazines instead only rely on dictionaries.
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References
Steven Pinker “The stuff of thought” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQM8PzCEY0)