Oxford Dictionary app takes out top award

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English (OLDAE) has taken out the 'prestigious' Innovation in Learner Resources British Council ELTons Award.

This award recognises quality and innovation in English-language teaching products and services.

The dictionary was developed by Oxford University Press (OUP), which has been dubbed the world's authority on the English language, and is designed for students studying other academic subjects in English.

The app version of the dictionary was developed by OUP and Paragon Software Group, a multi-platform software developer for mobile devices and desktop computers.

Diana Lea, Oxford University Press managing editor, says, 'We are really proud that we have created a dictionary that we believe meets the needs of students studying English for academic purposes around the world in a way that no other dictionary currently does.

"I am delighted that it has been recognised how glamorous, exciting and innovative a dictionary can be.

Based on the 85-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English, OLDAE is the only internationally available learner's dictionary to focus exclusively on academic English. Once the app has been downloaded, it can be used without an internet connection and runs on devices with an iOS 7.0 or later operating system.

It helps students understand academic texts and helps them improve their own academic writing.

The OLDAE app includes:

• 22,000 words, phrases and meanings explained, with the focus on their usage in academic writing
• More than 50,000 corpus-based example sentences
• Word lists for four subject areas (physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities) that users can add to or edit
• The ability to create and organise lists of favourite words
• A 'did you mean...?' function and wild card search to find a word spelling
• Customisable background colour, font size, search results, highlighting
• British and American audio pronunciations recorded by native speakers
• Full dictionary search to find words in any phrase, collocation or sentence in the dictionary

The app is available in the iTunes store as a free or paid version. The paid version will give 100 sample entries and an in-app purchase is required to activate the full dictionary.