THE USE OF DICTIONARY TO UNDERSTAND SIMILAR WORDS IN ENGLISH
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Abstract
A knowledge of words, phrases, clauses is essential to good writting and
speaking, but it doesn’t mean neglect the other part of grammar. The correction of
writing and speaking is to concentrate on what we are saying rather than on how we
are saying it. The problems might raise once speakers find similar words in meaning
but cotextually different in use. The study aims to investigate the forms of words that
have more than one correct meaning but different in use. The data were collected by
sorting some potential words that have the same meanings in the dictionary as a
content analysis.The words were investigated in the dictionary and provided their
meanings in forms of tables.The words were analysed qualitatively by looking at the
meaning prescribed in dictionary and compared how they are used in a sentence. It
is found that words serve different purposes in language. Some words seem to have
function words that cue a reader or speaker to the structure of the sentence such
as are, that, a, to, or, the, of, and so forth. Function words make spoken language
meaningful and written language coherent and readable. Other words might refer as
content words that communicate meaning in text. Clearly, students must know both
kinds of words to understand what they read.
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