How to improve your English learning by using the dictionaries  on line?

Someone once told me that he had no time to learn English or practise English.

Maybe you will find it happens to you in daily life, too.

We are busy now: we have no time to improve our English just like the students in campus and we admire the students for the best opportunities to practise all the skills of our languages, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating.

Here is a tip for improving your English learning using the dictionaries online when the internet is available after class or  for tea/coffee break in office.

For example:

What's your understanding of the following sentence:

1. Dr. Stevens is on sabbatical next semester.

You can search the key word of "sabbatical" using the Cambridge Dictionaries online:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

sabbatical noun

a period of time when college or university teachers are allowed to stop their usual work in order to study or travel, usually while continuing to be paid

to take/have a sabbatical

She's on sabbatical for six months.

sabbatical leave

(Definition of sabbatical noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

other websites of dictionaries online:

Dictionary and Thesaurus-Free online at your dictionary

http://www.yourdictionary.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sabbatical

Word Origin & History

sabbatical

1645, "of or suitable for the Sabbath," from L. sabbaticus, from Gk. sabbatikos "of the Sabbath" (see Sabbath). Meaning "a year's absence granted to researchers" (originally one year in seven, to university professors) first recorded 1886 (the thing itself is attested from 1880, at Harvard), related to sabbatical year (1599) in Mosaic law, the seventh year, in which land was to remain untilled and debtors and slaves released.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

Some websites can offer the word origin and history of the key words, such as:

Another example:

2. It made a lot of things fall into place.

If you are not sure the meaning of the idiom of "fall into place", you can search it in the website such as:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/

fall into place 

1. if something that happens makes everything fall into place, it makes you understand something that you did not understand before Once I discovered that the woman I had seen him with was his daughter, everything fell into place,

2. if things fall into place in a situation, they happen in a satisfactory way, without problems If a project is well-planned, everything should fall into place.

 

So, whenever the internet is at hand, you can learn your English and practise your skills. It's very interesting and useful for your language learning.

 

 

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