How A Dictionary App Can Help To Improve Your Vocabulary As A Student

This is a guest post contributed by the developers of Apple Tree, a dictionary app available for download onto Android devices.

It is a known fact that if your vocabulary improves, your understanding of your learning material and assignments as a student will also improve. You will also be better able to articulate yourself  by choosing the correct words to use when you write. In addition, being able to spell correctly makes your writing easier to understand. You will therefore achieve higher success in your studies when you build on your vocabulary.

Using dictionaries is an excellent way to improve your vocabulary and every student should own at least one. You can use either a sole language dictionary (monolingual) or a multi-language or cross languages one (bilingual/trilingual) if you are a student of several languages.

I am from Apple Tree. I contribute to our company's R & D. I was from a Malay government school in Perak and completed my SPM in 1997. At the time, we didn't have electronic dictionaries or dictionary apps. However, we didn't use the traditional book dictionaries very much either. We used to skip words we did not know because we were too lazy to flip the dictionary to find the meaning. It was also difficult to understand the pronunciation using book dictionaries. 

We skipped words we did not understand in our books because

1. We did not know how to find the root word or Kata Dasar for compound words or Kata Berimbuhan. So we ignored the words we did not know. 

2. We did not understand the IPA (IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of symbols for showing how words are pronounced). 

This made it very hard for us to learn new words and improve our vocabulary even for those of us who were hardworking enough to look up the meaning of words using the traditional book dictionaries.

In 1997 the internet was not very popular and we were  unable to get easy access. It was also expensive to go online. We had to depend on dial-up connection which was slow and not like the wifi that we are able to get everywhere now. Not may places could access the internet unlike now. Currently, though wifi is widely available, it is still inaccessible in many rural places.

Seeing this situation in the past and even now makes me very passionate about my part in the Research and Development in Apple Tree Malaysia. Recently, Apple Tree has developed a Dictionary APP that can be downloaded into a student’s Android device making it instantly accessible easily. This Dictionary App compromise (20 Dictionaries in 1 APP in 3 Languages). 

Our dictionary APP makes it easy for Malaysian students to check the meaning of words in Malay, English and Chinese. It also teaches them how to pronounce the words  in 3 languages. All the content and search function works under offline environment except the Malay pronunciation so you do not even need to access the internet once you have downloaded our app. 

In addition, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka licensed us the copyright of the Kamus Dewan Melayu-Melayu and Kamus Inggeris-Melayu Dewan as well as Longman publish for English-Chinese Dictionary. These are well known and established dictionaries.

Our vision is that our Dictionary APP can help all Malaysian students improve their vocabulary not only in English but Bahasa Malaysia as well by making it easy to access, understand and learn languages by using our dictionary app. We strive to make it easier to look up and learn new words including how to pronounce them."

Related Post: Turn Your Smartphone Or Tablet PC Into An edict With The AppleTree Dictionary App