LDOCE uses a defining vocabulary to make their definitions intelligible to the user. Critics claim this policy may result in imprecise definitions, something especially noticeable in certain concrete and abstract words that are difficult to define by a definition only. This paper examines to what extent LDOCE definitions of such words help learners identify the objects and words being defined. In our experiment on 381 learners of English as a foreign language, three groups of participants viewed different definition types: simplified definitions of LDOCE, unsimplified definitions of MWC, and definitions written in the learners’ mother tongue (UDPL/TR). The results show that the LDOCE definitions proved significantly more useful in the identification tasks than the definitions in MWC, and slightly more useful than in UDPL/TR. Learners with a limited receptive vocabulary size (RVS) did not benefit from LDOCE as much as high-RVS users.

中文翻译：

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LDOCE 定义在词条和图片识别任务中具体和抽象名词的有效性

LDOCE 使用定义词汇使用户可以理解它们的定义。批评者声称，这项政策可能会导致定义不精确，在某些难以仅通过定义来定义的具体和抽象词语中尤其明显。本文研究 LDOCE 对此类词的定义在多大程度上帮助学习者识别所定义的对象和词。在我们对 381 名英语作为外语学习者的实验中，三组参与者查看了不同的定义类型：LDOCE 的简化定义、MWC 的未简化定义和以学习者的母语 (UDPL/TR) 编写的定义。结果表明，LDOCE 定义证明在识别任务中比 MWC 中的定义更有用，并且比在 UDPL/TR 中更有用。