Students from the age of 13 upwards can enjoy the benefits of clear signposting, examples and authentic spoken English, fixed phrases, full American English coverage and detailed frequency information, as well as the clearest possible definitions using the carefully monitored and updated 2000-word Longman Defining Vocabulary. As over 95% of all communication is speech, the dictionary provides coverage of spoken as well as written English, aiming to help students feel totally confident. Analysis of the spoken corpus of British and American English, nearly 15 million words of natural, spontaneous speech, reveals phrases that only occur, or most frequently occur, in spoken English. Also shown are the 3000 most frequent written and spoken words in English, identified separately and marked by a symbol in the margin. This helps students to see which words occur more frequently that others, therefore allowing them to concentrate on learning these core words first. There are also 150 frequency graphs giving students instant information about the frequency of different grammar patterns, the differences in usage of British and American English and the frequency of written versus spoken words and phrases. The dictionary features signposts, simple subheadings of the main word which break the definition up into manageable chunks so that the student doesn't have to read all the definitions before finding the meaning they want.

Based on the 100-million word British National Corpus and the Longman Corpus Network, this dictionary explores a vivid and exciting area of English - spoken English. It also pinpoints the language patterns and grammar unique to spoken English.