If you are reading an English newspaper and you meet with a new word which decides your understanding of whole passage, what will you do? If you want to learn a new word, including its accurate definition, collocation and etc, what will you resort to? Have you ever heard of online dictionary? Have you ever used online dictionary?

    I do believe when you carefully read the above questions, you will have an idea of the topic of this paper -- online dictionary.

Actually, with the rapid development of Intelligence Technology and the coming of information age(Song Peiliao, Liu ningjing; 2009 ), a great amount of students have used online dictionaries in their English learning due to its peculiar advantages. No matter for a student who is English major or not English major, online dictionaries seem to have a charming attraction to absorb them. As an English major undergraduate, what are the influences of using online dictionary under the condition that this groups of people are good at basic English skills. Can it positively help us in English learning?

   1.2 Significance of the Research

Based on personal experience on English learning and confusing questions mentioned before, how can English major undergraduates take the positive part of Online dictionary is of importance. This paper will make a research on the use of online dictionary among English major undergraduates and further discuss its influences. It will have following benefits:

1) Having a general idea on online dictionary. Online dictionaries simply used at the beginning of its development. How does it work? What is the development of online dictionary? This general knowledge will help you have a further understanding of online dictionaries.

2) Advantages and disadvantages of online dictionary. As a new English learning tool, online dictionary is welcomed by many learners while online dictionary is also questioned by many scholars and learners on the aspect of inaccuracy of meanings, Internet and equipment reliance and etc. When clearly knowing the advantages and disadvantages of online dictionary, we can make the best use of it.

3) The use of online dictionary among English major undergraduates.

4) Influences of online dictionary on English major students. The positive and negative influences are the most important part on research. By knowing these, we can have more strategies on how to use online dictionary.

1.3 Organization of the Paper

Specifically, this thesis will pide into following parts:

Chapter 1 is about introduction. In this chapter, background information, significance of research will be introduced.

Chapter 2 is the literature review part. Basic information, such as definition of online dictionary, a brief history of online dictionary and some features of online dictionary will be clearly explained in this chapter.源:自*优尔`%论,文'网·www.youerw.com/

Chapter 3 is methodology and survey Design. In this chapter, I will show how I design the questionnaire and in which to do a survey.

Chapter 4 is data and discussion. After collecting questionnaire, I will do data analysis and discuss the problem of data.

Chapter 5 ends the thesis with a conclusion. It summarizes major findings of the whole paper and give some suggestion on using online dictionary.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Basic knowledge of online dictionary

Although online dictionary is familiar to most English learners, they do not form a general concept of what an online dictionary. In this section, I will introduce online dictionary in different aspects, such as definition of online dictionary, the history of online dictionary and etc.

2.1.1 The definition of online dictionary

    An online dictionary is a dictionary that is accessible via the Internet through a web browse. They can be made available in a number of ways: free, free with a paid subscription for extended or more professional content, or a paid-only service. Some online dictionaries are organized as lists of words, similar to a glossary, while others offer search features, reverse lookups, and additional language tools and content such as verb conjugations, grammar references, and discussion forums[Net 1] .This definition of online dictionary is from Wikipedia. It shows us some obvious features of online dictionary -- via the Internet, free and etc.