"OALD 7" VS "LDOCE 5"

1, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 7th

2, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th

Which is the winner? If you were I, how would you choose it?

Longman is better than Oxford, though the latter is more famous than former.

Nobody else would like to answer this question? Thanks!

The OALD7 is a great package, certainly for students, but as a native speaker teacher I usually find myself going for my LDoCE4 first, because I like its strict ordering of everything but phrasal verbs by frequency, the presentation of the top 3000 words' frequencies in speech versus writing, and the generally greater snappiness and apparent authenticity of the Longman examples.

Doubtless the LDoCE5 will be an even better package (I have yet to buy it, but have been looking at the adverts) than the LDoCE4 was: it's expanded to over 230,000 words, phrases and meanings to become about the largest advanced learner's dictionary now available, and boasts a very interesting-sounding new feature called the Longman Vocabulary Trainer, which apparently 'tests your knowledge of a word – its meaning, grammar, collocation and usage – then remembers how well you know that word. The word is then recycled and retested at different intervals so the word is never forgotten!'.

So the winner in my opinion (even though I haven't seen it) has to be the LDoCE5, if only because the OALD7 is now three years old, and the LDoCE4 was the better dictionary even back then!

Actually, I have a question of my own: do you guys think that publishers bringing out a new edition of a dictionary every five years or so nowadays is an absolute necessity, or just a way - scam, almost? - to make more money (a bit like a football club changing its kit a bit too often year in and out)? David Crystal may go on, in promotional interviews for every new LDoCE, about needing a new edition every five years, but when I compare my venerable "old" LDoCE3 (1995) with the LDoCE4 (published nearer a decade than only half a decade later), the quality and coverage is about the same, which is what one would expect from two dictionaries that were both compiled post-1995 (the year at least the BNC, with its appreciable transcribed spontaneous speech component, came to fruition); it's only when you compare much older editions of dictionaries with the newest that any real differences become apparent (e.g. McEnery et al in Unit C1 of their Corpus-Based Language Studies (2006) compare the LDoCE1 from 1978 with the LDoCE4 (2003)).

LexicographyLover:

Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary, it focus primarily on American English, and not British English. It also use a much broader group of sources than both Oxford and Longman in preparing its dictionaries. Is it true?

Hi Green Tea. Heh, I must admit that I didn't know that MW had released an ALD, but if its anything like what's available online for free at the link below, then I'd say that it looks an excellent dictionary!
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/

By the way, all the "BrE" ALDs (which give pretty good coverage of AmE too) are also available online - the LDoCE4, the OALD7, the MED2, and the CALD. (I'm sure those interested can Google the relevant links easily enough, if they want to compare each book's contents).