Longman Essential Activator (Hardcover) Intermediate to Upper Intermediate

Words are organized around basic concepts and their differences are fully explained.

Put your ideas into words!

The Longman Essential Activator is a dictionary with a difference. It's a production dictionary.

What's a production dictionary?

A production dictionary guides you to exactly the right word you need for the context. Let's say you're writing an essay about how you spent your weekend. You had a "good" time, you went to a "good" party, the film you saw was "good" and the meal in the restaurant was "good". You've used the word "good" four times! Wouldn't it have been better if you could have used some different words with similar and more appropriate meanings? If only you'd known how to find them.

This is when a production dictionary is needed. You could have looked up the word "good", and realised that actually you went to a "brilliant" party, the film you saw was "excellent" and the meal in the restaurant was "fantastic"! It's that easy, because when you look up a word in a production dictionary, you'll find lots of related words in the same section, so you can find exactly what you're looking for straightaway.

Didn't Longman publish the world's first production dictionary, the Longman Language Activator?

Yes, and the Longman Essential Activator works in the same way. The main difference is that the Longman Essential Activator is perfect for intermediate level students, while the Longman Language Activator is designed for students at a higher level.

Essential word banks

Intermediate students often need to tackle essay questions and discussion topics, especially if they are working towards an exam like the First Certificate Examination in English. You could be faced with anything from 'What do you do in your free time?' to 'How can we save the environment?' The Longman Essential Activator covers 25 topic areas based on a variety of exam task types, such as describing people, films/movies, education, environment, technology and computers. Within each section, you'll find all the vocabulary and phrases you'll need to be able to write correct English on that topic.

Essential communication section

When you're learning English, we know that what you most want to do is communicate as clearly as possible in conversation. To help you achieve this goal, the Longman Essential Activator has a whole section dedicated to communication techniques. Using clear flowcharts, it details all the essential phrases you'll need to communicate in various situations, such as saying goodbye, making hotel reservations and sending invitations.

Essential grammar help