Earticle

The rapid global expansion of Chinese language education has generated an urgent demand for learner-oriented lexicographical resources. Traditional Chinese dictionaries, primarily designed for native speakers, emphasize linguistic standardization and descriptive completeness, yet often fail to accommodate the cognitive, pragmatic, and cross-cultural needs of second language learners. As a result, their practical value for international learners remains limited. Against this background, this study examines the necessity of constructing a learning-oriented basic Chinese learner’s dictionary, defined as a dictionary designed for beginning and lower-intermediate learners with the primary aim of supporting vocabulary comprehension, acquisition, and use. Drawing on pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and second language acquisition theory, the paper systematically reviews recent Chinese and international scholarship on learner dictionaries, identifies structural and functional limitations in existing resources, and proposes an integrated analytical framework for dictionary construction. The proposed framework emphasizes learner orientation, functional system integration, technological support, and cross-cultural adaptability. On this basis, the study outlines a set of construction strategies, including corpus-informed entry selection focused on high-frequency vocabulary, hierarchically organized definitions progressing from core to extended senses, contextualized examples with controlled difficulty, pragmatic guidance addressing register, politeness, and usage constraints, and culturally informed cross-linguistic annotation. Particular attention is given to cross-cultural adaptation, arguing that simple bilingual equivalence is insufficient to represent culturally embedded meanings in Chinese vocabulary and may lead to semantic misalignment or pragmatic misuse. Rather than focusing on technical implementation details, the paper conceptualizes technology as an enabling mechanism that supports platform-based operation, multimodal presentation, learner feedback, and iterative content optimization. From a theoretical perspective, the study contributes a coherent framework that bridges lexicography and Chinese-as-a-foreign-language pedagogy. Methodologically, it proposes an operational pathway that integrates corpus-based selection, learner-centered definition design, pragmatic enrichment, and multimodal support. Practically, the findings offer implementable guidance for dictionary compilers and educational institutions engaged in resource development for international Chinese education. Overall, the study argues that learning-oriented basic Chinese learner’s dictionaries must move beyond traditional paradigms and adopt an integrated, learner-responsive model to effectively support second language vocabulary development.