Adding examples to my books

When I wrote Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics , I intentionally omitted examples for the headwords, so that the book remains compact and each headword entry looks short and clean. A few years have passed and I come to realize that if the book is used as a dictionary for language learners, examples are essential, even if they can be easily found in other dictionaries. They not only show the usage of the words, but also help the learners memorize them.

Currently, I'm more actively working on the French words book. So I chose to augment that book with examples first; its early version suffered from the same fault, too. As always, I'd like to make my book slightly different from any other out there. In giving examples, I decide to explain some example sentences or phrases in their literal senses so as to help the learners better remember the meanings. For example,

tête head. ... This word has many extended meanings e.g. “mind” (où avais-tu la tête?, “what were you thinking?”, literally “where did you have the head?”)

arriver to arrive; to happen; (followed by à + verb) to manage (to do something). ... je n’y arrive pas (“I can’t do it”, literally “I don’t manage to do it” or more literally “I don’t arrive at it / arrive there”).

Another decision is to merge several short example phrases, separating the replaceable components with a slash. For example,

attendre to wait (for); (reflexive) to expect, to foresee. ... j’attends le bus (“I’m waiting / I wait for the bus”); on s’attend au pire / à mieux (“we’re expecting the worse / better”)

exciter to excite. ... In general, say je suis ému / surexcité / ravi instead of excité for “I’m excited”.

Obviously, giving examples for the easier or more frequent words offers greater benefit in vocabulary learning. I think I'll continue to review my book and add examples along the way to about the middle of the book, which orders the headwords in frequency of occurrence. Once the French book is done, I'll start to work on the revised edition of the Spanish word book, even though there's no plan to formally publish it.