The current paper is an earnest attempt by the author to elaborate on the various aspects of illustrative examples in English learner’s dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual. The essential roles of exemplification in learner-oriented dictionaries and the issue of authentic versus invented examples will be fully discussed from different angles. Some problems of verbal illustrations in current monolingual and bilingual learner’s dictionaries will also be greatly highlighted. The author has endeavored to approach the issue of examples in the following steps:In the Introduction of this paper, the definition and criteria of the foreign learner’s dictionaries will be introduced, and the definition and types of illustrative examples are given in preparation for the subsequent discussion.Chapter One is primarily concerned with evaluating the essential roles of illustrative examples in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) dictionaries. First, the usefulness and indispensability of examples are recognized by many linguists and lexicographers. Hence their views are presented in this regard and in some cases are assessed by this author; then, drawing on their insightful perspective on this issue, the present author makes her own judgment by making a classification of the factions of examples in learner-oriented dictionaries.Chapter Two briefly touches upon the contentious issue of pros and cons of natural examples and invented ones.Chapter Three has analyzed and explored the methods and techniques adopted by several influential and popular learner’s dictionaries in presenting examples. The author first makes a general survey of the illustrative exemplification features in several representative monolingual learner’s dictionaries (MLDS) which enjoy great popularity, namely, CCED,OALD,LDOCE and CIDE. In the second part, the exemplification characteristics of two representative bilingual learner’s dictionaries (BLDS) are examined in detail.Although the treatment of examples in MIDS and BLDS are fairly satisfactory, there are still problems to be found and improved in this respect. With this in view, Chapter Four examines illustrative sentences and phrases in representative monolingual and bilingual learner’s dictionaries. The redundancies, inadequacies and other flaws (such as erroneous translations in BLDS) are identified and analyzed; at the same time; solutions are tentatively made by the present author toshed some light on the further improvement on illustrative reapplication.Other issues are touched on in Chapter 5, which includes the selection standard of verbal illustrations, and something about corpus.Based on the discussions and detailed analyses in the foregoing chapters, a summary is given in the conclusion.This author concludes this thesis by stating her sincere hope that her academic effort will be of some value for further research in the light of example treatment in foreign learner’s dictionaries. Thus all the efforts in writing this paper will be greatly rewarded.