If you looking for general information to aid your Chinese writing assignments, there are many different types of sources that might be relevant.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by the Oxford University Press, is a descriptive dictionary of the English language. Included is the complete text of the 2nd. ed. of the Oxford English dictionary with quarterly updates, including revisions not available in any other form.
Ethnologue is a database of information about the world’s 7000 living languages. For each language, it lists names and dialects, population estimates, location, details by country, vitality level, usage, and second language information.