Why I love Oxford Picture Dictionaries

I thought I’d take a post to expand on one of my must-haves for ESL teachers, the Oxford Picture Dictionaries.  I’ve always LOVED picture dictionaries, so I’m naturally biased toward this type of material, BUT some of the more recent materials Oxford has developed to supplement the picture dictionary itself are quite impressive.  If you haven’t looked at these materials yet, it’s worth some time to see if it would be a useful resource for the setting in which you teach.

Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive

From the website: Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive features easy navigation and provides practice opportunities for every word in the Oxford Picture Dictionary, Second Edition . In addition, video clips, readings, conversations, and writing activities provide hours of contextualized language practice.

Features

• Contextualized language practice and activities to reinforce new vocabulary.
• Immediate access to target words, promoting language autonomy.
• Tab-style navigation that provides a clear, intuitive interface even for novice computer users.
• Flashcard Maker that enables students to print a word and picture cards based on their individual needs.
• Vocabulary Notebook for students to actively create an electronic notebook of words and images, facilitating independent learning.

Highlights

If you have access to smartboard technology in your classroom, the OPD also has interactive presentation software that you can use along with the text book.  The OPD is also available in bilingual versions in Farsi, Japanese, French, Urdu, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Hatian Creole, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Oxford Picture Dictionary for Kids

This is an excellent alternative for working with children learning English.  In this series, Oxford offers a workbook, a teacher’s guide, many reproducibles, CDs and a battery of readers for student use.

Oxford Picture Dictionary for Content Areas

Designed to ‘accelerate academic development’, this dictionary is designed specifically for the ESL student in American content based courses.  Topics covered include geography, US history/government, the human body, living things ,the physical world, earth science, math, and technology.