Communications Textbook

Esl Teacher Textbook Recommendation: The Oxford Picture Dictionary, 2Nd Edition

Teaching ESL with a dictionary sounds like as much fun as a 24 hour read-a-thon of Chomsky’s theories on innateness (if that sounds life fun to you…stop reading now). Honestly, when I first began teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), I never thought that I would be teaching classes with a picture dictionary. However, I’ve come to find that the Oxford Picture Dictionary, 2nd Edition is the book of ESL textbooks to use in any ESL class. Use it with the Teacher’s Manual and you will have the ultimate ESL curriculum.

The Oxford Picture Dictionary, 2nd Edition (Monolingual English) can be used by ESL students of all levels, and contains important English words or vocabulary. We use this book at our ESL school, Hawaii Literacy’s Drop In Center (www.hawaiiliteracy.org), because it can be used with any level of student. As long as the student has learned their basic ABCs and the basics of English reading, they can learn from it effectively.

To understand the almost magical adaptability of this ESL textbook, I will discuss a little more about how it is used in our school.  The Drop-In Center is a free ESL school for the local immigrant community of Hawaii. Therefore, student attendance is not always consistent. Students are free to come and go and thus it is difficult to have a traditional lesson plan structure. In addition, since the school is mostly run by volunteers, there are often not enough ESL teachers to divide students into different levels.

The Oxford Picture Dictionary offers many advantages for us:
1) It has up-to-date vocabulary relevant for all levels of students.
2) Students and ESL teachers can begin on any page at any time, so new students will not feel like they are behind the class.
3) Pictures can be easily understood even if the student is a true beginner.
4) All levels of students find the book useful and fun.
5) The teacher’s manual and workbooks are excellent and make teaching and learning much easier.
6) It is inexpensive for most students (between $11-$19 US)

The only disadvantage that I could find is that it is a little heavy. I suggest cutting the book into parts, or suggesting to your students to get backpacks with wheels.

Of course, even with these many advantages, how do you get around the fact that you are teaching from a reference book? Well, you need a wise and experienced ESL teacher, one who is also not afraid to use the Teacher’s Manual!

For my class, I don’t even prepare. I open up the Teacher’s Manual and go from there. It already has ready made sample dialogues (which are very realistic), lists of sentences for dictation, discussion questions, related vocabulary and other suggested activities. I might throw in a quiz or two to help the students check their comprehension. Then I have them go home and review the vocabulary on their own at ESL teacher (www.eslteacherguide.blogspot.com), a blog recently created to help students and teachers all over the world learn and teach ESL on the internet. ESL teacher has a video lesson and a review lesson of the words in the book. We have the students work on only one page of the book a week, so that they have the opportunity to go home and absorb the words effectively.

Some of the other ESL teachers at our school integrate the vocabulary into their grammar practices, or into their own self-created activities. Whatever your classroom focus is or what methods you use, the Oxford Picture Dictionary is by far the best textbook/workbook series for building American English vocabulary building. Enjoy!

Meylysa Tseng

About the Author

Meylysa Tseng has a B.A. and an M.A. in Linguistics, as well as over 10 years of ESL teaching experience. You can learn more about her at ESL Teacher, a blog with resources for both ESL Teachers and ESL Students (http://www.eslteacherguide.blogspot.com).

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