The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Vietnamese [Vietnamese]

The authors tried hard to present the materials in an easy to understand format. This book is all about Picture-word association for different settings (at the work place, at home,...etc). It is a "must have" for all. You'll enjoy learning new words and use them in converations, intelligently. I suggest also to get the Pocket Vietnamese Dictionary: Vietnamese-English and English-Vietnamese.

In addition to vocab expansion for the L2 learner in an academic setting the beauty of this book is how useful it is in everyday situations. The utility of the "Oxford Picture Dictionary" is that you can use it on your own. Want to go to a market in a foreign country and buy a needle, thread, button, tack, or band saw? You'll find it here. It's organized for the vocab to be found quickly. Each Page is theme/topic based. The vocabulary is accurate, high-frequency, and focused. This is important especially when dealing with multiple definitions that obstruct the usefulness of most other text dictionaries. In addition to the targeted high-frequency, the artistry of the pictures is done very well. Phrasal verbs and collocations are included when necessary, with the target words highlighted. Additional info. is at the bottom of each page. Reading the preface and forward (instruction manual) of this book is also very helpful for instructors as well as learners. It's true this series is beneficial more to English learners if the student of this book is going from English to another language and cannot read the L2 language alphabet (Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, Thai, Korean, etc). This Oxford Picture Dictionary is great for vocab expansion for lower level students learning or acquiring language and/or for those only needing it for everyday purposes.

I am an ESL teacher and tutor 5 Vietnamese students. They all have purchased this book and we are using it with hands on lessons for each chapter of this dictionary. There are no other books that I have found in the 15 years I have tutored that are more descriptive and the illustrations helpful for teaching English. Enjoy!

I purchased this book to assist a Vietnamese immigrant that I work with. She knows very little English, but attempts to communicate ideas and concepts with her co-workers. This can be very frustrating for her because we speak English, and have little motivation to learn Vietnamese. So, she's stuck having to learn the language from people that are not teachers, speak too fast, frequently use common slang terms, and have an attitude that "She'll eventually pick it up". I feel sympathy for her, so I bought it for her. This book contains a few thousand words and pictures, all in the context that they're seen and used. For example, there is a two page spread of an intersection of roads. In that picture, there are pictures of various businesses such as laundromats, bakeries, beauty salon, and such. Car, motorcycle, truck, bus, etc. Parking meters, traffic lights, crosswalks, road, curb, corner, mailbox, fire hydrant, parking space, and many other things you'd find at an intersection of streets in a city. Many of these picture spreads also have verbs identified with a picture. For example, there is a picture of a car backing into a parking spot and noted "park the car", a bicyclist is noted with "ride a bicycle", "wait for the light", "walk across the street", etc. What makes it perfect is that beneath the English word is the Vietnamese word so the student can identify the nouns and verbs more clearly and what action the picture is conveying, such as "learn to drive", "plant a tree", "hang up your clothes", "wash your hair", etc. In certain instances, the verbs are presented in the order they'd be performed, such as: Wake up, take a shower, eat breakfast, go to work, leave work, go shopping, go home, eat dinner, go to bed. This helps with associating the nouns and verbs with the situations. Pick up the receiver, listen for the dial tone, put coins in the telephone, dial the telephone number, have a conversation, hang up the receiver. That sort of thing. All with clearly identified pictures. The amount of material is pretty extensive, covering 3,700 words. These words are grouped into 12 broad categories: Everyday Language, People, Housing, Food, Clothing, Health, Community, Transportation, Areas of Study, Plants and Animals, Work, and Recreation. Each category is then broken down into several picture spreads with all the pictures and activities defined. For example, the section on community is broken down into these picture spreads: City streets, an intersection, a mall, a childcare center, U.S. Mail, a bank, a library, the legal system, crime, public safety, emergencies and natural disasters. All things and related concepts are identified in English and Vietnamese. Very nice. Some spreads resemble comic book panes. Job Search is an example showing a young man looking for a job, looking for a Help Wanted sign, Looking in the newspaper, Calling for information, asking about the hours, filling out an application, going for an interview, and eventu

Excellent resource book both to refresh my own limited knowledge of Vietnamese and to find the right English/Vietnamese equivalent for my Vietnamese students.