To the Teacher
The Low Beginning, High Beginning and Low Intermediate Workbooks that accompany The Oxford Picture Dictionary have been designed to provide meaningful and enjoyable practice of the vocabulary that students are learning. These workbooks supply high-interest context and real information for enrichment and self-expression.
The Workbooks conveniently correspond page-for-page to the 163 topics of The Oxford Picture Dictionary. For example, if you are working on page 50 in the Dictionary, the activities for this topic, Apartments, will be found on page 50 in all three Dictionary workbooks.
The Low Beginning Workbook addresses the needs of low- beginning learners by practicing the most essential, level- appropriate words from The Oxford Picture Dictionary. Each topic in this workbook includes a Low-Beginning Word List at the top of the page. Here you and your students will find all the words that will be practiced on the workbook page. Word Lists typically provide 9-15 words per topic. Each item in the Word List is reviewed and practiced at least twice in the lesson.
All topics in the Low Beginning Workbook follow the same easy-to-use format. Exercise 1 introduces students to the target words in the Word List and provides a task designed to review meaning. The tasks in Exercise 1 offer learners opportunities to answer questions about his or her own life, give opinions, or use the OPD to personalize the learning process.
Following this activity are one or more content-rich contextualized exercises such as labeling, true or false, matching, sequencing, categorizing, or odd-one-out. These exercises feature an abundance of art to provide fresh, high-interest context and give essential visual support for the low-beginning learner. A variety of graphs, charts, and lifeskills documents are also provided.

As you peruse this book, you'll notice that about a third of the topics include a Challenge activity as a final exercise. Challenge activities provide higher-level critical thinking practice or additional personalization where appropriate. A standard feature in the High Beginning and Low Intermediate Workbooks, Challenge activities are introduced here to provide level-appropriate critical-thinking exercises. This workbook includes audio CDs offering one listening exercise for each topic. The CDs give students the opportunity to hear the language of each topic in natural, real-life contexts, including short conversations, narratives, and numeric and spelling dictations. The listening exercises are in the back of the workbook beginning on page 254. Each of the 12 units ends with Another Look, a review which allows students to practice vocabulary from various topics of a unit in a game or puzzle-like activity, such as word searches, complete the picture, and P-searches, where students search a picture for items that begin with the letter p. These activities are at the back of the Low Beginning Workbook on pages 242-253.
As a low-beginning classroom teacher, it's always my hope to find material that will motivate and empower my students, as well as make my own life a bit easier. It is my fondest wish that the Low Beginning Workbook will help to do that for you and your students.

To the Student
The Oxford Picture Dictionary has over 4,000 words. This workbook will help you use these words in your everyday life. Here is some more information about this book:
It's easy to use! The workbook pages match the pages in your picture dictionary. For example, to practice the words on page 23 in your picture dictionary, go to page 23 in your workbook.
It has exercises about real people and things. For example, are you thinking about buying a car? There's a chart showing popular cars in the United States on page 156. Do you like shopping for food? Take a look at the grocery list on page 67.
You'll find stories and puzzles in this workbook and you'll have a chance to give your opinions, too.
There are listening exercises for each topic.
Every unit has a game or puzzle called Another Look. These can be found at the back of the book.
Learning new words is both challenging and fun. I had a lot of fun writing this workbook. I hope you enjoy using it!
Jane Spigarelli
Jane Spigarelli