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Editorial Review Product Description
A comprehensive, flexible, and up-to-date vocabulary reference and teaching tool for English language learning. The Oxford Picture Dictionary and its components create a highly teachable programme that can be used as a complete, four-skills beginning course, or as a language development supplement and practical reference. NEW Grammar Activity Book ... Read more Customer Reviews (8) 
Pretty much useless for students of Japanese
I have no idea why this book is getting 5 stars and being raved about as a great teaching tool.Yes, the pictures are pretty, and the book is reasonably organized.But for those who cannot read kanji, it is useless.The trouble is that the index has English words with their pronunciations but no pronunciations in the Japanese word index.Each entry shows an English/Japanese word or phrase pairing related to some part of the picture, but no furigana (pronunciation) for the Japanese word.So if you haven't learned your kanji "on" and "kun" readings, you won't be able to look up most of the words--that is unless you are adept at stroke order and have the appropriate dictionary.In other words, if you already know the words, you can use this book.
What I find interesting is that all of the instructions for the various exercises are in English.The English pronunciation guide is in English.So if you don't know how to pronounce "match" or "yarn" this is the book for you.However, there isn't a single word about Japanese pronunciation found anywhere.Starting to note a pattern here?It seems that the book was originally written for Japanese to learn English and then partly translated to create an "English" version.Honestly, if they included the pronunciations for words I would give it 4 stars.
I do know some kanji and can read katakana and hiragana okay, so I can interpret maybe 10% of the words.In this way, I can use it as a refresher--to test my knowledge--AFTER learning a word's meaning and pronunciation in another book.That's the reason for the second star. But, I advise people to find another book for learning Japanese vocabulary.
This book is for Japanese to learn English!!
If you are English speaker, and try to learn Japanese, this is not the right book for you. The picture is in both English and Japanese, but the guild and practice are for English learners. If you are trying to learn Japanese from this book, you will be very disappointed if you can't read Japanese Kanzi.
wonderful!!! very useful for native English speakers too
This just arrived and I am sooo happy! Dont pay too much attention to reviewers here who claim this isnt useful for English speakers learning Japanese. I'm a rank beginner --- studied for 2 months so far and know only 175 kanji and very basic sentence structures --- yet I find this extremely useful. The kanji is easy to read and the illustrations are attractive. You could easily spend hours poring over this without getting bored. I can see myself referring to this handy dictionary for many years to come. Recommend this to all Nihongo students. It's worth far more than $16 IMHO. Do yourself a favor and buy this NOW!!!
For Japanese Only
This book is totally mis-reperesented on the basis of its title. It is NOT for use by English speakers.It is directed exclusively and only toward Japanese speakers and readers who wish to improve their English.It's a great book for the Japanese.If you're looking to learn Japanese from it, forget it.
Great for Japanese learning English
I bought this book thinking it would b user friendly for English speakers learning Japanese, but it looks to be intended for Japanese learning English. Unless you have a good working knowledge of written Japanese, especially kanji, this may not be the book for you. I rated it at 4 stars because it is a very good book for it's intended auience.
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