English Picture Dictionary for Spanish Speakers English Language Learning System

By Jeffrey Hastings -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2006

LeapFrog SchoolHouse, 6401 Hollis Street, Suite 100, Emeryville, CA 94608 (800) 883-7430 www.leapfrogschoolhouse.com/Dictionary $144. Includes books and Quantum LeapPad Plus Microphone. Consult Web site for library kit pricing.

According to LeapFrog SchoolHouse, a student raised in a native Spanish-speaking household who begins learning English in first grade may very well enter fifth grade with a vocabulary 60 percent smaller than that of his or her native English-speaking peers. That’s serious. A deficit so significant can amount to a barrier that impedes learning in all areas. This product is intended to help narrow that gap by introducing 20 new English words each instructional day.

The English Picture Dictionary comes in two slim, spiral-bound volumes that become interactive when seated in the Quantum LeapPad Plus Microphone. Using the system, Spanish-speaking students can learn to understand and speak 1,000 thematically grouped English words by pointing with the LeapPad’s stylus at objects and hearing their names spoken in both English and Spanish.

The LeapPad platform designed for use with this system works exactly like the one profiled in our June Test Drive column (p. 25), with one important addition: a built-in microphone allows students to touch an icon, record their pronunciation of a selected English word, and then hear it compared to the same word spoken by LeapFrog’s narrator.

Believe me, hearing those aural juxtapositions through the supplied headphones is strikingly instructional. For instance, after hearing my mealy-mouthed vocalizations of common English vocabulary words played back alongside the pristine, digital articulations of the software’s excellent narrator, I learned precisely why I make my living as a school librarian instead of a voice talent on Pixar’s animated features.

Hector Quiroz, a sixth-grade native Spanish speaker who now, thanks in part to our district’s excellent ELL program, speaks impeccable English, liked the system for more practical reasons.

“It would’ve been great,” he says, “back in first grade when I moved to Michigan from Mexico, if there’d been a system like this that could have helped me get started learning the language.”

By employing gentle prompts in Spanish and cues that are visual and intuitive, LeapFrog SchoolHouse’s English Picture Dictionary for Spanish Speakers leads Spanish-speaking students, whether guided or independent, through the core English vocabulary that’s essential to learning across curricula.