English Through Pictures

The three pocketbooks comprising the English Through Pictures series are the remarkable invention of I.A. Richards and Christine Gibson, who designed them to help the learner speak, read and write World English in the quickest and clearest possible way - through pictures.

The authors have made a careful selection of the most widely useful English words, choosing those with the power to define other words, and have put them to work in key patterns that offer the learner the ability to communicate successfully in World English. Book 1 contains a vocabulary of 250 such words, with an additional 500 developed in Book 2; these 750 words are then used in Book 3 to build a command of 1000 words which, by their defining power, hold the possibility of understanding as much as another 20,000 words of World English.

Throughout English Through Pictures, responsibility for learning is placed directly on the learner, who from the very start enjoys the ability to put essential words to work creating key sentence patterns where meaning is clearly shown in pictures. These simplified drawings allow learners to focus on the sentence and to enjoy growing confidence as they successfully take control of language, with the workbooks in Books 1 and 2 challenging and reinforcing their growing competence as both speakers and readers. Motivated and inspired, learners will soon find to their delight that fluent communication in World English - the common language of today’s world - lies well within their grasp.

English Through Pictures has already been used successfully alone or in combination with other English language programs by millions of learners in more than forty countries.