English Spanish Flashcards

An ESL teacher from Mexico sent me a message once asking whether I was interested in making English-Spanish flashcards to help educators in Spanish-speaking countries teach English to kids. Being an ESL teacher myself, I loved the idea of bilingual flashcards. So I decided to create a series of printable bilingual flashcards starting with the English-Spanish ones as a tribute to the Mexican teacher who gave me this wonderful idea.

BUY THE ENTIRE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH-SPANISH FLASHCARDS IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY PDF FORMAT

High resolution flashcards covering 716 English nouns in 16 topics

English-only flashcards are available here

Spanish is a great language to focus on when starting my cause of creating bilingual ESL materials for teachers all over the world. It is estimated that there are some 480 millions of native Spanish speakers which makes Spanish the world’s second most spoken native language. The geography and economic connections of the majority of Spanish-speaking countries dictate make learning English a strategic necessity for their population as their English-speaking neighbors are their major trading partners and sources of tourists. In many cases the ability to speak English can be vital for people’s career in such countries as Mexico. The United States is Mexico’s biggest trading partner buying almost 80% of total Mexican exports. The number 2 trading partner is another English-speaking country — Canada. The USA is the top trading partner also for Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and some other Hispanic countries of Latin America.

My collection of English-Spanish flashcards covers 716 English nouns.

No wonder that learning English is a must for kids in those countries. English proficiency guarantees better chances in finding good opportunities both at home and abroad as English has long become the international language of business. Both common people and governments recognize the need to learn English. For example, Costa Rica has recently declared English teaching a national priority.

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There is also a large Spanish-speaking community in the United States of America. I do believe that many Spaniards living in the U.S. want to raise bilingual children and therefore make their kids learn English from as young age as possible.

Since the majority of Spanish speaking people learn English to seek for opportunities directly or indirectly related to the United States, I used the American English for my English-Spanish flashcards. So, as you can see, my printable flashcards could be handy for quite a lot of educators and parents, and especially those living in Latin America and the USA.

When I create some kind of English teaching materials for my classes, I make sure there is enough materials to help me throughout the entire school year. So my flashcards and worksheets usually cover a number of topics my students learn during the year. I used the same approach when creating the English-Spanish flashcards. As a result my collection of cards can boast of some unique benefits that ESL teachers will certainly enjoy:

• 700+ colorful printable flashcards covering 16 topics
• The largest set of printable English-Spanish flashcards available online
• The vocabulary based on the most frequently used English nouns
• Large high-quality images for each word
• Children-friendly images
• Color-coded flashcards to show the grammatical gender of Spanish nouns
• Regional variations of some Spanish words (Castilian Spanish and Latin American dialects)
• The unique cut-out design with images and detachable English and Spanish words
• A useful design for word-to-word and/or word-to-image matching assignments

When designing the English-Spanish flashcards, not only I consulted with a person who knows Spanish but also with some online resources listing the most frequently used English words. I’ve made sure my flashcard set covers the basic vocabulary which is indispensable for English learners. The selection of cards is based on sight words (Dolch and Fry sight words), lists of most common words in English compiled by fellow educators as well as on my own teacher’s experience. So if ESL teachers use my flashcards to teach English, they can be sure they are helping students build their vocabulary that will make an important basis for their future language proficiency.

One of the essential features of the English-Spanish noun flashcards is their different colors that depend on the grammatical gender of Spanish words. The red color is for the nouns of feminine gender, the blue color is for masculine nouns, and the magenta-colored cards represent Spanish nouns of ambiguous gender (e.g., la/el azúcar) as well as those of common gender (e.g., la/el agente de policía). By the way, this is a useful feature also for those who would want to use my flashcards to learn Spanish as their second language.

Different colors of the English-Spanish flashcards indicate genders of corresponding Spanish nouns.

I took into consideration the regional variations of the Spanish vocabulary. It is a well known fact that sometimes they call things differently in Latin American Spanish and European Spanish. That’s why some English terms have multiple cards featuring different Spanish words commonly used in Spain and Latin America. Therefore the set of English Spanish flashcards covering 716 English nouns has 810 cards. If it so happened that I did not include some word(s) used in your country, you are welcome to send me a message, and I will create the card with the term preferred in your dialect of Spanish.

When creating the English-Spanish flashcards I took into consideration regional differences of Spanish language.

I use lots of visuals for my English lessons. And especially printed image flashcards. Let's face it, learning a foreign language would be rather boring without all those visuals teachers are using to engage students, especially little children, into the studying process. Learning a foreign tongue should be full of excitement and magic brought by the teacher with the help of his/her arsenal of teaching resources that surely includes colorful images, fun videos, worksheets and other visuals. So images are a key ingredient of successful language learning and an important component of an engaging lesson.

You may argue that the digital era can offer more advanced ways to engage kids such as all sorts of tablets, computers and interactive whiteboards. But I believe that old-school printed materials are always a number one tool for teachers. Everything big starts with basic things such as images of familiar objects when it comes to learning a new language. There are a few reasons I prefer using printed visuals for my lessons with children:

• Images can serve as a great icebreaker for students that don't know any English at all.
• Demonstrating pictures is one of primary ways to go about introducing a new language to kids and involve them into foreign language learning through something they already know and love. After all children associate paper-based visuals with the first book they loved. So a positive past experience is conducive to memorizing stuff.
• Working with printables can be a good filler when a teacher needs to keep a group of students students busy (with printed worksheets etc.) while conferring individually with students who need extra support.
• Printable flashcards are inexpensive and can be easily reprinted. One of the common problems of teaching young kids is that they love ruining stuff. I'm kinda wary of giving an expensive tablet to a group of 5-year-old students. Colorful flashcards is what I’d rather use when working with little ones.

The English-Spanish flashcard kit covers the following topics:

Animals (120 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a shark. One of the flashcards in the "Animals" collection.

Calendar and Time (16 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a calendar. One of the flashcards in the "Calendar and Time" collection.

Clothes and Accessories (34 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a dress. One of the flashcards in the "Clothes and Accessories" collection.

Food and Tableware (102 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring honey. One of the flashcards in the "Food and Tableware" collection.

Home and Furniture (59 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a house. One of the flashcards in the "Home and Furniture" collection.

Human Body (44 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a thumb. One of the flashcards in the "Human Body" collection.

Nature and World around Us (44 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a forest. One of the flashcards in the "Nature and World around Us" collection.

People (35 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring three women. One of the flashcards in the "People" collection.

Places and Geography (71 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a city. One of the flashcards in the "Places and Geography" collection.

Professions and Occupations (52 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a worker. One of the flashcards in the "Professions and Occupations" collection.

School (22 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a pencil. One of the flashcards in the "School" collection.

Shapes (21 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a sphere. One of the flashcards in the "Shapes" collection.

Sports (37 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a stadium. One of the flashcards in the "Sports" collection.

Toys (13 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a box full of toys. One of the flashcards in the "Toys" collection.

Transportation (20 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a bicycle. One of the flashcards in the "Transportation" collection.

Miscellaneous Nouns (39 English nouns)

The flashcard featuring a wheel. One of the flashcards in the "Miscellaneous" collection.

You are welcome to check the entire list of English nouns featured in my collection of printable English-Spanish flashcards.

It took me months to collect images and turn them into flashcards. I hope the resulting English-Spanish flashcards help ESL teachers working with Spanish-speaking kids. I’m planning to create more bilingual flashcards in other languages as well as English-only flashcards using the images I have found for this project. I will design bilingual flashcards for teachers working with kids that speak French, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian. I hope to find someone to help me make flashcards for Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Arabic speakers. I’ll be posting collections of my printable image flashcards on my blog. Please, follow this blog updates to get my flashcards for free. Or alternatively you may want to purchase a printer-optimized hi-res PDF version of printable ESL flashcards.