I have created another big set of bilingual flashcards to be used by ESL teachers. This time these are English-Chinese flashcards. I believe they can serve as a good visual aid for kids learning English in China.
China has become one of the most popular destinations for English teachers looking for job opportunities abroad. Being a fast developing economy, China badly needs as many citizens who can speak decent English as possible. English is today’s lingua franca spoken by people from all over the world to establish trade relationships. As a leading economy, China has to be serious about all things that propel the country’s trade including, of course, English fluency of Chinese people. That’s why they eagerly invite educators from English speaking countries to China.
 |
| My printable English-Chinese flashcards can help ESL teachers break the ice and make their English classes more engaging for Chinese students |
China is the most populated country of the world and that is the reason why Chinese need many English teachers. Therefore the eligibility requirements to become an English teacher in the Republic of China are quite liberal. Even native English speakers without teaching degrees and experience are welcome there to work as ESL teachers. Many people from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia use the opportunity to get a decent paying job in this Asian country that also involves exciting travelling, getting acquainted with interesting people and outstanding culture as well as witnessing the economic wonder of China with all the great benefits it can offer. Moreover, even non-native English-speaking teachers enjoy job opportunities in China.
Unfortunately, even the most qualified ESL teachers have to cope with lots of challenges of teaching English to Asian people. Their languages differ so much from European languages that they most probably regard English as something alien and extremely hard to learn. English must be as difficult to them as Chinese to the majority of speakers of European languages. The other problem is that too many English teachers working in China do not speak Chinese and therefore have hard time communicating with students. That’s why Chinese students require lot of visual materials during English classes to better understand the teacher. Hopefully, my English-Chinese flashcards will help ESL teachers break the ice and make their lessons less boring for Chinese students who just begin studying English.
It seems there are not so many English-Chinese printables available to ESL teachers online. So I decided to create my next set of bilingual flashcards featuring
simplified Chinese (used
in the mainland of China, Singapore and Malaysia but not in Taiwan and Hong Kong where mainly traditional Chinese characters are used) to offer them to educators working with Chinese students. I asked someone who knows Chinese to help me make those flashcards using the same collection of pictures I used to design
English,
English-Spanish and
English-French flashcards.
There are
more than 700 English-Chinese flashcards in the set. Traditionally, they include frequently used nouns (including the majority of
Dolch sight word nouns) in the following 16 topics:
Animals
 |
| Animals vocabulary flashcard featuring a panda |
Calendar and Time
 |
| Calendar and time vocabulary flashcard featuring summer |
Clothes and Accessories
 |
| Clothes vocabulary flashcard featuring a shirt |
Food and Tableware
 |
| Food vocabulary flashcard featuring rice |
Home and Furniture
 |
| Home vocabulary flashcard featuring a door |
Human Body
 |
| Body parts vocabulary flashcard featuring eyes |
Nature and World around Us
 |
| Nature vocabulary flashcard featuring a mountain |
People
 |
| People vocabulary flashcard featuring a family |
Places and Geography
 |
| Geography vocabulary flashcard featuring China |
Professions and Occupations
 |
| Professions vocabulary flashcard featuring a teacher |
School
 |
| School vocabulary flashcard featuring a pencil sharpener |
Shapes
 |
| Shapes vocabulary flashcard featuring a star shape |
Sports
 |
| Sports vocabulary flashcard featuring a goal |
Toys
 |
| Toys vocabulary flashcard featuring a rubber duck |
Transportation
 |
| Transportation vocabulary flashcard featuring a rocket |
Miscellaneous Nouns
 |
| Miscellaneous nouns flashcard featuring a dragon |
You can find
the entire list of nouns featured in the English-Chinese flashcards
here.
Besides the central picture part, flashcards have English and Chinese word parts that can be cut out if necessary for different word-to-image matching activities. The Chinese word part also has the
Pinyin transcription to give non-Chinese speakers an idea of how this or another word sounds in Chinese. This transcription certainly
helps ESL teachers learn a little bit of Chinese to understand whether students give correct answers during word-to-picture matching activities. Likewise, such flashcards can be used to teach Chinese to English-speaking students.
 |
| American English and British English variations of certain words |
Just as my other sets of bilingual flashcards these English-Chinese cards provide American and British English variations of certain words.
I hope ESL teachers working with Chinese-speaking students will find my English-Chinese flashcards useful. I will be publishing all the flashcards in the blog over time.
You can download and use all my printable teaching materials. If you do not want to wait till I publish all my English-Chinese flashcards in this blog, you are welcome to
purchase the entire set in a printer-friendly PDF format.
No comments:
Post a Comment