Didactic Material: Flashcards

Definition:
Flashcards are the most common kind of visual aids for learners. They appear useful in all language skills.

Types of flashcards

Various types of flash cards are also useful for teaching activities. Flashcards generally have:

•Words

• Pictures

•Words/Pictures

•Audio

Word flashcards

•Word cards (word flash cards) have a single word or phrase written clearly on the card. 

•Word cards are easy for the teacher or students to handle. We can hold them, prop, stick to the board or hang on a the wall.

They are beneficial to introduction, practice and revision of vocabulary. 

They facilitate grammar explanation. It is easier to teach construction of tenses (the rules of forming affirmative sentences, questions and negatives). 

We can also use flashcards to distinguishing parts of speech in a sentence, the word order or contractions of words.

Picture flashcards

•Flashcards (picture cards) are the most common kind of visual aids for young learners.

•They are valuable resource for teachers and parents and used as a linguistic or visual stimulus for  the  learners to read, speak or write. 

         Picture flash cards are pictures mounted or drawn on cards approximately 15 cm by 20 cm.

         They are normally used by the teacher in oral work for cueing responses to questions or more open communicative work for stimulating conversation, story-telling, etc.” 

The size of flash cards, however, depends of the type of use. It means that for group work they can be smaller but when we stick them to the board or hold in our hands they must be big enough for students at the back to see.

          Pictures can represent peoples’ appearance, their behavior, moods or actions and the setting of the situation to promote discussion and motivate learning. They could be pictures of animals, food, household objects, places or story characters.

Word/picture flashcards

Visuals and words combined also help students relate words to images.

Advantages

•They’re inexpensive.

•They’re portable.

•They’re efficient.

•They’re versatile.

•Offer various study methods.

•Use them with students of all ages.

Disadvantages

•Students are not always visual learners.

•Becomes boring when repetitive.


References:
Shaw, Jamie. "Use of Flash Cards in School." EHow. Demand Media, 23 Feb. 2011. Web. 13 May 2015.
"Visual Aids in the Classroom Situation." Visual Aids in the Classroom Situation. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
http://es.slideshare.net/Swedishteacher/fun-with-flash-cards?next_slideshow=1