About

Chinese Flashcards

For years students have used flashcards to help review vocabulary in a foreign language and regardless of the language, the cards were always structured the same way, foreign word on one side and native langue definition on the other. For the majority of languages this works perfectly, however Chinese presents a unique problem as there are three pieces of information a student needs to know, the Chinese words, the native langue definition and the word's pinyin spelling, but how do you make a three sided flashcard?

Nick Geiser, a Chinese language student at the University of Texas at Austin, began working on this problem on his own using a FileMaker Pro database. He was able to develop a system that allowed for the display of anywhere from one to three items but due to the limitations of FileMaker Pro was not able to easily share this with his fellow students nor could he include audio recordings.

Nick had recently used the UT website Chinese Take-In which he found to be an excellent test of his understanding of the language. He appreciated that something so complex was an open educational resource so he paid a visit to the website's creator Dr. Wen-Hue Teng to show her his FlieMaker Pro project. Dr. Teng immediately saw value in the project and brought it to Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) for further development.

LAITS worked with Nick to transfer his personal version into a fully functioning website for all students.

Wen Hua Teng

Senior Lecturer, PH D

Wen-Hua helped develop the best pedagogical way of presenting the cards as well as recorded and check the content.

Nick Geiser

Site Concept/LAITS Student Technology Assistant

Nick came up with the original site concept and developed the first working beta version of the site. He also cleaned up the backend database and provided invaluable information about the way students will actually use the cards.