This Idioms book contains a set of poker cards for people to play. The book itself is a package for the poker cards and a small booklet. In each card, there’s one idiom. While playing the cards, if users don't know the meaning of the idiom, they can check the booklet, where there are an explanation and origin of the idiom. Meanwhile, there is a narrative on each page, such as telling the story of an international student's, Amanda, experience with the English language and with specific idioms that she faced. All these idioms and stories are collected from different non-native speakers.
For example, I talked to a Japanese student who just came to the U.S., and she told me her story of "Icebreaker." She talked about how she felt fear, worry, nervousness and so on.. to live and study in a new culture. This project is inspired by my own experience of living and studying in the US since I was seventeen years old. The "Icebreaker" idiom is something that is very simple for native USA students but sounds like two disparate words for international students. I created the drawing of ice being broken to signify how literal significance has a relation to the signified idiom.
The illustration I create on the cards is according to the idioms. The design of the book is inspired by the traditional dictionary, but on top of that, I wanted to make a more playful one for English learners. I used my own experiences and input from other international students to create the mental images that were conjured when we were first confronted with these idioms.
