A critique of the Shona–Chinese bilingual dictionary as a reference material in teaching and learning of Shona/Chinese language

The present paper analyses the Shona–Chinese bilingual dictionary in relation with the teaching of the Chinese language to native speakers of the Shona language or teaching of the Shona language-to-Chinese people in Zimbabwe. The main aim of this paper is to give a critical analysis that will help improve this dictionary or other future similar dictionaries. The data used in this article are based on the headwords in the dictionary as well as the experience of teaching Chinese over 1 year. The Shona–Chinese bilingual dictionary is a remarkable step towards developing local Chinese teaching materials in Zimbabwe. The data analysis showed that to increase the usefulness of this dictionary as a complementary teaching reference book, there are a number of areas that need to be perfected. Some of the critical aspects that require attention include: the meanings of headwords should be defined as they are used in the target language, and all important headwords in daily conversations should be included in the dictionary. It was recommended that a more thoroughly revised dictionary should be produced to provide high-quality teaching materials of this sort.