April 12th, 2005
by Keith Law
I learn languages with flash cards. Of course, I use some audio aids, a textbook for grammar, and conversations with native speakers whenever possible, but more than half of my daily time commitment to language learning goes to reviewing and creating flash cards. After using them for several years across four different languages, I think I’ve come up with a system for using flash cards that maximizes vocabulary retention and avoids too much wasted time. I call it the Four-Deck system because once my stack for one language reaches about 100 cards, I divide it into four separate decks, each of which has its own rules for review.
This article describes the perfect scenario, where I devote the maximum time each day to flash card review and creation. Needless to say, I don’t hit all the targets every day, but some days I do, and at least on the others I know how to prioritize my language study.
I use 3x5 index cards, which fit well into the interior pocket of every coat I own, and write on them the long (5-inch) way. I put six words on each card, evenly spaced from top to bottom. One side has English words, plus a card number in the upper right hand corner. (If you use this system for more than one language, you might want to add a letter to the number to indicate which language is on that card.) The other side has the same six words but in the target language, and they’re written in a way that if I flip the card top-over-bottom I can read them. It is substantially easier to flip an index card top-over-bottom with one hand than it is to flip it left-over-right, especially if you have other cards in your hand.
When I make a new set of cards, I review the new cards immediately after finishing them. This gives me a chance to grab some new words that resemble other words I already know, and to come up with mnemonic devices for the tougher words in the stack.
I’ve got a few categories of words that I don’t put on the cards, even if I haven’t previously seen them. I don’t put down pure cognates (identical spelling in both languages, gender obvious); it’s not worth using up a spot that could go to a more difficult word. I don’t write down highly specialized or technical terms that I doubt I’ll ever use again. And I don’t include variations of words I already know if they follow some standard pattern for changing the part of speech, such as adding the main verb ending to an adjective to create the verb form.
Slight cognates, words with tough-to-guess genders, and verbs with endings beyond the most common (-er in French, -ar in Spanish) all go on the cards.
With those rules in mind, here is how I organize my stack of flash cards.
The Hot Deck comprises your last ten to fifteen cards – the cards that have the newest words on them, and that you need to review more than once a day to really ensure that you know them.
I review the Hot Deck at least three times a day: First thing in the morning, during the review of the Current Deck, and last thing at night before I go to bed. I find that the late-night review is particularly helpful because when I lie down to go to sleep I run through a few of the words in my mind before I actually fall asleep. Those words are nearly always locked into my memory in the morning.
The Current Deck includes the last 51-100 cards you’ve made, a number that counts the cards in the Hot Deck (the most current of the Current Deck, if you will). If you only grab one deck when you leave the house, this is the one. I keep this deck together with a rubber band, and usually put the Hot Deck portion at the front, followed by the rest of the deck in chronological order.
I review the Current Deck once a day. Even if I don’t do any other language study that day, I’ll always review the Current Deck. I find that skipping even one day with the Current Deck can set me back two to three days in memorizing the most recent words in the stack.
Once your total stack of cards exceeds a number you can easily carry around – for me, that’s a hundred – peel off the oldest thirty or fifty cards (assuming you know all the words on those cards, and you should, since you’ve been reviewing those for the longest time) and set them aside as your first Archive Deck. Archive Decks don’t travel everywhere with you, but you’ll still review them periodically.
My Archive Decks are 50 cards each, wrapped with a rubber band and toted around (when I travel) in a one-quart Ziploc bag, which can comfortably hold at least six Archive Decks. I try to review each archive deck once per week, going in order from the oldest (cards 1-50) to the most recent. If I’m headed out for a while and expect to have some time to really review cards, I’ll grab an Archive Deck as well as the Current Deck.
Whenever you review a deck from your archive pile, take every word you don’t correctly remember the first time you try to recall it and write them all on a new set of blank cards. (I like to number these separately as R1, R2, etc.) This will be your Review Deck, and you want to review these words more frequently than the rest of the words in your Archive Decks, which you should already have committed to memory and hopefully aren’t losing very quickly.
I usually go through the entire review deck once a week, but any new additions to the deck get daily reviews until I’ve learned all of those words again.
I’ve mentioned these points through the rest of this article, but here’s a summary of my daily flash card routine:
As I’m going through these cards, of course, I’m employing other tricks to learn the words on the cards, such as mnemonic devices or drawing on words I know in related languages. This system doesn’t guarantee that you’ll absorb the words, but it brings some discipline to the otherwise disorganized stacks of cards you’ll soon find lying around your house.
All content © 2005 Keith Law.