Are Flashcards Effective When Learning A Language?

Using flashcards is popular in the language learning community, but are they effective? I would argue that they are, especially if you use them properly and pair them with immersion.

I will go through why they can be great and why sometimes they may not be, as well as the best way to actually use flashcards and how to make your own ones.

Doing this can be really effective and they will really help you make progress in your language. If you are not using flashcards already, you really should start.

Why Flashcards Are Beneficial For Language Learning

Flashcards can be a great tool for learning a language and I will go through some of the reasons why this is so.

Flashcards Give You Repeated Exposure

To get to grips with a language, especially vocabulary you need to see it over and over again. You will pretty much never see a word just once and remember it forever, you need repeated exposure to it and flashcards provide this.

A flashcard app will show you the words multiple times and this is exactly what we need. You will probably see these words multiple times when you are doing things like immersion …but putting the word on a flashcard means it is a guarantee that you are going to see it again, so it just makes sense to use them.

The Algorithm Is Designed To Help You Remember

If you are using a flashcard app like Anki, it is designed to help you remember. These Apps are actually memory tools, not language learning tools.

Anki is designed for you to make flashcards about anything that you want to remember, it just happens that we want to remember vocabulary. As I already mentioned you need repeat exposure to a new word to remember it and programs like Anki actually have an algorithm that help with this.

A lot of scientific studies have been done to test how long we can remember new information and also how quickly we are likely to forget it. Apps like Anki use this information to create an algorithm that will know when to show us a flashcard and how many times to show us.

This is why these apps are also called “spaced repetition systems” as they know how to space everything out in the most ideal way for your memory.

The hope is that they show you the card enough times that you can remember it and then they refresh your memory with it, just before you completely forget it. The fact that the information never gets a chance to be forgotten and you are getting repeated exposure means you are more likely to remember the words you have learned. 

Having algorithms like this help you is extremely effective and it really is something you would struggle with if you where trying to make your own physical flashcards.

(You can read more about – Is Anki The Best Flashcard App For Learning A Language?)

Flashcards Can Teach You Basic Vocabulary

When you first get started with a new language you need to start learning vocabulary. Simply put, the more words you know, the more you will understand the language.

This can be tricky to do and flashcards can actually help you with this initial process. You can easily download an Anki deck of the most common words and start going through them.

This isn’t always ideal, which I will discuss later on, but in general it is effective in the beginning.

I have done this myself and it really helps especially when you pair it with immersion. There are going to be words you will hear all the time when watching shows and seeing them on your flashcards will help you quickly remember them and more importantly help you understand the content you are watching.

Flashcards Can Strengthen Your Passive and Active Vocabulary

One of the great things about flashcards is that they can help with your passive an active vocabulary.

The usual way people use flashcards is to have the word in the language appear first. Lets says its French and the word is Bonjour! …your job is to recall what this means. You have to recognise it and remember it, and you have to say “this means hello” and then you check the other side of the card to see if you got it right.

This is training your passive vocabulary and strengthening your ability to recognise words, which is great. However, you can make things a whole lot harder and actually test your active vocabulary ability.

You can switch the flashcards around so you see “hello” in English …you then have to think about what this means in French and you have to say “this means bonjour” and then you can check the other side to see if it was correct.

This may seem like a small difference, but the change in difficulty is huge. Once you can recall words like this it means they are in your active vocabulary and means they are much stronger in your mind than words you can simply remember passively.

(You can read more about – Active vs Passive Language Learning, What Is The Difference?)

Flashcards Are Easy To Use

Flashcards are also very easy to use which is great as it means anyone can use the system to help them learn.

You just have to click on the start button and your cards will come on the screen. Now all you need to do is say whatever it means then press Show Answer.

For example if you are studying French cards and the card says  “bonjour”  all you need to do is say “this means hello”  …when you click show answer hopefully the other side of the card will say “hello”.

Then all you need to is click if you got it right or wrong. Anki actually as 4 options: Again, Hard, Good, and Easy. You just need to click whatever one you felt was right for how well you remembered the meaning of the word. The app actually uses this information to work out when it will show you the card again.

Of course the easier you found it, the longer it will wait to show you again. It’s that simple. I know some of you think getting paper and making your own might be easier, but I would disagree, use the apps, they make everything easy.   

(You can read more about – Using Anki To Learn French)

You Can Make Flashcards To Suit Your Needs

Apps like Anki can look a little intimidating, but it is actually very simple to use once you play around with it, or watch a quick video on how to edit cards.

You will quickly realise that you can make the flashcards to your own requirements and really make them your own resource.

You can edit and add whatever you want, you can have crazy amounts of detail written on the cards, or just have the one word you are learning. You can also add pictures and sound and really whatever you want, they are extremely versatile and customisable to whatever you need.

You can even download a pre-made deck, which are usually great to use right away, but you can also edit these if there is something you want to change.

Why Are Flashcards Not Great For Language Learning

Everything I have spoke about so far has been really positive about flashcards, but like most things they are not always perfect, so I will go through some of the things that make them not so great for learning a language.

There Is No Context

The biggest issue with flashcards is that they have no context. You will see a single word on the screen and this is not ideal.

Language may be made up of individual words, but we certainly do not use them like this. It is far better to learn words in context, meaning surrounded by other words, which will actually help with your understanding and will make sense of things more.

I actually had this problem myself learning French. I had a flashcard that said “Aveugle” on one side and “Blind” as the English word on the other side …and that was fine. I remembered this word and went on with my life. 

A few months later I was in France, in my friend’s house, speaking French. I was trying to tell them how their new blinds on the window looked really good …a fairly normal conversation, and I was very happy that I knew the word for “blinds” …but the look on my friends face did quite match up with my joy.

They were so confused and basically this is when I found out that “aveugle” means to be blind …as in visually impaired.

The lack of context in my flashcards completely screwed me over and shows how dangerous learning words by themselves can be. 

You Can Easily Add Context

Saying that flashcards have no context is not a great argument as you can easily fix this. You can edit the flashcards to have whatever you want …meaning you can add the context.

In the example above all I had to do was add a quick sentence under the word “aveugle”. I could have added in French – “the man went blind after he looked at the sun”. Then I would know what the main word I was trying to remember …and there would be a little example sentence for context.

The issue here was that it was a premade deck and it was the first time I had seen this word, so I didn’t know the context to add it to the card, and i just wrong assumed it was refering to window blinds, which shows why this method isn’t always great.

However, if you actually learn new words elsewhere and add them to your deck of cards then you can add the context and actually make flashcards more useful. 

Flashcards Can Be Boring

The other main issue with flashcards is that they are boring. They can be fun at times, but they quickly get repetitive.

You are just looking at a word and saying what it means and if you are doing this a 100 times in a row it is boring.

You also have to do it every day, or your reviews build up and then you have hundreds of cards to look at. You also need to do it every day so that you are working with the algorithm and you are seeing the cards when it wants you to see them.

This can all add up to make it a bit of a boring task and more something that you just have to get through, rather than actually enjoy. 

Using Immersion To Make Flashcards

I have kind of touched on this already throughout, but basically the best way to use flashcards is in conjunction with immersion, which allows you to create your own cards as well as give them some context.

The idea is that you immerse and watch whatever shows you enjoy and when you come across a new word, pause the show and look up the meaning of the word …you have now learned a new word …but as I have already discussed, you need repeated exposure to really remember it.

The word will probably appear again in the immersion, but by adding it to your flashcards you know it will show up again, meaning you are actually going to remember this new word.

The best part is that you have learned this new word in context, it will have been said in sentence and you can actually take that whole sentence and add it your flashcard.  

There are some clever people who know how to export audio from TV shows, and they then add this to the flashcard, meaning you can hear it again, exactly how it was in the immersion, but on your flashcard, but it is fine if you just add it in a written form.

When you come to review this flashcard you can see the keyword you need to remember, but you also have the rest of the sentence which can really help you out.

Using Flashcards To Help With Immersion

The other way to do this, start with the flashcards and then hope you get the context from immersion. This isn’t ideal, but it can work. When you are a beginner and know zero words then this is what you need to do.

You need to just learn the most common 1000 words and immerse at the same time. Most of the words you learn will appear all the time, so you will get the context pretty quickly from  the immersion.

However, once you start getting into the more obscure words, this method no longer works as well and you are better to use the method I just described above. This is exactly what happened when I learned the word “aveugle”. It had no context and as this word was not that common it never came up in my immersion, so I didn’t know the real meaning and problem occurred.

For uncommon words like this, it would have been more beneficial if I had seen it during my immersion first, in context, and then added it my flashcards. 

(You can read more about – What Is Learning A Language By Immersion?)

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see how flashcards can be effective for your language learning.

So long as you use them properly, they can be extremely helpful and they will help you remember a lot more. If you pair them with immersion then you are going to have a lot of context and also get a lot of exposure to the words you are trying to learn, which is exactly what you want. 

(You can read more about – Beginner Language Learning Tools That Will Help You Learn By Yourself)