Flashy Flashies

Flashcards have been around forever, and are used by language learners the world over. Prompt on one side, target on the other. Applicable to any task that requires memorization. Simple. But do they actually “work”? As an infant, my parents used to use flashcards during bathtime to cram those phonics I couldn’t read yet into my tiny, sinless head. Were they right to do so, or were they just presenting random, completely out of context information (apples in the bath?!)? Let’s find out as we explore flashcards and how (and how not) to use them when studying a foreign language!

Good Beans or Bad Beans?

The main benefit of flashcards seems obvious at first glance. You appear to find out if you really know the word or phrase that you’ve diligently recorded on (or randomly imported to) your flashcard app… or if you’re a Japanese student on the train, diligently written on your physical paper flashcard despite having a smartphone in your pocket.

But it’s not that simple.

The human mind works in mysterious ways, and sometimes not at all, and once you start to question what words like “know” really mean, working out whether flashcards are an effective study tool or not, and where they deserve to be placed in your study routine, requires delving a bit deeper into the different ways they can be applied.

Pro et Contra

I should say that I have used flashcards a lot over the years, and it is mainly my misuse of them that has prompted this post. When I knew less about effective language acquisition, having them as part of my routine was certainly beneficial at times. They’ve also proved useful when I’ve had time-sensitive goals in mind (more about that later). At other times however, they’ve been a crutch or even worse, a hindrance to my progression. So let’s wade into the pros and cons, and get awfully tangled up in the weeds as we go along.

Yays

• Cramming for an exam. Let’s get this one out of the way. You know the scope of what could come up. You’ve studied the textbooks and you have a set date you have to Remember All The Stuff by. Flashcards can work the exact muscles tickled by those kinds of tests. If you’re doing the JLPT, you don’t even have to produce anything, apparently multiple-choice questioning your way to language proficiency! Are those tests productive? Will you remember the information after the exam? Are they a true measure of proficiency? If you’ve signed up for the JLPT, don’t ask difficult questions. Just do your flashcards. You can always delete the deck later.
  
  
• Learning word or grammar sets. Similar to the previous point, if you’re trying to cycle in a certain set of vocab or phrases into your brain for the first time, flashcards are often a go-to. A specific deck is a convenient way to corner off a list of items to focus on, away from other areas of study. I’ve found this most useful for learning kanji to N1 level over a period of months, which I’ll go into in a bit.
  
  
• Noting things down in a hurry. You encounter a new word in the middle of a conversation. A TV ad heard in passing seems to be repeating a certain phrase. You don’t have time to study it now, but you can slap it into your smartphone’s flashcard app. Being a glorified pen and paper is hardly worthy of high praise, but it is a neat and tidy way to quickly scoop up bits and pieces from your environment that you can’t learn there and then, but can attend to later. I find when I do this I often have a strong memory of the situation in which I heard or saw the item in question, making the process of learning it later in a study session a bit easier.
  
  
• SRS. Digital flashcards should have a Spaced-Repetition-System (SRS) built in. This makes sure that you see the vocab or phrase again soon after you’ve inputted it. The more you answer correctly, the later it’ll pop up next time. It can be a helpful tool, especially in the early stages of acquiring a word, and it’s a mainstay in many learners’ routines (although many big cheeses doubt its efficacy).
  
  
• Your personal dictionary. Do you tend to add new language to your flashcards as you study it? If so, they can be thought of as a record of a certain amount of language that you’ve come across and know to some degree, and you can see that amount growing over time (until it becomes a hideous, bloated mess and you delete EVERYTHING and it turns out to be the BEST THING YOU EVER DID). You can then reference it when need be.
  
  
• Almost every successful language learner I’ve come across has used them at some point.

Nays

• They present information out of context. In discussions about flashcards, it’s rightly said that you should record them in your deck using example sentences. This way, you’ll see the target word or grammar presented in context, you see. But is this really its true context? Are there other ways the target can be used other than in your example sentence? Isn’t this sentence now itself being presented out of context? You’ll hear many very successful language learners say it’s better to simply spend more time reading and listening and get the exposure that way. A more naturally immersive experience, but one that doesn’t have the short-term pay-off that flashcards present. When studying a foreign language, the big picture is that it’s a long-term process, so how using flashcards fits into this is up for debate.
  
  
• IT’S A TRAP! They can be addictive. Really addictive. According to learning consultant and former medical doctor Justin Sung in this episode of the KoreKara podcast, one of his clients came to him trying to get through 6,000 cards a day! This may be an extreme example, but I believe him. It’s illustrative of just how out of hand things can get if your priorities are in the wrong place. We only have so much time available and we need to make the best of it. While flashcards can have their place, they shouldn’t be the main piece of any study plan.
  
  
• They can be time-consuming to make. Finding a suitable example sentence. Finding out if it’s correct. Inputting both sides of the flashcard. Deciding what to include. Finding and adding any extra information such as pitch accent info. It can take more time than you might expect to make these little fellas. When learning a foreign language, time is one of your most precious assets. Say it takes you 20 minutes to add some flashcards from your session. Could this time have been better spent reading or listening to authentic material on the same topic? Going back to the first Nay on this list, many who’ve been there, done that and are now selling their own T-shirts would firmly say yes.
  
  
• Probably pointless for beginner material. It’s tempting to add every singly new thing into your flashcards as a beginner. It’s so convenient, it can seem like it’s almost doing the work for you! However, as well as being time consuming and bad habit-forming, everyday items are so common that there’s simply no reason to use flashcards to review them. In fact, if you stick with the language, you will encounter these words, phrases and grammar points so frequently that you’ll have no choice but to remember them!
  
  
• Almost every unsuccessful* language learner I’ve come across has used them.

*so far!

Some make do. Others get do.

I’m firmly in the camp that you should make your own cards in most cases. You see people downloading massive decks made or collected by others (there are loads of places you can get them) and full of stuff they haven’t studied yet. They then proceed to bludgeon their way through the deck until it’s “done” (wait till they see the cards due tomorrow!).

You should probably not do this.

However, if you really can’t resist that Genki 2 All Vocab & Grammar deck, here’s how I would recommend using it. After studying something from your textbook and actively trying to commit it to memory, search your beefy new Genki 2 deck for that material and extract the relevant cards to a new deck, and review that. Then make sure to add any missing info, like the pitch accent patterns if you’re studying Japanese, for example.

So how have I used them?

You may sense that I have mixed feelings about flashcards, and your senses would be correct. But why so, if I successfully used them to learn all those kanji? Let me explain and you’ll see how they were useful for a time, and where it all went pear-shaped.

After the JLPT N3 (the day after, in fact), I began studying for the N2, starting with kanji. I figured if I got them out of the way I’d have a far easier time reading, presumably increasing my study efficiency in general. I was doing bits and pieces of other things too, but kanji was the main focus at that time. So I got the Nihongo Sou Matome book and blasted through them in the following way:

1. I set up two decks. One had Hiragana and English on the front side with the target kanji on the back. The other was for practicing reading those freshly studied kanji, and was full of example sentences I’d tediously scoured various websites for.

2. Nihongo Sou Matome N2 Kanji contains an 8-week course (a chapter prescribed per day), and presents the kanji in the form of example words, so I was also increasing my passive vocabulary doing things this way. A criticism I would level at the book is that it’s an overly-ambitious course. Some chapters contained thirty or more new words, which simply isn’t doable. I tackled such chapters over two or three days, which was more realistic for me. Maybe some big brains can absorb thirty-plus new vocab items on a daily basis, but I certainly can’t. I wasn’t aiming to do the N2 in the next JLPT cycle anyway and was fairly relaxed about the time frame.
   
3. I’d first cross out each known item from the page. There are lots of repeats from N3 vocab in the book. Then I’d intently copy the new words into a notebook as I find the physical action of writing a very engaging way to interface with the language (it gets dem micro-muscles developin’, too). As I did so, I’d mentally note the radicals and form any associations with the meaning I could. Next, after painstakingly acquiring mistake-free example sentences (the monotony of this cannot be exaggerated) and seeing how the new words acted within them, I would add the new material into the decks described in step 1.
   
4. Then, each morning before work I would review the decks with a coffee/hangover, writing out the kanji from the Hiragana and English prompts. I would learn and add each page’s new stuff later in the day when I had a chance.

In a short space of time, I noticed I could read more and more of what was around me. Words I’d just learned suddenly seemed to be everywhere. It would show up in a restaurant menu, a billboard I’d passed a thousand times before, a domestic tourist brochure at the station. I felt I was finally learning real Japanese! It seemed to be working so well, and I was in such a rhythm of studying, that when I finished the book I immediately moved on to the N1 book in order to surf the wave of momentum and just get it done. Sugoi, ne?

It’s also important to say that I really came to enjoy writing out all those kanji each day. Maybe it’s because it masked my severe deficiencies in other language skills, but I found it relaxing and it was inspiring to know that I was practicing a writing system that dates back millennia. It just felt cool, as well as being of some practical use.

Spoiling the Broth

The only problem was, as the weeks passed, the decks grew ever larger and more unwieldy, and I found myself wrestling with them throughout the day. This also drastically ate into my study time for other areas (listening, speaking… you know, the actual language).

Something had to give, and I eventually ditched the sentence reading deck. I was still managing to write 40 or 50 with my morning coffee and finishing them off later, but if I missed even a single day this would balloon into a ghastly 100 or more cards due the next morning! This clearly wasn’t sustainable. So, when I finished the N1 book I knew I had to switch up what I was doing. I still had the grammar, reading and listening sections of the N2 to study for, and had been neglecting these areas for too long (let’s not even get started on speaking…). I’d grown tired of the same slog each day and it was a welcome change to be doing something else, albeit still with copious amounts of coffee/hangovers.

Was it worth it in the end?

I should say, for all its faults and its amateurish construction, this process taught me the value of consistency in language learning. Turning up every day counts, and to be fair to myself, I only missed a handful of days over the many months it took me to cover the N2 and N1 kanji. With daily practice, progress can add up quicker than you may expect. The days seem to fly by, and it’s rewarding to look back after a few weeks at what you’ve done.

Also, starting each morning with an achievement in the language I was studying became a kind of positive feedback loop. I’d always done something worthwhile before the day had even started. It was powerfully motivating.

The progression was easy to see, and compared to where I was when I took the N3 I’d given myself a decent platform from which I could launch myself into Japanese books, which I discovered when I stumbled across a way of using the local library for practicing reading (sounds obvious, doesn’t it?), which I’ll go into in my next post.

All things considered, it was certainly not a holistic approach and left my Japanese abilities horribly skewed in one direction. That said, reading is now the strongest part of my Japanese so I’m happy maintaining and slowly progressing that aspect of the language while I work on other skills with a greater, learned zeal.

No one-sided coin

Would I recommend flashcards? Within reason, yes. I’ve described here how I used them to level up in one area of Japanese, but they’re not the be all and end all by any means. Reviewing flashcards should not be taking up more than 10% of your study time in my opinion, unless you’re cramming for an exam or doing some kind of experiment like I was. I wonder if I had just read lots of books, looking up an unknown word after it came up three times (as recommended by King Julien Gaudfroy), would my reading comprehension be better than it is now? My instinct tells me it would be.

So basically, don’t let flashcards replace the real stuff. They’re just little snippets of information. They give you nothing in a conversation with a native speaker, which is what learning a foreign language is about for most people.

How do you use flashcards? Have your views changed on them over time? Let us know in the comments below, or if you have a question or a topic you’d like us to cover, get in touch here.

Keep on scuttlin’!