Video: why you shouldn't use flashcards

Open Forum
21

Very interesting video, thank you! I’m going to answer with a long post. :slight_smile:

Flashcards don’t do it for me as well, and I experimented with SRS even before SRS software came along. There were word lists, handwritten paper cards, then desktop software, then mobile apps… It never worked for me. During my repeated attempts to learn German over the years, I used SRS to build core vocabulary, but my level of retention was always horrible, and the whole process was boring, stressful and discouraging (at some point I really believed that there was something horribly wrong with my memory!). Now I’m learning Italian using native content here on LingQ and elsewhere, and after eight months I’m still amazed at the ease and speed of my vocabulary growth.

Here’s the thing: we know that the brain learns by spaced repetition, it’s pretty much been proven. But there is “natural” spaced repetition, and then there are systems and tools that deliberately take the key elements and build them up as a technology. There are two key elements in spaced repetition, and they are both equally essential:

  • repetition: you encounter some information over and over again
  • variability: you encounter this information in different contexts

Now, software systems do the first part very well: they make you repeat things. It’s the second part that they have problem with. What kind of variability can a flashcard app provide? Some external variability, yes: you can review your cards at different times, in different locations (yes, this helps too, it’s been shown in research), or on different devices. But that’s about it. After all, they are just flashcards on a screen. The internal variability is missing. You don’t encounter different meanings, or shades of meaning, or different emotions or concepts. You don’t encounter other pieces of information that could change your perception and add new associations and images.

I think it’s a feature of our technologically oriented culture that every time we discover something about how our brains work, we immediately want to distill the key elements and “technologize” them. And we tend to think that the result should be faster and more efficient than “natural” conditions, but this is not always the case.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with using flashcards if they work for you! It’s just important not to present them as the only method to learn vocabulary, because clearly there are people for whom they don’t work.

Actually, I think this could be a very interesting research topic. Maybe everyone needs some individual mixture of repetition and variability? It could be that those for whom the flashcards work need less variability and more repetition, and vice versa. Or maybe those for whom they work can compensate by “inserting” some variability - by making their own cards, or using images, or mnemonics? Personally, I’d love to know the answers - maybe some day some researcher will pick up this topic! :slight_smile:

22

First of all, thank you for sharing your ideas! Your take on technology and how it shapes our view of language learning is truly fascinating. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve gained a new perspective.

I completely agree when you say that there’s nothing wrong with using flashcards, but they shouldn’t be viewed as the only way to learn vocab. That’s the reason why I decided to make this video. I feel like the language learning community has made SRS an overrated way to learn words, promoting it as the “best way”, while I’ve always seen it as unnecessary. Of course, if someone enjoys flashcards they should use them, because fun is the most important element in everything you learn, but people should know that there are valid alternatives!

Hopefully researchers will come up with interesting, new studies.

23

Different methods work for different people. Even the same person might not succeed with one method in a particular language. I’ve found flashcards useful at times, but I use small decks and generally put the words into sentences as soon as possible (or I found the word in a sentence initially) to make sure I know the word in context. These are quickly retired. The problems probably start with enormous flashcard decks reviewed in one go.

The best way to learn vocab is by both reading progressive material which uses mild repetition to fix the word + meaning in your mind through usage, and by listening. Of course eventually by speaking. The important thing is not to think you need a huge native-like vocabulary to start speaking. I have to disagree with your statement that native speakers use ‘huge’ vocabularies in daily speech, because they don’t. Most interactions (not in-depth discussions on specialist topics) use a rather small number of words, lots of repetition and many fixed phrases. There is obvious diversion in longer conversations, but even then much of small-talk is repetitive stuff.

Btw, was the video uploaded with the right speed? I had to put it on 1.5 to make it sound normal.

24

Many instructors introduce words in context before having students focus on the words individually. Plus vocabulary tests are used much less often today than they were in the past.

25

In my reality (Italy) i have never experienced that. Both as a student and as a teacher.
And we used to have tons of vocabulary tests.

26

Yep, as I said in the video, if you like using flashcards good for you, there’s nothing wrong about it.
When I talk about words I take in account all instances of words, so the count gets inflated. I do this because people might know a word in a certain morphological form, and not recognise it in another one (this is especially true for Korean).

Youtube video is at the right speed, I just speak really slowly. I’m not used to be on camera and stuff.

27

I completely agree with you. I used to be a big fan of SRS, but I quickly realized that trying to memorize words in such a boring way was killing my progress, so I just started to read and listen to native content as much as I can and so far I’m doing much better!

28

Depends how you use it. Using it to remember what you already understand is very, very effective. Khatzumoto, MattvsJapan, the guys at antimoon, and tonnes of other examples of people who got to near-native ability used flashcards, but only to support what they already knew, not to ‘learn’ isolated vocabulary.

29

I tend to do that just by reading. This is because I want context to support me instead of reviewing isolated sentences. But yeah, a lot of people use it and it works for them! Personally, I would rather do activities that I enjoy instead of going all in for efficiency and no fun. A lot of people think that they have to use flashcards to get a hold on vocabulary, when in reality it isn’t that necessary, at least in my experience with 6 foreign languages. It can be useful, but it’s not necessary.

30

This is an interesting discussion.

Here’s what I think:

I think flash cards are good when you start from Zero to help get you to a point where you don’t need them anymore. Like a jump start.

I did it with Korean: learn the most basic (common) words using flash cards (in my case with Anki)

Now, I don’t make flash cards for every new word anymore. Only if I think “Oh I really like that sentence/phrase I want to remember that” or if it is about a new grammatical structure I want to remember then I make a flash card for it and then after doing it for a while I won’t need that specific card anymore and I’ll delete it.

One thing I’d like to add about “context”: For me the context comes from making the flash card. Let’s say you make a sentence flash card from a sentence you found in a text you were reading; or from a TV show you’re watching. When you see that specific card you’ll remember the context where it came from (“oh I remember that actor/actress saying that sentence when this or that happened in the show”…)

Also I think sentence mining is very similar to Lingq. You have to read / listen to a lot to mine for sentence = you have to read / listen to a lot to create Lingqs. I mean, unless you turn every sentence you find into a sentence card, but I don’t think that’s the purpose of it. It’s more like an incentive for people who maybe wouldn’t read otherwise.

The biggest negative thing about SRS and flash cards in my opinion is time. You can easily get consumed by it: “Oh look at the time! I just did an hour of SRS-ing (flashcarding? lol) Now I don’t have time for immersion anymore.” I think immersion (listening / watching / reading native content) should always be the priority.
Also people tend to overestimate a lot. “Oh I can do 50 words in Anki a day easily.” but they don’t think about this: sure, first you only have 50 words but then one day you’ll have 300 words to repeat each day plus another 50 new word and so on. At least if you use Anki. I don’t now about other systems.

31

I’ve had great success with flashcards, but only because my time commitment of about 1 hour per day is just too little to do the required reading and get the exposure for the 10,000+ least common words. If I lived in the country of my target language I doubt I’d ever bother with them (except for idioms).

I’ve challenged myself to re-read a 100,000 word book three times in the month of June. However, I’m near the end and while I’ve learned a lot of words that way, there are still a lot of LingQs that I will need to dump out into Anki otherwise I’ll never remember them.

Over the next couple of months I will see them frequently in Anki with their example sentences, and by August or October I will be ready to re-read the book a 4th time to see how I’ve progressed. This has worked for me for the past couple of years with other books, with a commitment of just 1 hour a day.

32

This is an interesting method. Although I don’t know if I would be able to read a so long book all over so many times. But in effect, if the story is something you really like, it could be a very useful possibility.