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How to use Flashcards?

Flash cards are one of the best tools for memorizing foreign words (or any other facts or information) because they enable you to sistematialy review and reproduce learned material. There are several ways to use flashcards and one of the easiest and most efecitve systems is five box system.

The five box system

The five box system uses five boxes or "pockets" for flashcards with words you are learning. The process of learning is very simple, yet wery effective and consists of 5 easy steps.

Step 1 (first day)

First you choose flashcards with words you want to learn. You can pick as many words as you can memorize in the time available. You can choose 5 foreign words and finish your learning session in 15 minutes or less or set much more ambitious goals with 30, 50 or even more words per day (if you are preparing for an exam, for example).

Then you take each flashcard, read the english word and then turn the flashcard and read the foreign word. Try to memorize foreign word - you have to memorize spelling, pronounciation and (if the word is a noun) gender. You can check some good tips for easy and quick memorization. This advices will help you to memorize each word with much less effort.

Then you turn the flashcard again, read the english word and try to reproduce foreign word and spelling (and gender if it is a noun). Turn the flashcard and check if you reproduced the word correctly. If you did not, take some more time to memorize it, turn the flashcard and try to reproduce it again. When you reproduced the foregin word correctly, put the flashcards in box 1 and take the next flashcard.

After you put all flashcards choosen for that day in box 1, your learning session is finished.

Step 2 (nex day)

Take flashcard from box 1, read the english word and, without looking the foreign word, try to reproduce it correctly. If you did, move this flashcard to box 2. Otherwise, take some more time to memorize this word again and leave it in box 1. After you finish all flashcards in box 1, you can introduce new words as in Step 1.

Step 3 (next day)

Take a flashcard from box 2, look at english word and try to reproduce foreign word correctly (of course, without looking at the other side of the flashcard). Then turn the flashcard and check if you managed to do it correctly. If you did, promote this flashcard to the box 3. Otherwise, put the flashcard to the previous box (box 1). This way, the words you reproduced incorrectly ("hard words") travel backwards and you will review them more.

After you finish all the flashcards from box 2, take the flashcards from box 1, and repeat Step 2 with all of them. After that, you can choose new words and repeat Step 1 with them.

Step 4 (next days)

You repeat the previous step, but always start with highest box - take the flashcards from box 5 and repeat Step 3 with all of them, then take the box 4, then box 3 and then box 2. After that you repeat Step 2 with flashcards in box 1 and finally introduce new words as in Step 1.

Final step and further review (next days)

When you take a flashcard from box 5 and reproduce the word correctly, you can put this flashcard aside, you learned it!

This step means that you reproduced the word correctly at least 5 times (more times if you made errors and the flashcard travelled backwards!) and this foreign word, spelling and gender are firmliy in your memory.

You should review learned words again in one week, and then after one month, to make sure you keep learned words in your memory.

Benefits of using flashcards

- ensures that you systematically learn new words
- ensures that you review words until they are firmly learned
- deals with "hard words" - you review them until you learn them
- you learn spelling, pronounciation and gender
- pictures are "memory trigger" - they help you learn much quicker
- flashcards enable you to review (remember) learnd words periodicaly after you learned them

Other ways of using flashcards

The five box system proved to be a very effective and quick system for learning foreign vocabulary. But you can adjust the system or use completely new system with flashcards. If you are a quick learner, you can use "four box system" or even "three box system" or you can just use choosen flashcards for quick review of vocabulary prior to an exam.

You can use the flashcards almost anywhere, and even a few minutes can be enough for quick revision.