|
 |
Are flash cards a necessary evil? | ||
Tags: Flash cards | Usefulness | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6610 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 25 of 83 17 January 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I love these method and techniques contradictions...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 26 of 83 18 January 2011 at 5:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm always astonished that people can make grand statements about what other people should or should not do. The issue isn't whether people love or hate flashcards. It's whether flashcards work for you or not. Alas, I think, as happens so often here at HTLAL, we probably don't agree on what flashcards are. I'm concentrating on Spanish right now and I use two kinds of paper-based cards. First, a home-made set where I right down interesting phrases with or without translation on 10 X 7 cm pieces of paper. I concentrate on things that I find difficult or unusual. Just this morning, I wrote down something I heard on the radio: Es inadmisible que estos hechos se vengan produciendo. This is something that I want to remember because it contains a number of interesting structures. I also recently bought a pre-production set of 420 cards of a commercial product called Essential Spanish 1. These 420 cards are divided into 12 grammatical or lexical themes. Each card has a dialogue or phrase in Spanish on the front and translation into French and English on the back. Right now I'm looking at two cards. One card has the following dialogue: --Es muy tarde. Tenemos que marcharnos. --¿Y cuándo nos vuelven a ver? The translation on the back is: --It's getting late. We have to leave. -- And when will you come to see us again? --Il se fait tard. Il faut qu'on parte. --Et quand allez-vous revenir nous voir? The second card has: A los pocos segundos, el motor del misil se encendió. Here is the translation on the back: A few seconds later, the motor of the missile ignited. Quelques secondes plus tard, le moteur du missile s'est mis en marche. I really liked this second card because it illustrated a construction in Spanish that I find difficult to use: A los/las with a unit of time to mean ...later. My natural tendency is to translate from French with the adverb después. I like these kinds of cards because I can focus on certain constructions without all the clutter of the notebooks that I use as well. When I go to a Spanish-language meetup, I'll take a few cards, such as these two, with me. Then I go about deliberately using the phrases or variations thereof in the course of the conversation. If necessary, I'll take them out of my pocket to refresh my memory. For example, recently I focused on this A los/las construction by using things such as A las pocas horas, À los pocos minutos, A los dos semanas, etc. all in context of sentences. And when I'm about the leave the meetup, I'll throw in some variation of the contents of the first card, i.e. Bueno pues, se hace tarde. Tengo que irme. Or, if somebody else is leaving, I'll use: Oye y ¿cuándo nos vuelve a ver? For me (and maybe for me only) this works wonders because I feel that my Spanish is progressing as I deliberately push myself to try something new or different. What I see too often at the meetups that I participate in (English, French and Spanish) is a lot of people speaking mediocre language to other speakers of mediocre language. I guess it's better than nothing, but I do sometimes get the impression that most people are not really progressing. They're stuck in some sort of fossilized mode. The main problem is that people are not speaking idiomatically. Most of the time they are sort of translating from their native tongue and sounding awkward. I make a point of carefully observing native speakers and also trying out trusted and idiomatic content from by flashcards. Native speakers inevitably react favourably when they hear something that is very appropriate. I don't claim to do this all the time, but I find that with the flashcards and all the other tools that I use, my repertoire of appropriate phrases is increasing by leaps and bounds. Edited by s_allard on 18 January 2011 at 7:02am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Naomi Chambers Newbie United States thepolyglotexperienc Joined 5006 days ago 23 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Spanish Studies: FrenchC1, Swedish | Message 27 of 83 18 January 2011 at 6:32am | IP Logged | |||||
I never really use flashcards to study. However, the times that I have used them they did help me learn vocabulary. The learning took place in the process of Making the cards. I used colorful markers, made them look nice, and paid careful attention to their appearance. Making them was always a fun little project. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6884 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 28 of 83 18 January 2011 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you're making your own flashcards, you can make them so that they don't have these problems. Except for the last one, these all seem like problems with a very particular format of cards, rather than the medium itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6207 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 29 of 83 18 January 2011 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
They work for some people, not for others. I sometimes use the electronic kind but I prefer the paper ones you can carry with you. They suit my lifestyle - carry some in a pocket and reviewing them while waiting for public transport, sitting on a park bench and so forth. Or else doing the same with a number of words written on an index card, or in a small pocket-sized notebook.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 83 19 January 2011 at 5:08am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, a kindred spirit. I don't know why people are making such a big deal out of flashcards. It can be something as simple as a few words scribbled on a piece of paper. Or a fancy software on a smartphone. It's a very simple idea that, I think, can be used by everybody, but I certainly won't fight over it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| thecrazyfarang Diglot Newbie France thefarangsdiary.blog Joined 4986 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Thai | Message 31 of 83 26 January 2011 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I think the main problem is that the SRS (or flashcards on paper) are misused. The vast majority of people use them too soon.
Exemple : you want to learn Thai. You have no knowledge. At the first lesson, you encounter several unknown words. Your first reaction is to put them into your SRS to learn this new words, isn't it? I think it's wrong to do it so soon. The words you just put into your SRS are (theoretically) basic, common words that you will meet frequently during your learning phase... So there is no use putting them in your SRS at the beginning of your learning phase. But if you already have a good level in Thai and you encounter an unknown word while reading your newspaper, putting the word into an SRS to "not forget" it makes sense to me because you will never see it again before long. I think a SRS is made to "remember uncommon words", not to "learn common words", and , in my opinion, should be used in an advanced level only. I'm not an native English speaker, I hope I've made my message clear.... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6610 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 32 of 83 26 January 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think SRS is made to remember what you ALREADY know. SRS is NOT a learning tool. SRS is a non-forgetting tool. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
