Learning foreign language vocabulary with flashcards

Because we often learn it in one block: a list of fifty words the night before a quiz, and almost nothing left the following month. That is the forgetting curve Ebbinghaus described in 1885.

Two principles reverse the trend. First, quiz yourself rather than reread: that is the testing effect, well documented by Roediger and Karpicke (2006). Second, space your reviews out over time, further and further apart: that is spaced repetition. Flashcards combine both.

Sentences, most of the time. An isolated word is hard to remember and hard to use: you know that “to reach” means “atteindre”, but you do not know how to fit it in. A short sentence gives you the construction, the preposition, the register.

Cloze deletion is perfect for this: the sentence stays whole, and you only have to recall the word or the preposition that matters. For German, put the article and the plural in the card: “der Tisch, die Tische”.

Yes, because they are two different skills. Recognizing a word when reading (foreign language to French) is easier than producing it when speaking or writing (French to foreign language). For a comprehension test like the TOEIC, the first direction matters most. For an oral exam or a translation into the foreign language, the second is essential.

Start with the direction most useful for your goal, then add the other for the words you really want to be able to use. For Japanese, split even further: one card to read the kanji, one for the meaning, one to write it from French.

These tests mainly assess comprehension and use of the language in concrete situations. Cards help you with the vocabulary and expressions part:

• Business vocabulary for the TOEIC: “to postpone a meeting”, “invoice”, “deadline”, always in a sentence.
• Linking words and expressions for IELTS writing: “on the other hand”, “as a result”, “to some extent”.
• False friends for French speakers: “actually” (en fait), “eventually” (finalement), “library” (bibliothèque).

The rest of your preparation goes through listening, reading and practice tests. Cards do not replace exposure to the language: they make sure what you come across sticks.

No need to retype everything. The simplest format is a CSV or TSV file: one line per card, one column for the front, one for the back. You can prepare it in any spreadsheet (Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice, Google Sheets) and then save it as CSV.

If your lists are on Quizlet, copy the content of the list, paste it into a spreadsheet or a text file with a tab between the term and the definition, and import it. To get both directions, duplicate the rows in the spreadsheet with the two columns swapped before importing. Our Quizlet alternative page explains the switch from one tool to the other in detail.

Fewer than you might imagine, but every day. Each new word will come back several times over the following weeks: adding too many cards at once swells your daily reviews. Start modestly, for example five to ten new cards a day, and increase if your sessions stay short.

Choose words you have come across in a text, a movie or a class rather than an abstract frequency list: a word tied to a memory is easier to retain. Our advice on making good flashcards applies to every language.

• Import your lists as CSV or TSV, from a spreadsheet or a list copied from Quizlet, or your Anki decks as .apkg files.
• Write cloze deletions for sentences in context, and front-and-back cards for the rest. Japanese, Chinese or Korean characters are typed like any other text.
• Let FSRS schedule each word according to your memory, and set the retention target to match your goal.
• Share a deck with your class as a single file.

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