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Flashcard

 

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Flashcard



 
 
A flashcard or flash card is a card that is used as a learning aid. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
, historical dates, formulas or any subject matter that can be learned via a question and answer format. Flashcards are widely used as a learning
Learning

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, Value s, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information....
 drill to aid memorization
Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
 by way of spaced repetition
Spaced repetition

Spaced repetition is a learning technique in which increasing intervals of time are used between subsequent reviews. Alternative names include expanding rehearsal, graduated intervals, repetition spacing, repetition scheduling, spaced retrieval and expanded retrieval....
.
Leitner System
A widely used method to efficiently use flashcards was proposed by the German science popularizer Sebastian Leitner
Sebastian Leitner

Sebastian Leitner was a Germany commentator and science popularizer.As a student in Vienna, he was briefly kept in custody by the Nazis in 1938 because of his opposition against the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany....
 in the 1970s.






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A flashcard or flash card is a card that is used as a learning aid. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
, historical dates, formulas or any subject matter that can be learned via a question and answer format. Flashcards are widely used as a learning
Learning

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, Value s, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information....
 drill to aid memorization
Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
 by way of spaced repetition
Spaced repetition

Spaced repetition is a learning technique in which increasing intervals of time are used between subsequent reviews. Alternative names include expanding rehearsal, graduated intervals, repetition spacing, repetition scheduling, spaced retrieval and expanded retrieval....
.

Leitner System


A widely used method to efficiently use flashcards was proposed by the German science popularizer Sebastian Leitner
Sebastian Leitner

Sebastian Leitner was a Germany commentator and science popularizer.As a student in Vienna, he was briefly kept in custody by the Nazis in 1938 because of his opposition against the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany....
 in the 1970s. In his method, known as the Leitner system, flashcards are sorted into groups according to how well you know each one in the Leitner's learning box. This is how it works: you try to recall the solution written on a flashcard. If you succeed, you send the card to the next group. But if you fail, you send it back to the first group. Each succeeding group has a longer period of time before you are required to revisit the cards.

For example, suppose you have 3 groups called Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3. The cards in Group 1 are the ones that you often make mistakes with, and Group 3 contains the cards that you know very well. You might choose to study the Group 1 cards once a day, Group 2 every 3 days, and the Group 3 cards every 5 days. If you look at a Group 1 card and get the correct answer, you "promote" it to Group 2. A correct answer with a Group 2 card "promotes" that card to Group 3. If you make a mistake with a Group 2 or Group 3 card, it gets "demoted" to Group 1, which forces you to study that card more often.

Flashcard
The advantage of this method is that you can focus on the most difficult flashcards, which remain in the first few groups. The result is, ideally, a reduction in the amount of study time needed.

Similar ideas have been implemented into a number of computer-assisted language learning
Computer-assisted language learning

Computer-assisted language learning is a form of computer-based accelerated learning which carries two important features: bidirectional learning and individualized learning....
 titles. Much of this software makes use of so-called electronic flashcards.