Flash cards are cards, which learners of a foreign language use to memorize new words. These cards are not big, approximately the size of business cards. The unknown word in a foreign language is written on one side of a card while the same word in a native language is written on the other side of it.
 How to Make Flash Cards
The little cards may be made of thin papers, so that you can pile up more of them. A foreign language learner should carry a pile of blank flash cards always with him/her in order to be able to write any new word. When the new word is written, its meaning should be figured out and written on the back side of a flash card.
There are also general vocabulary flash cards sold in stores. Those cards are printed, look nicer and may appear more attractive to the learner. The typical set of flash cards contains about 100 of the latter with one word and its derivative written on each card.
How to Use Flash Cards
The best advantage of using flash cards to learn a foreign language is that you don’t need to spare time for the classes. You can take out several of your cards and read the words every time you have a free moment:
- while waiting for an elevator / metro or inside of it
- staying in a queue when entering cinema / museum etc.
- waiting on the phone and the like situations
The Advantages of This Method
• It is free / inexpensive and easy to employ.
• No need to have special time for classes, the learner uses the time throughout the day that he or she already has.
• The advantage of flash cards over the word lists lies in the fact that the learner doesn’t remember a specific word order, but can later group words of different difficulty together in any desired order.
• All that one needs to learn a new word is to write it down. Afterwards, he/she will drill the word until the latter is remembered.
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