Languages · Subjects

The problem

You understand the text, and out loud nothing comes.

Reading comprehension improves by itself; production does not. The gap comes from almost never practising making the word appear: you find it on a page, you recognise it, and you take that recognition for mastery.

A card you can hear

The word can be heard and not only seen. For a language, the sound is part of what must be retained, just as much as the spelling.

Matching for pairs

Verb and participle, word and gender, idiom and meaning: when the knowledge is a correspondence, the shape that questions it should be one too.

Volume treated as volume

An exam vocabulary runs to hundreds of entries. That is not a motivation problem but a planning one, and it is precisely what a recall schedule takes on.

From your notes to cards

A vocabulary list, three cards.

One page yields a card to hear, a definition and a choice of grammatical form.

Uploaded excerpt · vocabulary and irregular verbs

to seek — to look for, to pursue. Past simple: sought. Past participle: sought. The verb belongs to a more formal register than to look for.

gives

Listen

to seek

Listen to the card

to look for, to pursue — formal register

Two-sided

What nuance separates to seek from to look for?

Multiple choice

Past simple and past participle of to seek?

sought / sought

seeked / seeked

sought / seeken

saught / sought

The right shapes

The shapes that make you speak

Three shapes, for three skills that writing alone does not train.

Listen

It adds the sound to the card, without which a word stays a mute string of letters.

Matching

Ideal for verb-participle or word-gender couples, where the correspondence is what has to be known.

Multiple choice

The distractors reuse the classic errors — regular forms invented for an irregular verb.

Your sources

Where your cards come from

The teacher's list, a text studied in class, an article, a subtitled video: cards take the language of the source.

PDF

A chapter, a handout, a past paper with answers.

Word

Your own notes, in .doc as well as .docx.

PowerPoint

The lecture deck, exactly as you were given it.

Photo of your notes

The whiteboard or your notebook, as JPG or PNG.

YouTube video

An online lecture, straight from its address.

Pasted text

Three paragraphs are enough to make a deck.

Anki import

Your old deck finds its place again, in its own window.

On exam day

Before the oral

With the exam date set, shaky vocabulary comes round more often in the final days. School breaks stay breaks. The method, in detail →

Frequently asked questions

Can cards be heard?

Yes, a card can carry a spoken version of its content. For a living language, that is the difference between recognising a written word and recognising it when someone says it.

Does the interface stay in my language if my material is in another?

Yes. Cards take the language of the uploaded source, the interface keeps yours. An English text gives English cards without the rest of the app changing language.

How should I revise conjugation?

By matching, form against form, rather than by tables. A table is reread line by line and gives the illusion of knowing; matching questions the correspondence itself.

What about preparing a speaking test?

Cards build the stock — words, phrases, turns of phrase — you will draw on. Speaking itself requires speaking: the card prepares, it does not replace.