The flashcard debate

One of my more personalized flashcards

Are flashcards really the answer? Doubts are beginning to creep in to be honest. They're definitely helpful, and with the audio file added, they give me good practice listening and repeating after a native speaker, which is pretty valuable for Chinese because of the pronunciation difficulties.

But I've begun to think that as far as absorbing vocabulary and sentences goes, maybe using podcast material is more beneficial over the long-term. Podcasts give you more context, and are certainly more interesting than the flashcards, which are really just a series of unrelated, random sentences.

I follow a few other language bloggers on the internet, and I know that there are those that are against flashcards, and those that are for. I'd probably say that I'm in the 'for' camp for now, just from the point of view that they are a good tool for remembering certain phrases, and for remembering Chinese characters.

But they do have their drawbacks. One of the main ones—which is really the reason I have begun thinking about them a little more critically of late—is that you really do have to tailor them for yourself, and this can be time-consuming. I sometimes find myself spending more time, looking for, copying and pasting, and uploading sentences, than I do actually thinking about them in a meaningful, semantic way.

But like I said my current deck of cards has definitely helped me progress in some ways, especially with the pronunciation, so I'll keep them ticking over for now I guess, just to keep my options open.