Different kinds of flashcards

I’ve tried to design my cards so that they are self-explanatory and can be used without any preparation. However, here I’ll spell out the different types there are.

Bold blue words mean the target word or phrase. I’ve generally left the first letter or letters of the key word to give students a hint. In more recent cards I’ve included articles in this blue phrase to encourage students to learn nouns and articles together.

The sound ‘mmm’ is used to show where a word or phrase has been omitted. Although it sounds a bit comic, it’s better than just leaving a pause as it draws attention to the target word or phrase and avoids confusion.

Cards testing verb forms are shown by a long underscore with the infinitive (and possibly the pronoun) of the verb in brackets at the end of the sentence. Since choosing between tenses is such a difficult area of English for most learners, there are lots of these cards. The student should be able to assemble the verb phrase with the correct form in the correct tense for that context.

Forms of words are tested by putting the basic form in bold in brackets at the end of a sentence. The Anki user should then produce the correct form out of the basic form. I’ve used this kind of card for comparative, superlatives, gerunds, infinitives and some adverbs too.

The symbol […] is used where a preposition has been left out, for testing dependent prepositions and phrasal verbs. I haven’t been completely consistent here and sometimes the […] symbol just indicates that a short word has been omitted.

Parts of sentences in bold indicate that the student should read these words aloud. I developed this type of card after already having made several thousand cards in order to encourage students to practice their sentence intonation. It also increases the speed that cards can be viewed by avoiding using the sound ‘mmm’.

Extra information is given at the bottom of the screen. I’ve included irregular verb forms, irregular comparative / superlative forms, word families, simple explanations of some tense usage and other useful information. For card up to Pre-Intermediate level, I’ve include quite a few Russian translations (I made these cards principally for my Russian students). It’s easy to modify these cards and replace the Russian words with translations into a different language.

Synonyms and paraphrases of target words and phrases are placed in brackets in italics at the end of the sentence. This is to help students think in English, to generate connections between related English words and avoid the slow, difficult and boring method of learning a language purely through translation.

Listening cards have an audio clip with two written forms. Students should choose the option (a) or (b) with corresponds to the audio. There aren’t many of this kind of card and they only occur at Elementary level.