New Ways To Learn German: Learn German With Flashcards

Published by Janica Hieronimi on March 28, 2021

Have you thought about learning German with flashcards and are wondering if it can help you to learn vocabulary and the language faster and more efficiently? Learn German with flashcards might be the best way for you to learn German!

Flashcards offer an effective way to remember information by building up the memory. They may assist you to remember the information written down with minimal effort, and/or if you choose to use an app this works by combining images, audio, video, and other multimedia which help you to remember and recall a word or even a whole phrase by writing it down and repeating.

What Are The Benefits Of Learning German With Flashcards?

We know learning vocabulary is never easy and can be a boring process. It takes time to memorize words and phrases, especially in the German language. Flashcards aim to activate your recall abilities. When you actively go through a deck, you train your brain to quickly and accurately remember information. Flashcards will also improve your ability to comprehend vocabulary through visual learning.

Some main benefits of using Flashcards to learn German are:

You get instant feedback – You know immediately if you’re correct and which mistakes you’ve made.
Natural repetition – Flashcards aid the repetitive process necessary for new phrases to go into your long-term memory.
Increase neural connections – Viewing flashcards in random order assists your brain to build up memory.
Make learning more fun – Flashcards make learning a language a game. You can challenge yourself and also have friends or family members test you. If you use an app, there are many fun game to engage in

The traditional use of flashcards is for memorization only. It is important to use the flashcards multiple times. A with many things in life everything comes with practice and repetition. The more you go through your flashcards, the more you will remember and therefore forget less and less. If you have a photographic memory, that’s even better. The main purpose of flashcards is to remember information long-term (which happens through constant repetition).

Making Your Own Flashcards

It may be a bit old school but making your own flashcards has two advantages:

writing down a word or a sentence that you want to remember already helps to stay in your memory easier because writing it down will rewire the association in the brain.
If you make your own flashcards on paper you can take them anywhere you go with you and repeat and practice them everywhere.

How to do it:

Buy or construct your cards. A set of index cards doesn’t cost much. You can mostly find them in any paper or office store. You can also choose to print off cards from a template.
Select the category of information for your “deck” of flashcards. Instead of turning every piece of information from the class into a card, consider making a deck of related terms, facts, or formulas.
Summarize the most important information within that category. This can be a great opportunity to predict which information you will want to remember and think about what are the most critical points.
Personalize the cards to make them unique. Include images that trigger your memory, also add cues that came to mind when reading actively or taking notes or when you listened to people.

Flashcards can be one of the best ways for you to memorize your German vocabulary.

If you’ve ever tried to read and remember them, you probably know that this method doesn’t work well. In contrast, flashcards stimulate multiple areas of your brain, thereby improving the retention of information.

Flashcards are particularly efficient if you add multimedia that enhance your ability to recall word meanings. The following German flashcard apps offer pre-designed and customizable flashcards to help you learn German vocabulary quickly and painlessly.

Memorizing Cards:

Look at the front of the first card, and explain the related information listed on the back. Don’t cheat! Try to say the information out loud, and then flip over the card to see if you got the correct answer.
If correct, move the card to a separate pile. Make sure not to fool yourself by peeking when you get stuck.
If not correct, put the card on the bottom of the pile to revisit again during that study session. This helps you to spend more time with what you remember the least.
Revisit each stack as often as you wish and your time allows you to. You can even do it on public transport, on the plane, in the restaurant. The more “swipes”, the more it will become “memorized”. Continue to put aside cards for less-frequent review once you have been able to retrieve the information a number of times. Easy task!

Flashcard Apps

You might prefer to use technology for your learning process more than the good old DIY method. That’s totally understandable because we spend so much time on the computer these days, why not make it useful as well, right?

Flashcard apps are becoming very popular, not only amongst students but also amongst business people to travel and need to make use of their time in the most efficient ways.

I have personally found too many Flashcard apps by using the search function and not all of them are great. My favorite one so far is the app called Anki.

Anki:

Anki is my top 1 for flashcard apps! It uses spaced repetition to make your studies more efficient and effective.

The concept is simple. Anki will show you one side of each card. When you think you know the answer (or if you can’t remember), you flip the card over to see the correct answer. Anki will ask you to rate the grade of difficulty. Based on the rating, the app will decide when to show you the card again. This could be as soon as a few minutes from now or as long as a month. This will allow you to spend more time studying the concepts that are difficult for you and don’t waste time reviewing the information you already know.

Pricing: Free (except for the iOS app, which is $24.99)

Platforms: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Web

Practice Practise All Is Coming!

If you want to improve practicing words most efficiently just use Readle – learn German, seriously! Trust hundreds of users whose German skills got better and better, and they started using German verbs with their conjugations automatically, without thinking of the correct form! It’s never been easier!