Flashcards are all about rote learning, so why would anyone recommend them as a study method? There is good reason for using flashcards, and over the next 3 weeks I will tell you exactly why I use and recommend flashcards in this flashcards series of posts. Over these weeks I want to convince you that you should be using them in your study and help get you started, either through using my ready made flashcards, or producing your own.

I have always loved using flashcards for study and always recommend them to my students, whether they be in my class, or if I am tutoring them, flashcards are always my first go to for study. I attribute my success in school, and my success in multiple university degrees to my use of flashcards.

I remember when I started using flashcards, it was straight after my half-yearly HSC exams. I was very disappointed with my results, with a fairly low average. But, through the use of flashcards I managed to turn my poor results around.

To begin with my use of flashcards was not great. I went through and created them, with the syllabus on one side and the answer on the other. I would then go through my flashcards each week for each subject. I would seperate the cards as I went into the pile I knew and the pile I didn’t know. I would not stop going through the ones I didn’t know, until I had gotten them all right and put them all into the “know” pile.

Over time, the older cards became very easy and I would always get 90% of them right on my first go, and the newer cards I would go through a few times as I learnt to memorise them. I even remember breaking them into piles of 7 and going through that pile until it was done, and then moving onto the next 7 cards.

This method greatly improved my results. I was not doing past papers, or practice questions. I wasn’t submitting work to my teachers, and yet I managed to increase my results by over 30% in every subject. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I learnt just why such a method was helping me not just with memorisation of the information, but with its application and analysis as well.

Are you convinced yet?? If so, you should get started straight away. You can click here for further information on how to set up your own flashcards, or here (students) or here (teachers) to purchase a download of my cards, ready to print, and start memorising today.

If not, over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you just how flashcards work. The best way to use them, and hopefully help you to improve your results through this simple yet very effective study method. Over the next few weeks I will talk about how flashcards:

  • Help establish memory
  • Improve information recall
  • Allow for deeper thinking
  • Improve your ability to apply knowledge, and
  • much more

So, stay tuned and learn why I use and recommend flashcards.