How to make good flash cards and use them effectively?

The first reason why Hungarian people are not so successful at learning languages is probably the fact the our language is singular from the aspect that it doesn't resemble to any other languages (that is why it is also one of the most difficult foreign languages to learn). There's not much to do about that, except accept it. But the second reason is something we can actually work on. I think this reason is our learning techniques. We spend a lot of time and money on language learning with little success, although only with changing the way we learn a language could save us a lot of money and time. 

Until now I mostly have had adult students. Their most common concern was the lack of time for learning a language. When I met the flash card technique a few years ago on Gabriella Szalai's  website, the most appealing feature of using flash cards was that because of its forms - small paper cards, or in certain cases online cards- they can be used anywhere, anytime, so sts no longer have to find the time to actually sit down at the table with their books or in front of their computers, it is enough if they use the few-minute idle time intervals that we all have for sure, like sitting on the bus, standing in the line,lunch break, waiting in the surgery, cooking dinner etc. In Hungary using flash cards (FCs) as a learning technique is not particularly well-known, consequently we don't know how to use them. So I thought if sts would understand the concept of FCs and could make their own this would not only help them to reach short-term goals quicker thus increase their motivation but also would lead them to the road of autonomous learning, another idea we need to work on.

What makes a good flash card?

According to Gabriella Szalai, a good flash card has at least a phrase containing 2-3 words instead of only one word. It is important to learn chunks of the language, that we can put into use easily. We make language learning much more easier for us if learn the words together with the words we usually use them with. These can be lexical chunks i. e. set phrases or grammatical chunks i. e. grammatical structures that follow certain rules. Leo Selivan refers to these language chunks as co-text, i.e. the surrounding words \ the linguistic environment of the word. Also it is clever to avoid phrases camouflaged as grammatical rules that you can only find in dictionaries, like 'talk to sy about sg', instead we should make a short sentence with it. Make it personal by putting the sentence in the first person singular, as that's how we'll use them most of the time anyway and learn vocabulary related to your needs and interests. Use colour coding to differentiate different topics or different grammatical groups, or draw on the cards, they will help remember if you are a visual type of learner.

Examples:

talk to my friend about the weekend
I'm reading a book about animals.

How to use flash cards effectively? (According to Gabriella Szalai)

• use those few-minute idle time intervals we all have during a day; flashcards are made for using them in situations like this for it's not about how much time you study them at a time but rather the frequency of the use. In other words use them more times during a day but only for a few minutes, with lots of repetition; this is the way for new vocabulary to get into our long term memory
•  use only 6-8 cards at a time, this way you can avoid the rule of 'the first and the last'. It means that we remember better for the first and the last and we tend to forget the ones in the middle.
• you may write the translation of the phrase in your L1 on the other side of the card, in this case always learn from your L1 to English as it is more difficult for our brain to recall than to recognise phrases
• few examples how to PLAY with the cards: choose 2-3 cards and put them into a sentence; if they are sentences make them into a story; choose a card presenting a grammar rule and use it with a phrase card to make a sentence; choose a phrase card, make into a sentence and put it into as many tenses as possible\ as you can; choose a 6-8 cards, put them next to each other and make yourself to put each of them in a sentence one after the other creating a story- the funnier the story the better, emotions has a huge role in remembering things, in our case words; the latter one is even more fun if you do it with your friend, 'study buddies' make the process fun and enjoyable, you no longer feel you are actually learning a language.

Gabriella Szalai's website: www.angolnyelvtanitas.hu
Leo Sullivan's post about co-text