Get More Learning Opportunities From Flashcards by Making Your Own
Flashcards are great for memorizing, but you can get even more out of them if you create them with information you’ve already processed yourself.
For some items, cards can be simple definitions. For others, you want the information you study to be formatted in a way that you know you will understand. Zane from the Life by Experimentation Skills Development Blog suggests that creating your own flashcards is the best way to do this:
The actual process of creating the cards is important. Your deck of cards doesn’t have to be just “vocabulary definitions.” Turning knowledge into flashcards is valuable for the same reasons it’s important not to take verbatim notes: when you try to express information in your own words, you process the information. When you process it, you must recreate the ideas in a way that makes them understandable to you. The process of retrieving and reorganizing information actually strengthens memory.
The whole point of flashcards is to help you develop your memory in a subject, so learn it so you know you can memorize it. Find places to get cards on different topics, and then translate them into your own cards in a way that works for you. Maybe you have your own mnemonic system or a silly way of remembering a certain fact. Whatever it is, use that instead of ignoring it.
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