The Leitner System Is the Best Way to Learn With Flashcards.
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Varying your learning methods is a great way to stay more engaged in learning new information, but remember: classic methods are called that for a reason. Take flashcards, for example. You’ve certainly used them before, but you may not have used them in a way that maximizes their benefits.
Explore the Leitner system, which provides a more structured and proven method for studying with flashcards and may just jump-start your learning. This memory-improving method is best when you have plenty of time to study, so don’t use it for cramming. Instead, start it immediately at the start of a semester or a new chapter.
What is the Leitner training system?
This system was developed in 1972 by science fiction writer Sebastian Leitner, hence its name. (This is taken from his book “How to Learn to Learn,” but older copies sold for about $4, and they were only available in German, so just take my word for it.)
For the first few decades, he used exclusively physical tools: index cards and boxes . (You’ll also need a pen or pencil to create the index cards.) Writing the index cards by hand is generally a good idea, as handwriting helps you remember the information better . But these days, there are other, more modern options for practicing the Leitner Method. We’ll talk about them later.
Essentially, it’s a variation of spaced repetition — a scientifically proven method that helps students absorb and retain a lot of information. This method is best used when you have plenty of time but need to learn a lot of concepts, phrases, or ideas—so use it for an entire course or a really long chapter, rather than just a section or topic with just a few new points. Now let’s explore what it is and how to use it.
How to use the Leitner system
Let’s assume for a moment that you’re doing this the old-fashioned way—relying on index cards and a pen. The first thing you’ll do is make your index cards. Don’t worry about the other margin-related steps for now. Make your index cards as usual, including vocabulary words, new concepts, phrases, important dates, and anything else you need to know. It’s helpful to use a reading comprehension method to go over a chapter or topic first, so try the SQ3R method , which asks you to identify questions you have about the material before you start reading, then write down the answers to those questions as they arise, along with anything else you learn. You base these questions on subheadings, graphs, tables, summaries, and other key parts of the chapter, but later you can base your index cards on those same pieces of information, as well as on answers you find. Be mindful and include concepts and words you already know, even if it seems silly. This is all part of the Leitner method and will be useful to you.
Once you have a full deck of cards, it’s time to use this method. You’ll need five boxes (or envelopes, or even labeled binder clips, as long as they can hold large stacks of cards). Label them on a timeline, ideally based on the time you need to absorb the information. For example, if you have an important midterm exam in two months, label Box 1 “Daily,” Box 2 “Every other day,” Box 3 “Weekly,” Box 4 “Bi-weekly,” and Box 5 “Monthly.”
Now, go through the flashcards. For every card you answered correctly, move it to slot 2. For every card you answered incorrectly, keep it in slot 1. You get the idea, but let me explain: slot 1 is your daily review, so you study those cards every day. However, if you start this session on Monday, and your slot 2 is for every other day, you won’t return to it until Wednesday. If you answer cards in slot 2 correctly, they go to slot 3, which in this example is your “weekly” slot. If you answer any cards in slot 2 incorrectly, you move them back to slot 1, where you study them every day until you get them right.
In short, when you answer a card correctly, it moves forward to a slot where you’ll need to reread it less often. When you answer a card incorrectly, it moves back to a slot where you’ll need to reread it more often . Ultimately, the cards will end up in slot 5, all the way down. These are the cards that contain information that’s been effectively stored in your memory and truly absorbed, so you won’t need to reread them as often. Cards in lower-numbered slots also contain information you don’t remember, and you should reread them more often.
Changes and points to consider in the Leitner system
How you use the system will depend on how much time you have to study, as well as how much you need to learn. For example, if you only have a few concepts you want to practice, or you only have two weeks before a big test, you could use three boxes to represent daily, every other day, and weekly study. You also have some wiggle room when it comes to incorrect answers. The most precise approach would be to move all incorrect cards back to box 1, regardless of which box they were previously in, for example, but you can decide whether getting it wrong once means you need to study it every day, or whether you think it should be downgraded to just one box. Personally, I don’t see any harm in downgrading it to box 1; if you get it wrong due to a momentary brain fart, it’ll easily enough return to higher numbers over time; If you made a mistake because the information truly slipped your memory, it deserves daily attention until you know it well enough to improve it.
You also need to be strategic when studying on a day that includes multiple slots. For example, if you start on Monday and use the “day, every other day, and week” pattern for the first three slots, Friday will be quite challenging. Start with the highest slot of the day and then work backwards. This way, you’ll be able to study all the places where you made a mistake and moved back twice, but you won’t have to study the ones where you got it right and moved forward twice. It’ll also give you a bit of confidence if you start with the more difficult ones and get some right, moving them to a slot you won’t have to look at for a while.
The goal here is to thoroughly study the cards with information you’re having trouble remembering, without becoming overwhelmed by learning what you already know. As cards move to higher-numbered slots, add information from new chapters so that your deck provides a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know for the final test or, ideally, for long-term real-life application of this information.
Apps can make this easier.
Yes, the classic approach involves handwriting cards and physically transporting them in boxes or envelopes. While this can be helpful in itself, it’s also labor-intensive, time-consuming, and quite difficult to organize. Where will you store all those cards? Are you going to take them with you for studying on the go? The answer is probably no. This means you could miss several days if you can’t lug around a stack of cards, which completely defeats the purpose of the system.
That’s where apps come in. Always be careful when using your phone for studying, as it only takes a few taps to get distracted by non-educational messages and apps. Frankly, flashcard apps make it all much easier if you can exercise the necessary restraint when using them.
Flashcards in any form are useful because they force you to actively recall and retrieve answers from your memory, so any flashcard app you download is better than nothing. Keep in mind, however, that not all of them follow the Leitner method. For Leitner-style flashcard exercises, I recommend Brainscape (my personal favorite), Cram , and Flashcard Lab . You can read my full reviews of them at these links, but overall, Brainscape is an elegant and well-made app that comes with a variety of pre-made decks and simple options for creating your own. Cram is much more basic but easy to use, and Flashcard Lab creates flashcards from your own spreadsheets, making the creation part almost too easy. All of them allow you to indicate whether you answered a flashcard correctly or incorrectly, and then move it around in your schedule so you see it more or less often.
Outsourcing card creation and sorting to technical specialists leaves more time for learning and streamlines the entire process, increasing the likelihood that you’ll stick to your Leitner practice.