Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!