How to Study Vocabulary with Flashcards

Choose words worth learning

Not every new word deserves a card. For a new language, start with high-frequency words: the few thousand most common words make up most of what you'll read and hear. Frequency lists for many languages are freely available, and good textbooks introduce common words first.

For exam vocabulary (GRE, SAT, medical terms, a biology unit), use the official word list or your course glossary. Beyond that, add words you meet in your own reading and listening — words from real contexts tend to stick better because you already have a memory attached to them.

Decide which direction to study

There are two directions, and they're different skills:

• Recognition (foreign → native): you see "perro" and recall "dog". Needed for reading and listening.
• Production (native → foreign): you see "dog" and recall "perro". Needed for speaking and writing. It's harder.

Many learners start with recognition for new words and add production once the word is familiar. In our editor, the reverse card type makes a card in each direction from one entry, so you don't have to type the pair twice.

For exam vocabulary in your own language, the usual direction is word → definition, with a reverse card if you also need to produce the word from its meaning.

Put more than a translation on the card

A bare word pair is the minimum. Small additions make words easier to remember and use:

• An example sentence, ideally from something you read. "Me llevé el perro al parque" is more memorable than "perro" on its own.
• Gender and articles where they matter: "el perro", "die Katze", "la maison".
• Irregular forms — plural, past tense — only when they're unpredictable.
• A picture instead of the translation, for concrete nouns. It helps you think in the language rather than translating.
• Pronunciation. Turn on text-to-speech and set the language for each side so the browser reads the word aloud with its built-in voices. Voice quality varies by browser and device, so check it sounds right.

Keep the front simple, though. If the front shows the word plus a sentence plus a picture, you may be recalling the picture, not the word.

Use cloze for words in context

Once you know a word in isolation, cloze cards help you learn how it's used: "Ayer {{c1::fui}} al cine" (past tense of "ir"). This is especially useful for verb forms, prepositions, collocations ("make a decision", not "do a decision"), and particles. The cloze guide explains the syntax.

Practise spelling by typing

Recognising a word and spelling it are different. If spelling matters — a spelling test, a written exam, a language with tricky orthography — use the type-in answer card type, or Spell mode, which reads each word aloud with text-to-speech and asks you to type it. Spell mode tolerates small typos, so you can see when you're close rather than just wrong.

How many new words a day?

Every new word you add today will come back for review several times over the coming weeks. That's why the daily review load is set mostly by how many new cards you add, not by how many reviews you choose to do.

A sensible approach is to start modestly — say 10 to 20 new words a day — and watch how long your daily reviews take after a couple of weeks. If reviews take longer than you can sustain, reduce new words. The stats page shows a forecast of upcoming reviews to help with this.

Consistency matters more than volume. Fifteen words a day, every day, adds up to a large vocabulary over a year.

Use spaced repetition for the long haul

Vocabulary is where spaced repetition shines: thousands of small, independent facts that you need to keep for years. Review mode schedules each word individually using FSRS, so easy words fade into the background and hard ones keep coming back. See the spaced repetition guide for how to grade reviews honestly.

Before a vocabulary test, Learn mode gives you a mix of multiple choice and written questions, and Test mode builds a graded quiz including matching. Match is a quick timed game for a change of pace.

Getting words into cards quickly

• Paste a word list in "word – meaning" or "word, meaning" format; the delimiter is detected automatically.
• Import a CSV or Excel sheet, or a Quizlet export (Quizlet to Anki shows how to get the text out).
• Open an Anki deck (.apkg) you've downloaded.
• Use Smart import on textbook pages or a photo of a vocabulary list, with on-device OCR.
• Start from a deck in the library.

Many vocabulary lists use non-Latin scripts. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Cyrillic text works in the editor, in study modes, and in printed cards.

Don't only use flashcards

Flashcards get words into memory; using them keeps them there and makes them useful. Read and listen to material slightly above your level, and add words you meet there. Try to use new words in writing or conversation. The combination of cards and real use is far more effective than either on its own.

A sample daily routine

A language learner aiming for steady progress might do this each day:

• Do all due reviews first, out loud where possible, so you practise pronunciation too.
• Add 10–15 new words from your textbook or from something you read.
• For new words, study recognition first; add the reverse direction once they feel familiar.
• Once a week, run a Test-mode quiz on recent words, or a Match game for a quick check.

That usually fits in 15–25 minutes, which is sustainable alongside reading, listening, and speaking practice.