Have you ever been frustrated of how time-consuming and tedious the process of facilitating varied activities in the classroom can be? I know I have. For instance making flash cards. Sitting in my office, cutting paper for hours, and only for one single lesson (!).
Quizlet has brought a solution to that, and makes flash cards even more effective, cost-efficient, and varied. The whole planning, implementation, and assessment process is boosted, as Quizlet offers all these functions. Most students have easily access to a computer, but even better. Quizlet now also comes as an app! That means that you can create flash cards sets that the students can access anywhere. So either if you’re sitting on the bus, eating lunch, or visiting their grandparents – you can access your quizlet puzzles. Duolingo is, of course, a hard competitor with its beautiful skill trees, ingenious interface, and excellent implementation of the four main skills in English – speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Still, the teacher does not have the same possibilites of tailoring her own programme. Quizlet is therefore a wonderful opportunity of realising this in class. The photos that are used in Quizlet are also from Flickr, and some are licensed under the Creative Commons.
Pedagogically, learning by flash cards has deep roots in Western language teaching. Precision teaching has been criticised on the grounds of its narrow aims; students are taught to cram and reproduce with accuracy. However, when learning the basics of a language, flash cards are very effective, and some level of cramming is necessary.
I have earlier created a flash card set when teaching English at the Upper Secondary level in Norway. I used it in relation to a text called “the American People” in the textbook Targets by Haugen et. al. 2009:
Please feel free to try it out: