CardsBack to the cards A word is more
than a translation.
You hear a bark. You remember a walk. You think of your dog. All of that belongs to one word.
Think of the word dog.
Maybe you picture your own dog. Maybe you hear barking. Or remember walking home with muddy shoes and a very happy animal.
All of those things come with the word. You didn't have to look up a definition.
Now take the French word chien. You learn that it means dog. Useful. But when you want to say it, you might still have to go through the English word first.
So give yourself more ways to practice. See a dog and try to say chien. Hear the word and bring the animal to mind. Use it in a sentence about something you remember.
Scroll through the network below. Then flip the cards and see how each one gives you a different way into the word. You can drag the network and tap its ideas.
This is a picture of associations, not a scan of a real brain. The childhood photo is a fictional example.
Jump to the practical guide ↓Dog gets its meaning from the connections between your neurons.
Targeted flashcards connect new words to deeper meaning beyond translation.
What does dog even mean?
0 reviews
At first, the meaning comes through “dog.”
Tap “dog,” then “chien.” Flip a card to build more connections.
Practice what you want to do.
Reading chien and knowing it means dog is useful. But can you see a dog and come up with chien? Can you understand the word when someone says it?
Those are different questions. Give yourself a chance to answer each one.
If you want to follow a conversation, listen before you read. If you want to speak, try saying the word before you turn the card over.
Use your own dog.
A stock photo works. But you probably have a photo of a dog you actually know.
That photo comes with a walk, a place, a memory. It gives you something familiar to think about while you practice the new word.
Keep it obvious what the card is asking. A crowded park could mean twenty different things. A photo of your dog makes the question much easier to answer. For an idea you can't photograph, try a sentence or a situation.
One card. One question.
- Word → meaning. Do you know what it means?
- Meaning → word. Can you come up with the word yourself?
- Picture → word. Can you name what you see?
- Sound → meaning. Can you understand it without reading it?
- Sentence → missing word. Can you fill in the gap?
- Phrase → understanding. Does the whole sentence make sense to you?
- Your memory → word. Can something familiar help you find the word?
You don't need all of these for every word. Pick the ones that help with what you're trying to do.
In Polyglot Cards, each direction has its own review schedule. You might recognize a word easily and still need practice saying it. Your reviews can reflect that.
Try to answer first.
It's easy to turn a card over, recognize the answer, and think you knew it.
Give yourself a moment before you flip it. Try to remember. Then check.
There's research behind that habit. In a foreign vocabulary study, people who kept trying to recall the words remembered more later than people who kept studying them. Karpicke & Roediger, 2008.
A good picture still needs practice. Another vocabulary study found that people could get too confident about picture cards and study them too little. Carpenter & Olson, 2012.
That's what the network is there to help you think about. Different ways to find the same word. The glowing lines are an illustration, not a measurement of what a review does to your brain.