
My son's flashcard routine - btilly
http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-sons-flashcard-routine.html
======
revelation
When I was a kid.. I was outside playing. Seriously.

And then when I got older and could read, I was often reading books. And I
think the knowledge and information you can glean from just reading books is
enormous. Language isn't about spelling stuff right [1]. It's about having a
comfortably large set of words at your disposal and knowing what words can go
together to express feelings, atmosphere or intent.

[1]: the fascination with spelling seems to know no end in the USA. Spelling
competitions?!

~~~
frossie
_the fascination with spelling seems to know no end in the USA_

It's not unique to the USA - the French could tell you a thing or two about
the Championnats d'Orthographe....

I agree with your point though. There is a telling moment in the OP, where it
says that the son's reward for working the flashcards is the parent reading
him books beyond his reading level. What is the point of spelling words ahead
of your reading level? Spelling prowess comes from repeated exposure to
written words[1]. It's called "reading" and I can't see any reason (aside from
stupid standardised testing) that a kid's spelling ability needs to be ahead
of their reading level.

[1] This is if why you are a perl programmer the word "pearl" starts looking
wrong.

Edit, due to comments below:

The question is why are teachers asking for words to be spelled essentially
out of context. I just can't think of a good reason _because_ the only way you
can learn them is by flashcard games, and like the comment above, I just can't
see how it is a good use of a kid's time. I certainly do not blame the parent
for making sure their kid does well at school, I just don't see the sense of
school being this way.

Take the word, oh I don't know. Serialization. Or hypervisor. Or encryption.
Most people here can spell them (I assume!) even though you were never
required to learn to do so at school - you have learned by sheer exposure. You
also know that the opposite of encryption is not unencryption, but decryption,
and a decrypted message is not the same as an unencrypted message. Now of
course there are linguistic reasons for all this, but the point is that you
know these things because you encountered these words in context.

A kid that reads a Star-Trek tie-in is sure to be able to spell
"teleportation". Yes, you can also teach a kid to spell that out of context
with a flash card. But why? I just don't get it.

[Disclosure: frustrated non-native English speaker who had to teach a first
grader to spell "reduce, reuse, recycle" this week, gaaaaah].

~~~
btilly
You have no idea how many times I've apologized to my son for the fact that
English spelling makes no sense and he has to learn it. If I could wave a
magic wand, we'd have a good phonetic spelling system. (And there is an
example of a word that is not phonetically spelled...)

With that said, let me clarify a couple of potential misconceptions.

The words that I am teaching my son are not beyond his reading level. In fact
they are taken from lists of words that he is expected to be able to read, and
was asked to spell on tests in his classroom. His spelling winds up beyond his
grade level simply because most kids his age don't know most of those words.

The only connection between the reward activity (reading) and the flashcards
is that I use the first to make the second pleasurable. I'm not reading to him
because it is good for him, I'm reading to him because he enjoys it. I'd be
happy playing with marbles instead. I don't put words from the story into the
flashcards - he has enough other stuff that he actually needs to learn which
is higher priority.

------
Sukotto
I use Anki[1] with my kids (grades 1 and 3) for spelling, reading, and math.
It works really well, was relatively easy to set up (import csv files), and
keeps track of the spacing for me so I never have to worry about unconsciously
filtering the hardest cards to the bottom.

Even better, Anki v2.0 just came out with the ability to have multiple
profiles. (No more including the child's name in the deck's name... yay)

The downsides are: The documentation is lacking in all but the most basic
uses; The help forums are difficult to find [2]; You are tied to your computer
(or smartphone).

[1] <http://ankisrs.net/>

[2] <https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ankisrs>

~~~
peteretep
I was unsure why the original poster had developer his own system instead of
just using Anki...

~~~
btilly
That is addressed in paragraph 2. At the start I needed to address problems
with handwriting, which meant that the evaluation of whether he has done the
flashcard correctly has to be done by me. Having flashcards on a computer, and
then a manual evaluation, seemed like counterproductive complexity. I did not
want a computer between me and my son for this activity.

But it turns out to be a good thing. Because the fact that I have been
involved has let me track down issues, such as the need for a reward activity.
Anki currently does not offer that as a feature.

However in a year or so I do want to move my son to something like Anki.

~~~
peteretep
FWIW: I used Anki for learning a foreign language, with the help of a human,
who would ask one side, and then rate my answer. This worked pretty well, in
fact, and allowed the devolvement to Anki of spacing and scheduling, with the
benefits you've mentioned.

------
rubberbandage
English word construction seems like anarchy, but there really are
rules—they’re just rules for all the different languages that english draws
from, respective to each word. I learned to recognize the origin of words
(from Greek, Latin, German, French, etc.) pretty early on, and it drastically
cleared up the seeming chaos of how a word was spelled. Is your son getting
any context behind the words? Otherwise I could see these exercises being as
frustrating as trying to learn a modern symphony by ear with no knowledge of
music.

------
pixelcort
The startup I'm working on is a flashcard mobile webapp that uses spaced
repetition, but also uses multiple choice quizzes for new cards that get
harder each time a card is shown again. This lets students transition from
answer recognition to answer recollection without that anxious feeling that
comes from trying to recall recently learned cards.

It was designed for adults learning vocabulary for second languages or
professional certifications, but lately we've been trying to see what kinds of
features we could add to make it more useful for kids as well. The recognize-
to-recall transition could really be useful for students who otherwise would
be overwhelmed from the anxious feelings of recalling recently new cards.

One feature we're looking at is the use of mini games and tiny (10-15 second)
video clips to make the app more fun and help space out new cards a bit more.

If anyone has a child who could benefit from reduced-anxiety learning, I'd
love to chat with you and get your thoughts. Check out my HN profile for my
contact info and more about the webapp.

------
LinaLauneBaer
I have developed a flashcards app for both iOS ( <http://christian-
kienle.de/Flashcards-Pro/> ) and OS X ( <http://christian-
kienle.de/Flashcards> ). For the development of these apps I tried several
different learning systems and interviewed friends who are learning with
flashcards how they do it. I found out that everyone learns a little bit
differently so it was hard to find one system that everyone could work with.
So I decided to make the system pretty flexible by introducing smart decks -
something like smart playlists but for decks of cards. The drill mode
described in the blog post cannot be emulated in a nice way by my apps. I may
adopt it because it seems really good to get the information in your short
term memory which is the first step. Thanks for sharing your experience.

------
jedberg
When I was kid, my flashcard routine was this:

Show the card. If it is right it goes to the done pile, if it is wrong, it
goes to the back of the current pile. Repeat until there is nothing left in
the current pile.

Then do the same thing the next day. We did this until I could get through the
entire pile in one try.

This method seems overly complicated for both child and parent.

~~~
btilly
I did something similar to that as a kid. I hated it. It worked, but much less
efficiently.

The strategy that you describe causes you to spend most of your time looking
at cards that you've already mastered. You don't have the ability to slowly
add to the list. You don't have the ability to have as many flashcards. And,
according to the research, long-term retention is worse.

He currently has 465 cards that he's shown some retention on. Of those,
tonight he will do 14. Your system would have him spending 33x as much effort
maintaining that knowledge as what we're currently doing. A factor of 33 is
worth some bookkeeping on my part.

~~~
jedberg
> Your system would have him spending 33x as much effort maintaining that
> knowledge as what we're currently doing. A factor of 33 is worth some
> bookkeeping on my part.

I will grant you that. We only used this strategy for the times tables up to
12x12, which has a finite set of cards (144 if I remember my facts correctly
:) ).

If I wanted to do an ever growing set, I might consider this method.

> And, according to the research, long-term retention is worse.

Can you point me at some good research on this area? I believe you, I'd just
like to read more, as someone who is interested in this sort of thing.

~~~
btilly
In the blog post I point to <http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition> which
includes lots of links to research on various aspects of this topic.

------
frannk
It seems in english speaking country there is a need for flashcard system too.

I want to share my view on "flashcard" app.

I am a chinese coder, who love learning and reading english. To help people
learn english words in long term(for school Exam,SAT,GRE, or just for work), I
have made two web app.

1\. jianbing.org （running for 2years, shutting down for bad UX, 20K users） 2\.
<http://rollingword.com> ( alpha, Launching, without rollingAlgorithm shipped)

To make things simple, I have a simple philosophy ： Our brain is a distribute
network system just like DNS! so our memo brain have two parts 1\. Area like
Local DNS (8.8.8.8) , which is fast(fast CPU) but memo unit have TTL (time to
live). It just a cahce with small latency. 2\. Area like Authority DNS( Like
Router53) , slow CPU, Big database hard drive.It like computing strategy,
coding, Learning.

We can not remember a word because it is not in the Local DNS(maybe in the
Authority DNS area but it is a so slow CPU), or it is expired.

So our algorithm(calling rollingAlgorithm,which make word/cards rolling ) is
to copy a Local DNS ttl table by collecting user test feedback;

how to test?

first user can get a list of cards/words， , by rollingAlgorithm(based on
Actuarial Science, which used to calculate people life time).

the learning and reviewing is in a row. we show user a "pile" of card ,if user
hit his cache , user click "Learn",we say he remember the word , send back a
high score to rollingAlgorithm;

if cache missed,user click "fail", he will relearn the word and the word is
queued in the row and will come up again (if missed again,come up again),send
back a low score to rollingAlgorithm;

we collect user memo performance while they are learning!

we make your memory rolling, at best performance.

------
joezydeco
The Pimsleur language instruction CDs use a similar method of spaced
repetition. At least for me, it was incredibly effective.

~~~
rweba
What language(s) did you learn, how long have you been learning (them) and
what level of fluency have you reached?

I have been using the Pimsleur Spanish CDs for almost 6 months. I have made a
lot of progress (especially with vocabulary) but am still at a beginner level
(high beginner though, almost low intermediate).

~~~
clueless123
I learned basic Mandarin Chinese by using those CD's (Pimsleur) on the way to
work and back for a whole year.

I am still amazed of how "organic" was the learning.. I mean, after some time
I just started "understanding" more advanced conversations to the point that
even my chinese friends got startled.

Also, I have not used the CD's for over 3 years (or spend time in china) and I
still recall most of what I learned.

~~~
joezydeco
I think that's what stunned me the most about this type of learning is how
_deep_ the knowledge gets burned into your brain. It's not like cramming for
an exam or reading the language dictionary on the flight over.

------
kellishaver
Flashcards didn't work for my daughter at all. She just can't learn that way.

What we did for spelling and math facts was just to have her write each
word/fact in the list X number of times (usually 5) and then we would quiz her
on them. If she got them right, she was done. If she missed any, she would do
them another X times. The rest of the week, we would quiz her each day before
she started and she would only have to write the ones she got wrong. Usually
she had everything down by Tuesday or Wednesday and her motivation was the
progressively smaller amount of time she had to spend studying instead of
playing.

~~~
jerf
Did you something like what is described in the post, or did you just do "the
usual" with flashcards? (I have to admit I'm not confident you read the linked
post before commenting based on the word "flashcard".)

~~~
kellishaver
What we tried was a system very similar to what was described in the post that
yes, I did in fact read.

------
druiid
This made me think back to Wordsmith
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordsmith_%28TV_series%29>). It was the show
that got me from a young age thinking about how you break up and form words,
etc. To this day in my head from time to time I'll often play over words,
breaking them up and similar (as though getting a 'taste' for the word).

I wonder if perhaps this show might be of benefit as well to the son of the
submitter.

------
tokenadult
Ben, I didn't realize you had a child of just that age. Please allow me to
recommend to you and to other HN participants who surf by who are parents of
children learning to read the best--bar none--approach to initial reading
instruction in English for native speakers of English. It has worked for all
four of my children, including the three who spent significant parts of their
childhood in a mostly Chinese-speaking environment (reducing their exposure to
English speech and English printed materials). The book Let's Read, a
Linguistic Approach

<http://wsupress.wayne.edu/slp/bloomfieldlr.htm>

[http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-A-Linguistic-
Approach/dp/081...](http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-A-Linguistic-
Approach/dp/0814334555)

by Leonard Bloomfield (an eminent linguist and pioneer of new methods of
teaching hard-to-learn languages) and Clarence L. Barnhart (a lexicographer)
has now been revised by Cynthia A. Barnhart and Robert K. Barnhart (I presume
they are the original co-author's children). I used the first edition, and can
recommend it UNRESERVEDLY. The first edition appears to no longer be in print,
and some Amazon reviewers say they prefer the first edition, but the second
edition, currently available, surely is better than the great mass of school
materials used for English reading instruction. How I used the book is to set
a goal of somewhere between one lesson a day and six or seven pages a day, and
then read each lesson out loud to my child, with my child then reading the
lesson back to me, with adaptation earlier in the book to do the reading and
reading back a sentence at a time, and near the end of the book for the child
to read by himself or herself without me reading first. All my children are
strong readers who love to read. You'll find that this book, under
Bloomfield's pedagogical influence, makes good use of spaced repetition of the
key sound-symbol correspondences in Engish. But this is reading connected
text, rather than just looking at flash cards, and the stories are remarkably
interesting for their carefully graded vocabulary.

More details if you like. My main online involvement in the early 1990s was
discussion of optimal reading instruction approaches for United States
schools, but now I've discovered that mathematics education needs at least as
much help, and have shifted focus to that. But I could provide (old) links to
rationale for this approach if you like, and anyway an ounce of inexpensive
prevention is worth a pound of expensive cure when helping a child's initial
reading instruction prevents future reading and spelling difficulties. And
kudos to you for continuing to read aloud to your child as he learns to read.
Not reading to children beyond school age is one of the big missed
opportunities in many middle-class families.

Aside to other participants: I'm wondering how many people who have used flash
cards for foreign language learning have put their languages to the test in a
country where those languages are spoken. I have studied many languages (I
think there is a partial list in my user profile), and what I have observed
over and over is how each language maps reality in a different way, so that
ones rarely correspond one-to-one in the manner expected by flashcards. I much
preferred learning to read Chinese, for example, by using the excellent
Chinese Reader series by John DeFrancis

[http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Chinese-Reader-
Part/dp/03000...](http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Chinese-Reader-
Part/dp/0300020600/)

through which I first learned about Bloomfield's approach to foreign language
teaching. (DeFrancis was a student of Bloomfield's.)

~~~
asimeqi
I must add my experience with this wonderful book. My daughter is 5.3 years
old. She started with this book when she was 4.6 years old. Before that she
only knew the names of the letters. She is now at lesson 95 (out of more than
250) and she can read very well (she is reading books like Frog and Toad etc.)
I intend to finish the whole book before her sixth birthday by which time I am
sure she will be an excellent reader.

The way we work with the book is that I will read the first 2 or 3 words on
the page and then she tries to read the rest. I help when help is needed. In a
good day she can read about 95% of the text without any help. The reason for
this is because the text is organized in an excellent way. There is only one
new rule introduced in a lesson and the child can figure it out the from the
first few words and can take it from there. In fact I have found that quite
often when my daughter cannot read a word, it is because she has lost focus
and forgot how she read the words that came before. We go back a few words and
reread them and suddenly the new word that she could not read, now is easy.

One characteristic of this book that I haven't seen other people mention is
that the book is great for non-native speaker teachers like myself. Before I
started with this book I got another book that used the phonetics method. But
I couldn't start teaching my daughter with that book because I couldn't make
the phonetic sounds correctly myself. With Bloomfield's book there is no worry
for me because I do not need to make any sounds, just read a few words when my
daughter cannot read them.

------
siscia
I used to have the same problem... I was young, about 5th grade and all my
essay where horrible full of grammar error and I always got very bad grades on
those. Then I move in the Junior High / Middle school and I was still doing
very bad error, but the content of my essays was great so I was able to get
about 60-70% on my test even if, again, the content was above the average. It
was bad especially in Italian (my first language), where how you say a word is
exactly the same way in which you spell it, we don't even have idea of what a
spelling competition is, it just doesn't make sense. Then I move to high
school, in my first essay I didn't do any single grammar error, it was great,
no error at all.

I probably do have some problem especially with pronunciation, my parents used
to bring me to some kind of doctor who I remember I hated, in my mind words
were (and are) fine, but they just come out wrong out of my mouth, I ramble a
lot.

Some people say that my mind just work faster than my mouth so I can't keep up
with words and some of them come out wrong, obviously I can simply talk right
if I put a little of effort on it, but sometimes especially when I am talking
just because and other person are not suppose to care of what I am saying I
just ramble (yes, I talk with myself, ok ???)

People usually don't define me like a dumb person, and my ramble nowadays is a
problem only when I want it to be a problem...

I know that it is very hard to say, especially at a father, but kids most of
the time just need time, your son is not stupid I won't stress him with those
card, if you really want him to make some exercise ask him to keep a diary it
helps a LOT, and not only with spelling but also with construction of phrase
and syntax that is what really shape the mind of a person.

(NB Keep a diary is WAY HARDER than play with some cards, not because the
spelling or the syntax, but because is something hard to do, it takes more
effort, more time and he must be very determined doing that (I am not able to
as instance) but it will lead to better result, it will give your son a
wonderful memories especially for when he would be a teen or an adult, and it
will teach your son DETERMINATION that is the only thing can be teached in
order to make a successful person)

------
nemo1618
Not very relevant, but gee, wouldn't it be nice if spoken and written words
were isomorphic? Think of all the frustration we could spare children if every
time they heard a word, they could figure out exactly how to spell it. Once
they master the individual letters, spelling becomes all but trivial.

One can dream... <http://www.lojban.org>

~~~
asimeqi
Albanian, my mother tongue, is such a language. In first grade it took me all
of 4 months to learn how to read and write everything. But that didn't mean I
was reading everything. In fact I read my first book when I was in second
grade and was reading independently only in fourth grade. One needs to
practice reading to be able to read. Spelling also is not trivial. There is a
one to one correspondence between sounds and letters, yes, but before you can
write the word you need to figure out all the sounds that make up that word
and that is not trivial at all. Again from my experience, we were taking
dictations until second year of high schools and we were still making
mistakes. I think that grammar actually plays a more important role in writing
ability, at least when comparing Albanian and English. A verb in Albanian can
appear in more than 70 different forms depending on the tense and other
grammatical categories that I can't even translate, while a verb in English
can appear in a very limited number of forms. I think it is much easier in
English to remember by heart how to write those few forms than in Albanian to
figure out how to write each form by sounding it. Of course an Albanian can
predict how a verb should be written from the context (there are rules) but
that cannot be done before having studied Albanian grammar for a few years.

------
jerf
It seems to me that at grade two, by the time you had as much experience as
you describe in this post you ought to be blowing the doors off what is
actually expected for a grade 2 student in school already, so I was surprised
when the teacher suggested other things to be doing. Is he getting ahead now,
or just catching up?

~~~
btilly
On the material that I've been covering, he is blowing the doors off of what
is expected.

But that only applies to what I've been covering. For instance the word
"because" has not appeared on his spelling tests since I began, so is not in
the flashcard set. It turns out that he consistently misspells it and so there
is some unlearning to do there.

That is issue #2 in the list at the bottom.

~~~
jerf
Yes, it wasn't entirely clear to me what the ratio was, but I think I get it
now.

------
donniezazen
Post has been removed. Privacy?

~~~
btilly
I misclicked inside of blogger. Fixed. Sorry.

------
yakiv
Would it make more sense to say that his son is ahead in letter reversals?

------
Evbn
With no disrespect to the great man, just think "Em, jeff Barr is an Ass."
when you want to get embarrassed.

Have you tried breaking down words logically by linguistic origin to
supplement rote memorization drills?

~~~
btilly
The only two mnemonics that I've taught him are, _There are two too many ways
to spell 'tu'_ and _I before e except after c, or when says "a" as in neighbor
and weigh._ I know that lots of people use mnemonics, but I've personally
tended to find them more trouble than they are worth.

Until this week we hadn't encountered any facts that were sufficiently hard
that he had to break them down to successfully master them. It is clear that
he uses tricks acquired from one card to do another card. But I've not had to
tell him how to do that.

I should note that drills usually involve under 10 cards. We're not talking
about endless work. (In fact most of the work is reading to him. Which
stretches his vocabulary, and is also a learning exercise, but I won't tell
him that if you don't tell him that.)

~~~
DanBC
The i before e rule isn't much use. There are so many words that don't fit,
and so the rule gets expanded.

I before E. I before E, except after C. I before E, except after C or when the
sound is "a" as in neighbor and weigh.

It's a weird rule.

Off the top of my head: seize, eider, science, frequencies, vacancies,
fallacies, either, feisty, society. Etc etc.

~~~
gjm11
The form of the rule that I was told in school is: I before E, except after C,
when the sound is "ee". This (1) is pretty simple, (2) has rather few
exceptions, and (3) does correctly give the spelling of lots of words that
some people would otherwise find tricky.

Note that "except after C" means "ignore the rule in this case" rather than
"reverse the rule in this case". That is, it doesn't mean "E before I, after
C".

Of the 9 words on your list: 5 (science, frequencies, vacancies, fallacies,
society) are "after C" and therefore not covered by the rule; 2 (eider,
feisty) are never pronounced with an "ee" sound and therefore not covered by
the rule; 1 (either) is sometimes pronounced that way and sometimes not and
therefore a kinda-half-exception; 1 (seize) is a definite genuine exception.

There are a few other exceptions, but the rule in this form correctly fixes
the spelling of a whole lot of common words (a few examples: piece, frieze,
grief, believe, retrieve) that would be easy to get wrong without it.

