Monthly Archives: May 2010

Language Learning Toolkit: Flash Cards

As a person learning Euskara online and far away from the Basque Country, I realised early on that I would need to take extra measures to help make the learning process easier and more effective. This is where the Language Learning Toolkit comes in. The Language Learning Toolkit consists of anything and everything I can find that will help me: learn vocabulary words, understand grammatical concepts, fine tune pronunciation, sharpen reading and comprehension skills, etc.

The first tool in the Language Learning Toolkit that I want to discuss are: FLASH CARDS.

Since Euskara is a language isolate, it is a given that a majority of the words used will not have any similarity with another language. There are some exceptions though. For example: merkatu is a cognate of the Spanish mercado as well as the English market, making it quite easy to remember. However, most of the words I have encountered so far in Euskara are completely different from its counterpart in English or Spanish. For example: zuhaitz is very different from its Spanish counterpart: árbol and its English counterpart: tree.

This is where flash cards come in handy. Whenever I encounter new words or whenever I am given a new vocabulary list (in the BOGA program, a new list is given every session and in Bakarka, a new list comes in every chapter) I immediately create flashcards for them with the English and Spanish translations at the back. Sometimes, I also end up including a little drawing to give myself a visual aid to further cement the word and its meaning in my brain.

So, here’s a detailed step-by-step guide on how I made my flashcards. I create all of my flashcards uniformly as I’ve found that this particular way of doing it makes it easier to do a quick study whenever I can.

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