How should I use flashcards for GCSE revision?

Say the answer before you turn the card

A flashcard is a question you answer from memory. Turning it over is not the revision; the few seconds of trying to remember are. So answer every card properly before you look - say it out loud or write it on scrap paper - and only then turn the card over. Turn first and the answer on the back looks familiar, and familiar feels like known.

Answering in your head is fine for something short, like a date or a single word. For anything longer, such as a definition or the steps of a process, give the whole answer. In a study of key-term definitions, students who gave each answer in full before checking it remembered more two days later than students who only thought of the answer.

Mark yourself strictly

Self-marking is where most flashcard revision quietly goes wrong. When US middle-school students, about the age of Years 7 to 9, marked their own definitions in one study, they gave themselves full or partial credit for 73% of the answers that were completely wrong. Showing them the correct definition while they marked brought that down, but only to 44%.

So mark against the points on the back, one at a time. If the card says "partially permeable membrane" and you said "a membrane", that is a miss and the card goes back in the pile. It feels harsh. It is also the only marking that tells you the truth before the exam does.

One card, one thing to remember

Keep each card to one thing you can mark right or wrong. A card asking for "everything about Lady Macbeth" is a page of notes; a card asking "Which line shows Lady Macbeth calling on spirits to make her cruel?" is a flashcard. Write the front as a question rather than a heading, because a heading only asks you to recognise a word.

Some cards are worth making both ways round. For a definition, one card asks "What is osmosis?" and another describes the process and asks for the word, because the exam can come at it from either side. Quotes work the same way: one card gives a theme and asks for the quote, the other gives the quote and asks what it shows.

Ready-made cards save hours, as long as they are accurate and match your exam board. Writing your own cards helps when you put the idea in your own words; copying sentences across gives you no advantage over a ready-made card. A sensible mix: start from a deck written to your specification, and rewrite in your own words the cards you keep missing.

Keep a card until you really know it

The urge, once you get a card right, is to put it aside. Not yet. In a well-known experiment, students who kept testing themselves on words they had already got right remembered about 80% of them a week later. Students who dropped each word after one correct answer remembered about a third.

A good rule for GCSE is to keep a card in play until you have got it right on three different days, then let it come round less often instead of retiring it. It is close to what researchers recommend after testing it with students: get each item right three times in your first session, then come back to it in three more sessions spread well apart. Those later sessions made a big difference to how much was remembered, for little extra time.

Use one big pile, not lots of small ones

Splitting a topic into small piles and mastering each one before moving on feels efficient. It is the slower way. In one experiment with university students, words studied as one big pile were remembered 54% of the time on a later test, against 21% for words studied in four small piles. After their first session, nearly three-quarters of the students believed the small piles had worked better, which may be why so many people still use them.

The big pile works because each card comes round after a longer gap, so you have to work harder to dig the answer out, and that effort is what makes it stick. Shuffle the pile every time, so the order cannot give the answers away.

How often should I go through my flashcards?

Come back to a pile after a gap - the next day, then a few days later, then after a week or so - and leave longer gaps for the cards you know well. The nearer the exam, the shorter the gaps can be. A large study of spacing found that gaps which are too short cost far more than gaps which are a little too long, so when you are unsure, wait the extra day.

You do not need an app to keep track. The Leitner system does it with five boxes or envelopes: a card you get right moves up a box and comes round less often, and a card you miss goes back to the start. If you would rather see the dates worked out, the spaced repetition planner shows when each review falls before your exams.

What should I put on my flashcards?

Flashcards suit anything with a fixed answer the exam can ask for directly. Here is what earns a card in each subject, with the free deck we have written for each one.

Where flashcards stop helping

Flashcards are for the facts. They will not teach you to solve a multi-step maths problem, plan a six-mark answer or write an essay, and research on quizzing finds that practising the exact facts does little for harder questions that use those facts in a new way. So count a topic as done when you can answer exam questions on it, not when you can get through the pile.

The best order is cards first, then questions: get the facts in, then use them. When a question shows up a fact you did not have, make a card for it.