Let’s talk about studying with flash cards.
Flash cards can be a major help for those pesky, hard-to-remember, definitions and formulas. But, if you don’t use them right, flash cards can be almost useless.
In today’s blog we touch on what makes flash cards useful, and useless!
Studying with Flash Cards: Seems Easy Enough, So What’s the Problem?
At Professional Exam Tutoring, we’ve seen plenty of students that use flash cards. What may come as a surprise is that some use them and make virtually no progress.
Many people were taught to use flash cards. However, few were taught how to use them.
One major issue that we see with students that see little progress despite using flash cards is that they make, or study, flash cards for every definition of every subject. Sounds pretty thorough right?
Sure it does.
Thorough, but unnecessary. Hundreds and hundreds of flash cards will more likely overwhelm you, than help you.
Most people go into an exam already scoring somewhere in the 40% to 60% range. What does that mean for your flash cards?
Well what it implies is that you may not need about half of your flash cards. There is no sense in having a stack of 500 flash cards if you already know 250 of them.
Why does this matter?
For the majority of people it’s psychological. Just the thought of working through a stack of 500 flash cards is daunting. Whether it’s the CFA exam, Series 7 Exam, or the SIE Exam, many people will either procrastinate going through their flash cards when it’s a large stack, or avoid them altogether. We have seen some students that will still use them when the stack is this large, but mostly stick to the ones that they know.
Unfortunately, this does nothing to improve your knowledge.
Some FINRA exam can be quite difficult, and it’s the unfamiliar concepts that are the MOST important in your study journey.
Flash Cards: Try This
Since there are concepts that you need to know – which you currently don’t – you should focus on those, and only those.
Create a stack of flash cards with only concepts that you consistently get wrong on your practice exams (or that you always seem to forget).
Next, don’t pull out your stack of 200 cards every time you sit down to study.
Commit to studying new concepts but only 5 to 10 per day at the most!
Using this method will make studying your flash cards more digestible. You will only need a small sliver of your flash cards when you study this way. It will be much less intimidating, and will make it much more likely that you’ll follow through.
After about a week of going through 5 to 10 flash cards per day, take the ones that you reviewed that week and review them all again at the end of the week.
Reserve a two hour study period for this, and consider it a break from taking practice questions. This will help solidify them into your long term memory.
Practice questions are important, but knowing the material is more important.
If you put in the time, and you do it the right way, your flash cards can flip from useless to useful very quickly. Good luck!