In many ways, test prep has gone high-tech. There are practice tests online, apps to help you review vocabulary, and digital descriptions of the best way to study for each section. And yet, one of the most powerful ways to prepare for standardized tests is the same one that was probably used by your grandparents–flashcards.
Why Flashcards?
Physical flashcards offer a number of advantages that digital test prep has struggled to match. First, preparing them in and of itself is a useful exercise, giving you a chance to mentally overview the material you’re going to study by forcing your brain to focus for at least a moment on each individual concept or word you’re hoping to memorize. Â
Second, flashcards lend themselves naturally to long-term learning strategies such as breaking up the material into smaller sections and allowing opportunities to review already-studied information.
Third, flashcards are eminently portable, making them convenient to incorporate test prep into a busy schedule. Kept in a small baggie or even on a ring, flashcards can be easily tossed in a backpack or purse for easy access during bits of downtime throughout the day. Even a couple minutes between classes or while waiting for a ride is often enough to do a quick run through of whatever stack you’re currently working on.
Finally, the very fact that flashcards aren’t digital actually offers certain advantages. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of looking for something in a book or magazine and found yourself saying, “I don’t know what page it’s on, but I know it’s in the upper right hand corner…”  In a similar way, physically handling the cards and observing the spatial positioning of the information on the card can help make information easier to remember. Â
What Should You Put on Flashcards?
Almost anything that you can put in a list lends itself well to flashcards. The most obvious application when it comes to the SAT is vocabulary. Even though the new SAT has made an effort to get away from unnecessarily esoteric words, vocabulary continues to be an important component of the overall test. And with an increasingly significant portion of the test now being passage-based, the stronger your word power the better off you are. To help you focus on the most important words, Curvebreakers provides a list of 150 high-frequency words, and flashcards are an excellent way to learn them.
Besides traditional vocabulary, flashcards can also be helpful for other aspects of test prep. A stack of cards with math vocabulary or basic formulas could be a powerful way to review key concepts. Grammar rules or punctuation examples could also be readily reviewed using flashcards.
Flashcard Strategies
It’s not enough to simply have lots of lovely stacks of flashcards taking up room in your bag. To leverage their full test prep potential, it’s important to practice with them regularly. Here are some strategies that can help:
Identify what you already know
Begin by going through the entire stack of cards, separating them into two piles: cards you know and cards you don’t. Only move cards into the “Know” pile if you can provide a correct definition with confidence almost immediately. In general, if you can’t define a word in 2-3 seconds, you don’t know it. And if you can’t use it in a sentence, you also don’t know it and should continue to review it.
Work with small stacks
Once you’ve identified the cards you still need to learn, separate them into smaller stacks. Focus on learning just that smaller group of words or concepts until you can define them with ease. Â
Review frequently
Each time you’ve mastered a small stack, make it a point to go back through your entire stack of cards to review what you have previously learned. If any of the cards are giving you trouble, move them back over to your “Learn” pile. Â
Repeat repeat repeat
Flashcards are a memorization aid, and most of the time what we memorize is initially stored only in short-term memory  It’s important to review the material enough different times on enough different days, and preferably in enough different settings, to cement the information in long-term memory.
While flashcards may seem like an archaic way to learn material in the 21st century, they represent a tried-and-true test prep tactic. Â Coupled with regular practice tests, flashcards are one of the surest ways to increase your score as well as strengthen your real-life knowledge base. Â