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When teaching teenagers and adults, teachers have to be careful not to accidentally be demeaning by using children's learning tools, because this can embarrass and discourage students. This, however, does not discredit the use of flashcards with teen and adult learners. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite. This essay will discuss a few fun and engaging ways to use flashcards with older learners that are age and language level appropriate. The first, and my favorite, possibility for flashcard usage is to pair students together with flashcards that have short interview questions and ask them to use them to hold short conversations. This was a method I used when I tutored at a Japanese cram school, and I really noticed a difference in how my class interacted with one another in other speaking and listening activities. Because this method includes reading, listening and language production, it engages the students' productive and receptive skills, and allows the students to get to know one another. This helps build confidence for future real-life language exchange with other English speakers. The second use for flashcards is to have pictures on the cards, but instead of asking them to identify the photos, have them produce a single-sentence story using the word. While the use of photo-based flashcards may seem a little childish, It combines rapidfire identification skills with the ability to produce language skills from current or previous lessons, so it once again engages both the productive and receptive skills. In this case, however, it allows the teacher to observe the level of language the students are producing and assess how well students are retaining new grammar structures and vocabulary. A downfall to this method, though, is that the speed at which flashcards are typically used may not give students enough time to think about what they want to say. This method is definitely a fluency exercise, not an accuracy exercise. Finally, Flashcards can be a useful tool for students' personal use. I am a foreign language learner; my minor in university was Japanese Language. While I was studying Japanese as an adult learner, my teacher encouraged us to make flashcards for our vocabulary words, and from my personal experience, this was a really effective learning tool. Because the material on the flashcards was chosen by me, based on what I struggled with or what I felt was important to remember, I felt like my education was personalized to me. It was an important tool because, where a textbook would have been bulky and awkward, I could take my flashcards wherever I went and study at any time. They weren’t embarrassing, because only I was privy to what information was included and how it was represented, be it pictures, definitions, or wordplay to help me remember. To recap, flashcards can be very useful tools for teen and adult language learners. Among many other uses, they can provide real-time language exchange, allow the teacher to assess the absorption of previous or current lessons’ materials, and allow students to personalize and mobilize their educations for their own needs.
