How to learn from a course with flashcards

Read a section once

Read a section the way you would read a short article: once, for meaning, without a highlighter in hand. Trying to extract cards while reading splits your attention and produces cards about the page rather than about the subject.

A Miyu course section is deliberately short — a few paragraphs, a vocabulary table, a tip. Finishing one in a sitting is realistic, and finishing is what makes the next session easy to start.

The vocabulary tables are already organised for review: a term, its pronunciation, and a meaning. Languages also keep an example sentence with each entry, which is often more useful to memorise than the bare word.

If a section assumes something you have not met yet, finish the earlier step of the series and come back. The suggested order is a suggestion, not a gate.

Turn one line into one card

When a line deserves remembering, select it and make the card. One line, one fact. If the line contains three facts, make three cards later; a card you can answer in five seconds is a card you will keep answering.

Keep the phrasing you selected. It carries the context you were reading in, which is exactly what makes the card recognisable six weeks later.

Do not transcribe the whole section. A course of three sections should produce a handful of cards, not thirty. The reading did the teaching; the cards only keep the parts you chose to keep.

Keep the selection short enough that the answer is one idea. If the selected text runs to two sentences, cut it in half; the second half can become its own card later.

Add the premade deck

Many courses ship with a premade deck. Add it if you want a baseline the course author already vetted; skip it if you prefer to build your own. Adding it twice does not duplicate anything, and the deck lives beside your other decks rather than inside the course.

A reasonable split: use the premade deck for vocabulary you have no opinion about, and your own cards for the ideas you want phrased your way.

The deck is optional in the strong sense. Nothing in the course reading or the section progress depends on it, so you can add it in week three when the reading alone stops being enough.

Premade decks are ordinary decks: they appear in your deck list, follow your presets, and can be deleted like any other deck.

Study the deck, then the course

Review the deck before returning to the course. The cards keep the earlier material alive while you read forward, so the next section builds on something you still remember.

The course tracks how many sections you have completed. That counter is a map, not a score; going back to an earlier section is allowed and often useful.

When a card from the deck feels trivial, delete it. A deck that only contains things you still need is a shorter deck, and a shorter deck is one you will actually open.

A card you keep failing is information, not a verdict. Rewrite it smaller, or add the missing context, rather than grinding the same wording for another week.

Finish the section

End the session by finishing the section you started, even if the cards are not all made. A finished section is a clean stopping point, and clean stopping points are what make you come back.

Then stop. The next section will still be there, and the queue will be shorter than it was yesterday.

A course is a reading list with a schedule attached, not a test. Finishing slowly is still finishing, and the numbered series will wait for you in the order it was written.

Mark the next section before you close the app. Knowing where you stopped removes tomorrow’s first decision, and the first decision is the expensive one.