Today’s topic: setting up a practical weekly schedule for learning with language card games and other card games that we can adapt to achieve our goals.
First off, I recommend that we prepare some cards at the beginning of the week that we can use throughout the week. As we know, our willpower is a finite resource, so sometimes during any given day the fact that we would have to make some new cards might slow us down, but if they’ve already been made in advance, there’s no reason to not start studying. So on Sunday, consider making enough new flashcards that you’ll have some to put into your Leitner Box every day of the week. We’ll be talking about what a Leitner Box is later in the series and I’ll also link out to that here if you’re interested.
We can also take time at the beginning of the week to make pairs of cards that we could use for the game Concentration during the week. Concentration is the game where you try to remember the location of two matching cards, flip them over, and take them. The player with the most pairs at the end wins.
Then, I recommend we save those new cards we’ve made for our Leitner Box and Concentration (at least until tomorrow) but even better, string them out across the week so you have something to look forward to. If you have some new, interesting cards made for yourself, but you haven’t studied them yet, that can help motivate you to begin the next day and build some excitement.
Now, the Leitner Box is something we’ll do every day, but what else can we do?
On Monday, and maybe another couple days in the week, we can do Concentration.
On Tuesday, we can try to play a card game we already know, using only our target language along the way, not our native language. This helps because we already know how to play the game; the difficult part is speaking only in our target language during the game. And that might take a little preparation to learn some key card-playing vocabulary in our target language, but those will be super essential weapons in our arsenal as cardlangers anyway moving forward.
On Wednesday, I recommend you try to find a card game from the country or culture whose native language you are studying. I believe you can find video tutorials of this online and, of course, videos of native people/speakers of your target language playing the game. It’s amazing what you can learn about a language by what people say when they play games, isn’t it? There are certain phrases and mannerisms you will learn there that you can’t learn anywhere else.
On Thursday, we can try practicing the Mind Palace with a select number of cards, including, maybe, a level of our Leitner Box for that day. I won’t explain the Mind Palace in detail here, but basically we draw a card and try to associate it with a room in our house and memorize it in that way. We could also place a card in each room of our house in a twist that I call the Card Palace, as we physically walk around and try to remember which card is in which place. If we have a flashcard that said ‘apple’ for instance, we could place that card in the kitchen mentally or physically.
Friday night I would reserve to play some of the most popular trading card games in the world, using foreign language cards. These could be games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh! And it would be helpful to have English versions of the cards available as well, or at least a way to look them up online while playing. Another great idea would be to see if you could do a video call with someone who could play those games with you in the target language you’re studying.
Last, on Saturday, I would play card games designed specifically for language-learning. There are advanced games like Othertongue and Chinese Champions, as well as games more suitable for beginners or casual gamers like Fighting Flashcards, Japanese: The Game, or Kloo.
I hope this helps gives you some fresh insights for how to incorporate language card games into your daily routines. Feel free to pick out what might work for you and experiment with where to insert it into your schedule. If you have any questions or comments related to a weekly language card game schedule, I’d be happy to hash out the details in the comments section with you!
Alright that’s it for this episode. Don’t forget to like and subscribe so that you and other likeminded people can find your way back to my latest and greatest content. You can also head over to the Language Card Games’ Shop to buy a game, support what I do, and start playing your way to language-learning success today.
In the next post, I will outline some of the disadvantages of language card games and what we can do to curb them.
