> Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak This isn't actually a settled matter. I did a literature div

> Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak This isn't actually a settled matter. I did a literature dive a while back and found that drilling vocabulary flashcards shows the highest benefit on artificial recall tasks (like multiple choice tests), and over relatively short time scales (days to weeks). Studies that looked at longer time scales (months to years) and more organic tasks generally showed mixed results. Which I generally interpret as a sign that the literature in question is highly susceptible to the file drawer effect. And that in turn suggests that the magnitude of flashcarding's value for this kind of thing has a lot to do with your goals. In a nutshell, are you more interested on the science on how to develop communicative proficiency over the long run, or are you more interested on the science on how to get a good grade in class? I'm studying Chinese right now, and I do use flashcards, but it's not because I believe it's the best way, per se. It's because it's a convenient option for reviewing characters and words that don't appear often in the reading material I have. When they do appear often in my reading material, I find (anecdotally) that it takes a lot fewer organic repetitions to get the character or word to stick in my head than it does with flashcard repetitions. It's also worth mentioning there's no particular reason to assume Chinese and Japanese schools are any less likely than schools elsewhere in the world to cling to inefficient pedagogical techniques out of a sense of tradition. So one can't necessarily assume that the way they are doing it is the way they ought to be doing it.