Vocabulary Study Cards

After deciding that I should probably try a little harder to remember some vocabulary words, I headed off to my local Office Max store in search of something to make them from. Originally, I planned to use business cards, print them and separate them. But that really wasn't the best idea since I do need to practice writing in Japanese. So I looked for index cards instead. I couldn't find them anywhere.

But, in a display marked "pens and highlighters," I found some Vocabulary Study Cards by Oxford. They were about $2.50 per pack of 100. This is what they look like:

Each pack has 20 each of blue, purple, green, red and orange cards. The picture above is what the front of the card looks like. The pic below is of the back.

Sure, I could have done the same thing with plain, cheap index cards, but they wouldn't have the pretty colored borders. And they wouldn't look as neat and well-organized sitting on my desk collecting dust when I get frustrated with them.

I like that the box on the front has enough space to write an individual kanji, a word, or even a phrase in Japanese. I can add the kanji readings, or definitions in English on the back for my helper (also known as any poor soul who wanders past me while I'm studying), and I have a designated area for including a sample sentence, something which I think is very important. For verbs, I might add conjugations on the back, or maybe I'll make a separate set of cards for that. I considered color coding different parts of speech, but I won't for two reasons: 1) I'm trying hard not to be such an overachiever because it makes me very, very tired, and 2) I don't want any clues as to the meaning of the words as I look at the fronts of the cards.

So my task now is to transcribe all of the words I want to learn onto the cards. I'm not using the cards for kanji right now since I have the flash card set from White Rabbit and they are serving me quite well. I bought 800 of these blanks, which coincidentally is the estimated number of vocabulary words that I need for JLPT 4 in December. I'm confident that the simple act of writing out these cards will add at least a few words to my repertoire. Wish me luck!