You should know by now that using pictures to learn vocabulary is far better than the translation method because it builds direct connections in the brain and improves memory, so every flashcard you make ought to have a picture. Now, that’s easy if the word is “ball”, but it can be quite a challenge with some other words. Let’s find some answers and figure out how to make Anki flashcards for difficult English vocabulary by looking at examples.
Note: the ideas in this article are for both Anki flashcards and any other type of flashcard you want to make!
Making flashcards is not a simple trick, and that can be seen by the vast majority of flashcards being low quality. I don’t recommend that students download and use other people’s flashcard decks on Anki anymore, because I’ve seen with time that they don’t work very well in the long run. You have to make your own cards for your own memory if you are serious about learning English.
Is it possible to represent abstract things with pictures? There are people around the world whose job it is to represent abstract things in the form of pictures. So that means, yes, it is! They do it every day. All it takes is a bit of creative and hard work. We can benefit from it because they share their images with the world!
Finding Pictures for Anki Flashcards
To find the right picture, first try searching for the word online. I recommend using an English search engine when looking for English words, such as Bing or Google. If that doesn’t work, think about what comes to mind for you when you imagine the word. Take a look at a few examples:
Sometimes it’s not so easy, and we have to look deeper in ourselves to find a concept. Let’s say you want to represent “debt”. If you search online, you’ll find lots of images like this:
But these don’t really help because the answer is in the pictures, and if you take the word away, it could mean a whole lot of different things. So by thinking deeper, you might think of credit card debt, the most common for most people, and when searching for that, you could find this picture:
The message is clear, it’s not just about the credit cards and it’s not just about being broke, it’s about the fact that he has no money, but he still can buy things. That is what debt is.
Now, if you still can’t find the right picture, you have to move on to the next method of how to make Anki flashcards for difficult English vocabulary.
Modifying Pictures for Anki Flashcards
Sometimes, we just can’t find the right picture. Let’s say you are thinking of the “heavy”. If you get a picture of something that comes to mind that is heavy, you might get a picture like this:
But the problem is, this is an elephant. So when you see this card in a few months, you might think of the word “elephant” instead of “heavy”, so now you have to think of the concept of heavy and how we show that concept. The next step of your thinking should be a scale. You could get a balance with one side being heavy and the other light, like this:
Or you could get a scale like this:
The problem with these is, for this first, you might think of the word “balance” or better yet “off balance” or you might not know if you should say “heavy” or “light” and with the second, you might want to say the word “scale” or “light” because it’s at zero. For this flashcard, you’ll have to modify the pictures.
Ask yourself the question, “How can I show ‘heavy’ and not any other thing?” You might be tempted to have a fat man on a scale next to a skinny man on a scale and point at the fat man. The problem here is that the word that will come to mind is “fat”, and not necessarily heavy. So we have to add details to the image. Let’s fix both of them and you’ll see what I mean.
Not only can you modify a picture, you can also put pictures together. I wanted to show the concept of “transform“, and so I took two pictures, the before and after of a butterfly, add an arrow, and the concept is perfectly clear:
A similar example is “recover (health)”:
What about something relatively simple, like “father”? You’d be surprised how hard it is to get a picture for father, because you have to illustrate the relationship of the man with the children. If you just have a picture of a man, you’d think “man”, and if you just have a picture of a family, you’d think “family”, so you can circle the father, point at the father, or something similar, like what I did here:
For the word “scratch”, I found that putting together multiple pictures of animals scratching their itches made the meaning clear, whereas just one animal scratching itself didn’t make me think of “scratch”:
For the phrase “get well soon”, I had to find a picture of someone at a sick person’s bedside. All I had to do was add a speech bubble, and that made it clear we are looking for what a healthy person would tell a sick person:
Is a simple edit not enough? Still not sure how to make Anki flashcards for difficult English vocabulary? Time for more serious editing.
Making Your Own Pictures for Anki Flashcards
Don’t underestimate your creative power! You have the ability to represent things yourself, too, if you think carefully and work hard. You have to put on your thinking cap when you can’t find the perfect picture and you can’t even find one that’s close.
For an example of how to make one, let’s take the word “lend”. To illustrate lend, you have to make it clear that it isn’t “give”, “take”, or “buy”. It has to be clear that it is temporary and ownership isn’t given. To illustrate this, I made my own picture of me lending one of my tools to my son.
It’s obvious that he isn’t buying it, and it’s obvious it isn’t a gift because I am keeping my set of tools, and I added an arrow to clarify that I am giving it and it wasn’t just given to me. I paired this with the opposite meaning, “return”, by switching the arrow and having my son give it back:
You can make pictures like this quite easily once you get in the habit and practice. You’ll get better and better as you learn what types of picture help you remember more. Just remember, if you don’t start, you’ll never take control of your English learning!
And don’t be afraid of a simple drawing. Finding a picture of “civilian” is almost impossible. It is “person”? Is it “citizen”? Is it “bystander”? You just can’t find a good picture for it, so a simple drawing with a police officer, civilian, and soldier was enough to make the meaning clear:
Let’s get to something more advanced, for those of you who want to go to the next level and be language learning masters. Some concepts are complex and very difficult to show, and we need more context to show them.
A really tough word in Chinese is “学渣”, which means a student who and does poorly and doesn’t care about their studies. I had to really reinvent a picture of parents yelling at their son by adding a speech bubble and his grades:
Do you know the grammar structure, “Just because… doesn’t mean…”? To illustrate it, we have to show that there is an inadequate reason that someone wants to do something, and we have to show that it isn’t right. What came to my mind was cursing when you are angry, “Just because you are angry doesn’t mean you can curse.”
I started with the picture of an angry cat. The thinking cloud shows what’s going on inside the cat’s head, “I’m angry, so swearing is OK,” and the hand is showing that it isn’t OK. You can almost hear the hand who is shaking it’s finger at the cat saying “Uh-uh!” While you are making this picture, you will engrain in your mind the concept, and it will be so memorable, that it will always easily come to mind when you review it.
By the way, as you can see, GIFs are sometimes the answer to your problems. You can search for them or make your own easily with an online GIF maker. Another example of a GIF I had to make was for the verb “correct”:
Picture Editing Programs
You might be thinking, “I don’t know how to make or modify pictures!” Well, you’ll find it’s actually quite easy with some programs you already have on your computer or phone. Most phones nowadays let you draw and add stickers like speech bubbles and arrows and even text. That’s how I did the last picture, completely on my phone. You can also use Microsoft PowerPoint, because it has really good image editing tools and lets you work with lots of pictures at once, adding and removing from them. You could also use Paint, the simplest place to get started, though the tools are limited, which comes on every PC.
Final Remarks
Every word in the English language can be illustrated, because words come from real life experiences, even abstract words are based on concrete experience. If you are willing to work hard at illustrating them, or finding pictures that illustrate them, and add them to your flashcards, you will make significant improvements in your English vocabulary. If you still aren’t sure how to make Anki flashcards for difficult English vocabulary, or maybe there are some specific words you are struggling with, contact us and we can help!
Don’t rely on other people’s flashcards when they don’t work, don’t settle for something that isn’t good enough, don’t be afraid to try and improve your picture editing skills, and don’t give up too soon. Your brain will thank you as you see your English grow like a tree!