The debate over Flashcards

It seems I've converted Brendan from Peeling Mandarin into a flashcard user. You can see what he had to say here and here.

Ken from ChinesePod who seems to be against the use of flash cards, picked up on Brendans post and started a heated discussion here and here.

I thought I would say one more thing about this subject and that is, Don't over do the use of flashcards. When I first started using jMemorize I was doing at least an hour a day of this stuff and believe me it can get very monotonous after a while. It's very important to keep a balance between a few different methods so that the learning stays interesting. You don't need to look far to see that the majority of people who start to learn Mandarin give up before they get very far at all, and I would guess that boredom with the learning process plays a large part in why.

On the other hand I am sure that I would not be able to learn as much as I have without flashcards. They are an extremely effective method of memorizing material. I make sure that even if I don't get time to do any other study, I always do some flashcards every single day.