They do and they don&#x27;t. Flashcards and SRS are great for very discrete bits of information. They&#x27;re a pretty good for things like getting a faster start with the most commonly used 500 nouns, remembering verb tables or memorizing Chinese characters.<p>They&#x27;re pretty bad for language acquisition in general, though. They chop the language into decontextualized bits. Time spent doing vocab flashcards is time not spent learning how words fit together. Time spent on sentence flashcards is time not spent reading books and absorbing cultural stories and background.<p>tldr; use flashcards to drill the basic phonics &#x2F; alphabet of a language and maybe the most common words at the beginning and then focus on extensive reading + listening and having conversations with actual people about what you&#x27;re learning.<p>I&#x27;ve recorded a video about this topic before: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;toshuo.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;spaced-repetition-systems-explained-in-2-minutes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;toshuo.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;spaced-repetition-systems-explained-i...</a>