Word Cards
A word card shows you, well, a word. There are word cards in two directions:
French-to-English words
An French-to-English card shows you a French word, and lets you translate it.
These cards train your passive vocabulary. You learn to understand French words, but you might not yet use them actively.
Many cards show you more than one translation, because for many words, there is more than one.
However, you do not need to know all the translations. If you are able to think of one of the first translations, then you can treat this card as "learned". We get into more details about this later.
English-to-French words
An English-to-French card shows you an English word, and lets you translate it into French.
These cards train your active vocabulary. You start to actively search for French words, and use them.
Does every word card exist in both direction?
When a user learns the French-to-English card "le table" - "the table", they frequently ask whether this card also exists as "the table" - "le table".
The answer is mostly yes. Most word cards have their direct counterpart, which show the same words, but in the reverse direction. There are however a few caveats:
- Most words have more than one valid translation. For example, "the table" can be translated to "le table", but also to "la tableau".
- The same is true for the other direction. "le table" can be translated to "the table", but "the table" might be a valid translation too.
Just French offers cards for all words:
- the table ==> le table, la tableau
- le table ==> the table, the chart
- la tableau ==> the table
- etc.
As you can see, the cards exist "in both directions", but most of the time, there is more than one card in the other direction.
If you progress through a word course, you will get cards in both directions. This allows you to train both your active and passive vocabularies.