Where do our flashcards come from?

Five rules every card follows

1. It’s on the syllabus. Every card is checked against the official specification.
2. It has come up in a past paper. Each card is tied to the exam questions that asked it.
3. Students sitting the subject say it matters. We asked them what’s worth learning.
4. New-course content is in the new specification and stressed in the new textbook. Both, not one.
5. One thing per card. Lists get bullet points, steps get numbers.

The figure shows the first three checks. Facts meet them one after another, and a fact that fails any of them drops out. Only the facts that pass all three become cards.

Biology, Chemistry, Physics · Step 1

We went through every paper, one question at a time

We took every Higher Level paper we have, with its marking scheme: 1,750 exam questions across the three sciences, going back to 2002. For each one we:

1. split the question into its parts: (a), (b), (c) and so on,
2. read each part with its marking scheme, and
3. decided: it becomes a card, or it’s left out with the reason written down.

Nothing was skipped for looking familiar. So nothing the exam has asked is missing, and nothing is on a card just because a textbook mentions it. In the figure, each part of the paper is read in turn and becomes a card (blue) or is set aside (dashed).

Biology, Chemistry, Physics · Step 2

A question asked 16 times is one card

The same things come up year after year. “Define electronegativity” is on 16 Chemistry papers, from 2003 to 2026. That’s one card, not 16, with all 16 questions kept behind it.

• You learn it once.
• You can see every year it was asked, with the marking scheme.
• A card with many questions behind it is one the exam keeps coming back to.

Asked a different way? Still one card, as long as the answer is the same. In the figure, questions from different papers fly into one card, and each leaves a dot under it.

Biology, Chemistry, Physics · Step 3

What you work out stays on the paper

Flashcards are for what you have to remember. So these don’t become cards:

• calculations
• anything printed in the Formulae and Tables booklet
• step-by-step experiment methods
• drawing diagrams and reading graphs

You get better at those by doing past questions. Leaving them out keeps your decks to the facts that earn marks. In the figure, facts go up into the deck; calculations, tables, methods and drawings go down to the past papers.

Biology, Chemistry, Physics · Step 4

The new course: only what’s really new

Biology, Chemistry and Physics have new specifications from September 2025. Some of what they add has never been on a paper, so there are no past questions to check it against. A new fact became a card only if:

1. the new specification names it,
2. the old syllabus didn’t have it, and
3. the new textbook stresses it, with a heading, a key term or bold type.

That added 163 Biology cards, 31 Chemistry and 19 Physics. They have no past questions behind them, and don’t pretend to. In the figure, only the facts inside both the specification and the book, and outside the old syllabus, become cards.

Subject by subject

Biology

1,470 cards, made from 528 exam questions from 2004 to 2024, plus the new-course cards. Every card links to the learning outcome it covers in the specification.

Copied onto a card, you’d be learning a false sentence, and a true-or-false guess is right half the time anyway. So the card asks for the fact itself. The same card covers questions from 2006, 2008 and 2022 that ask it other ways. In the figure, the impulse first runs the wrong way and is crossed out, then runs the right way, out to the muscle, and that’s what goes on the card.

Chemistry

773 cards, made from 624 exam questions across 27 papers, 2002 to 2026. Answers use the marking scheme’s words wherever they’re clear.

Without the diagram, “solid X” means nothing. The card asks for the fact the question was testing, and nine questions between 2004 and 2022 needed it. Experiments have their own decks, 32 of them, with the reagents, results and reasons you need, not the method steps. In the figure, the apparatus runs, the solid is picked out, and only the solid goes on the card.

Physics

548 cards, made from 598 exam questions across 27 papers, 2002 to 2026. Then every answer was checked against the textbook, Real World Physics, and any card that neither the book nor the specification backs up was removed.

Balancing the equation is something you work out on the day. What you have to remember is what came out. In the figure, a proton splits a lithium nucleus into two alpha particles; the equation’s left side is given, and the two alpha particles are what go on the card.

French, German, Spanish · Step 1

We wrote down every word in every listening paper

For each language we took every Higher Level listening exam we have, 20 to 23 papers going back to 2006, and wrote down every word spoken, with the second it’s said. German alone is 28,318 words.

• Names, numbers and dates are set aside.
• Little words like “the” and “in” are learned inside phrases, not on their own.
• Everything else becomes a card.

In the figure, words come off the recording as it plays. The dashed ones (a name, a number) are set aside.

French, German, Spanish · Step 2

We counted every word, then put the most common first

Then we counted how often each word comes up. In French, quand (when) is heard 78 times, in 22 of the 23 papers. Très (very) is heard 74 times.

French cards come in that order, most common first. So the first words you learn are the ones you’re most likely to hear, and each card shows how often it came up. In the figure, each bar is a word: the bars grow as the words are counted, then line up tallest first, and the tallest become your first cards.

French, German, Spanish · Step 3

Every form of a word counts toward one card

Words change shape. The French verb pouvoir (to be able to) is heard 73 times in 14 different forms: peut, peux, pourrait, pu and more.

• All 14 count toward one card, pouvoir.
• You learn the word once, and know it in any form.
• A word heard in two papers is still one card, with both sentences behind it.

In the figure, forms of the same word (the same mark) gather into one card, and another word’s forms into another.

French, German, Spanish · Step 4

Some words are only learned together

En avoir marre de means “to be fed up with”. Learned word by word, it makes no sense. So it’s one card, and you learn the phrase as a whole.

For every word we decided: a card on its own, or part of a phrase? If the words mean something different together, they stay together. Every card also gets one meaning, the one it has in the exam, and the real sentence it was heard in, with its recording.

In the figure, three words on their own point to three meanings that don’t fit. Joined, they point to one that does.

Subject by subject

French

2,769 cards in three decks, one for each part of the exam:

• Listening vocabulary: 2,169 words and phrases from 23 listening papers, 2006 to 2026.
• 1,000 common comprehension words: the most frequent words in the reading passages of 33 papers, 1996 to 2026.
• Key comprehension question phrases: the 99 phrases the questions themselves use, so you always know what you’re asked.

In the figure, the recordings, the reading passages and the questions each fill their own deck.

German

2,823 cards from 20 listening papers, 2008 to 2026, including 148 phrases. Every one of the 28,318 words spoken is on a card or set aside with a reason.

German verbs often split in two, with the second half at the end of the sentence: rufe … an. We join them back. The card is anrufen (to phone), heard in 13 of the 20 papers, in forms like rufe … an, angerufen and anzurufen. In the figure, the two halves light up, leave the sentence and join into one card, and the verb’s other forms follow.

Spanish

2,449 cards from 20 listening papers, 2008 to 2026, including 215 phrases. Every one of the 21,409 words spoken is on a card or set aside with a reason.

One word can mean two things. El tiempo is both time and weather. Counting alone would lump them together, so we read every sentence it’s in and made two cards:

• el tiempo (duración): time
• el tiempo (meteorología): weather

In the figure, the same word appears in two sentences, one about a clock and one about the sky, and splits into two cards.

See where any card came from

You don’t have to take our word for any of this. Every science card links back to the exam questions it came from, with the marking scheme beside each one, and to its place in the syllabus. Language cards show how often a word came up and the real sentences it was heard in.

Thousands of cards means a few will have mistakes. When we fix one, you keep your progress on it. Spot something wrong? Tell us from Help › Support.