Practice and practice runs
The extra ways to use a deck: Quiz, Match and Listen, timed practice runs across several decks, and bringing cards forward before an exam.
Daily review is the part that makes cards stick. Everything on this page is extra. It gives your child other ways to use the same cards, and none of it changes when a card is next due.
Three ways to practise a deck
Opening any deck from My Flashcards shows the cards and, once the deck is big enough, three practice tiles.
| Mode | What it is | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Quiz | Pick the right answer out of four. The wrong answers are borrowed from the same deck, so they are plausible. | Four cards |
| Match | Pair each question with its answer. A clock counts up, and nothing is scored. | Three cards |
| Listen | Hear a question, get a moment to think, then hear the answer. Hands-free, with adjustable speed and gap. | One card |
A tile only appears when the deck has enough cards for it.
Practice never moves a card's review date
Only the real daily review decides when a card comes back. Your child can use Quiz, Match and Listen as much as they like without disturbing the schedule.
Practice runs
A practice run is a timed test across the decks your child chooses. It appears on My Flashcards once your child has at least ten cards.
Your child picks:
- Which decks to draw from, a subject at a time or deck by deck.
- How to be asked: multiple choice (30 seconds a question), true or false (20 seconds), or a written answer (60 seconds).
The page shows the length before the run starts. A run has at most 40 questions.
Three things make a run different from review, and the page says all three to your child before they start:
- It is timed, and it does not stop when an answer is wrong.
- It does not change any review dates. It is a test, not practice.
- The professor may look at how it went, to know what to go over. It is one thing they look at, never the whole story.
For written answers, capitals, spaces and full stops are ignored, and your child can still count an answer they gave in their own words.
Afterwards your child sees which topics went well and which went thin. There is no "readiness" score.
Revising towards an exam date
When your child sets an exam date in My exams, the cards for that subject come round a little sooner so that the last review lands a few days before the exam. Only that subject changes, and cards are only ever brought forward, never pushed back. Turning it off restores the usual dates.
If your child is preparing for the 11+, 13+ or a competition, see how exam prep works. Children with an exam target also see short timed question sets on the practice-run page.
Flashcards overview · Daily review · How exam prep works · UK academic competitions