Level Up Your Language Flashcards: One Card Teaches a Phrase. Six Cards Teach a Pattern.

One example sentence only teaches that sentence. Six varied cards around the same chunk teach a pattern you can actually use when you speak.

Stephanie Ayn Land

10 min read

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Feb 16, 2026

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I Knew the Phrase. I Just Couldn’t Use It.

There’s a French structure — ça fait [temps] que — that covers a huge range of everyday sentences. My Anki cards are set up English-first, so what I’d actually see on the front of a card was something like:

• I’ve been working here for two years.
• It’s been a long time since I saw him.
• How long have you been waiting?
• I’ve been trying to call you for months.

And every single time, my brain would freeze because I knew that what I wanted to say was wrong. I wanted to default to depuis — which means roughly the same thing but is structured much closer to the English word order. Je travaille ici depuis deux ans maps neatly onto “I’ve been working here for two years.” My brain loved depuis because it understood the construction and it felt safe.

Here’s the kicker, though: depuis is the more formal option. In actual conversation…