Learning Spanish with a flashcard app: ser, estar, subjuntivo

Spanish is gaining ground in German schools: in the 2021/22 school year, according to Destatis, around 496,000 students learned Spanish, and in 2023/24, according to Deutschlandfunk, around 518,000. And most of them stumble over the same things: ser or estar, subjuntivo or not, el problema even though it ends in -a.

The good news: exactly these stumbling blocks make ideal flashcards. For the principle behind vocabulary cards in general, read Learning vocabulary with checkst. This article is about what makes Spanish specifically challenging for German speakers.

Set your goal: school, DELE or simply speaking

The DELE diplomas are issued by the Instituto Cervantes on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Education, from A1 to C2. In Berlin there are formats designed specifically for students, such as A2/B1 escolar. Watch the deadlines: for the Berlin exam dates on November 13 and 14, 2026, the registration deadline was already September 30, 2026.

How many words you need for each level is not officially defined. If you study with exams in mind, you will find the content for each level in the Instituto Cervantes' Plan curricular. Frequency lists complement this with everyday vocabulary.

Decks you can import

• Spanisch 5000: free course with 5,000 words, including for Anki. The "A1 to C1" classification comes from the provider.
• Refold Spanish 1K: 1,000 cards with audio for every word and every example sentence, paid.
• Davies frequency dictionary: The Routledge book by Mark Davies and Kathy Hayward Davies is based on a corpus of over two billion words from 21 countries. On AnkiWeb there is a sample with 1,000 notes, without audio.
• "Español las 5000 palabras más comunes": cloze deck with 4,999 notes and example sentences, translations into English.

Not every deck with "5000" in its name is based on Davies. And if you don't like English translations, choose a deck with a German side instead.

The stumbling blocks

Ser or estar. The choice changes the meaning: ser listo means to be clever, estar listo means to be ready. Learn such pairs as a contrast on a single card.

Subjuntivo. It does not simply correspond to the German Konjunktiv. Wishes, hopes and feelings can trigger it. Learn the trigger and the verb form together, in a sentence.

Gender. The ending often helps, but not always: el problema, el idioma. Learn every noun with its article.

False friends. Regalo means gift, the German Regal means shelf, which is estantería in Spanish. Tapete is a small table runner, while the German Tapete (wallpaper) is papel pintado. Put the correct meaning and the German word it gets confused with on the same card, or your German will win.

Your workflow with checkst

1. Import a base or start from scratch. Open a frequency deck as .apkg in checkst, or photograph your textbook vocabulary and import it via text recognition.

2. Grammar as sentence cards. Instead of "Conjugate ser in the present," you query a form within a sentence: give the situation, produce the form. Cloze texts work directly in checkst. The AI can suggest cards from a text, either on the device or with your own OpenAI key. Check these especially carefully for grammar.

3. Listen. checkst's speech output reads the Spanish side aloud when you set the field to Spanish. checkst also plays decks that include their own audio track.

4. Few repetitions, well spaced. checkst schedules with FSRS. According to the Anki manual, the default target retention is 90 percent. If you didn't know a form, press "Again," not "Hard."

5. Learn together. In a Spanish course or in upper school: create a study group in checkst, invite members via QR code, and share a deck for the next test.

Example cards

What the research says

For vocabulary the picture is clear: the meta-analysis by Kim and Webb found medium to large benefits for distributed practice in a foreign language, and longer intervals helped more on later tests. Nakata 2017 is interesting: five or seven retrievals produced better test scores than one or three, but per invested minute, a single retrieval gave the largest gain. More is therefore not automatically more efficient.

For grammar the picture is more mixed. Serfaty and Serrano found better productive results with digital cards and an artificial language after several relearning sessions. Suzuki and DeKeyser, on the other hand, found when learning Japanese morphology that massed practice was similarly accurate. "Spacing always wins" is therefore not true for grammar across the board.

Limitations

• You can't understand grammar with cards. Explanation comes from class or a textbook; cards are for consolidating afterwards.
• No speaking practice. For the oral DELE exam you need people.
• Nobody checks other people's decks. Not even with checkst.
• Apple only. iPhone and iPad, no Android, no web app.