Conventional and Digital Flashcards in Teaching Vocabulary for Indonesian Primary Schools: A Systematic Literature Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30998/scope.v11i2.4000Keywords:
Conventional Flashcards, Digital Flashcards, Vocabulary Learning, Indonesian Primary School, Systematic Literature ReviewAbstract
In Indonesian primary EFL classrooms, where students rarely use English beyond the classroom, flashcards offer a practical medium for teaching vocabulary. However, previous studies on conventional and digital flashcards remain fragmented, with each medium typically examined in isolation rather than compared side-by-side, and with limited attention to the challenges teachers face in practice. This study aimed to systematically review and comparatively synthesize research on the use of both conventional and digital flashcards in vocabulary learning for young learners in Indonesian primary schools. This study employed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Data were collected from Google Scholar, ERIC, and Semantic Scholar, and 16 peer-reviewed articles published between 2022 and 2026 were included, comprising 10 studies on conventional flashcards and 6 on digital flashcards. The articles were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis, and theme frequencies were calculated separately for each flashcard type to enable direct comparison. The analysis generated three major themes: challenges faced by teachers, opportunities and benefits, and strategic directions. For conventional flashcards, teachers reported challenges in classroom management, preparation cost, and visual quality, while benefiting from kinesthetic interaction and operational practicality. For digital flashcards, teachers faced infrastructural constraints, scaffolding demands, and digital literacy limitations, while benefiting from multisensory integration and gamification-driven motivation. This study contributes the comparative synthesis of conventional and digital flashcards in Indonesian EFL primary classrooms and identifies the integration and sequencing of the two media as the next research frontier.
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