Ming argues flashcards teach only labeling and skip crucial steps for non-verbal children. Moving straight from real objects to 2D pictures makes kids learn the picture as the word, not the thing itself, so they can't generalize to actual objects.
If your child is a non verbal child, I don't want you to buy flashcards anymore. And if you go to online stores, you guys have, if you try to type in like speech or learn how to talk. The first few things of course is going to be flashcards, right? And then it's going to be books or whatever. But the problem is a few things. One is it's the same as learning from the iPad. It's a one way communication. You're teaching only one language function and that is to label things that are on the car 2D and not even in real life. If your child is non verbal, the conceptual level is that you go from a real object 3D towards a toy like object that represents that thing. And then one more level is like a real life picture 2D, snap it with the iPhone, print out. And then after that it's like a realistic picture. And after that it's line drawing and after that as symbols. So the complexity goes like that. If you're skipping from the real object towards a 2D, the child will learn the 2D object as the word. And therefore when they see the real object, all they know how to do is to label it and not to use it in the correct way.
