ICFES flashcards
Free flashcards for the Colombian ICFES Saber 11 exam, study now with no sign-up
20 free flashcards, no account needed. Each one comes back right before you'd forget it, calculated with the same formula the full app uses: you repeat what's slipping, not what you already know cold.
- ¿En qué consiste la falacia ad hominem?
- Atacar a la persona que argumenta en vez de su argumento. "No le creas, si ni siquiera terminó el colegio" no refuta lo que dijo — ataca quién es.
- ¿Cómo se calcula la pendiente entre dos puntos (x₁,y₁) y (x₂,y₂)?
- m = (y₂ − y₁) / (x₂ − x₁). Si el resultado es positivo, la recta sube de izquierda a derecha; si es negativo, baja.
- ¿En qué se diferencian la fotosíntesis y la respiración celular?
- La fotosíntesis (en los cloroplastos) usa luz, agua y CO₂ para producir glucosa y oxígeno. La respiración celular (en las mitocondrias) usa oxígeno y glucosa para liberar energía y produce CO₂ y agua: son procesos inversos.
- ¿Qué fue el Frente Nacional en Colombia (1958-1974)?
- Un pacto entre el Partido Liberal y el Partido Conservador para alternar la presidencia y repartirse los cargos públicos, buscando frenar la violencia bipartidista de "La Violencia".
- What's the difference between 'since' and 'for' with present perfect?
- 'Since' is followed by a specific point in time: 'since 2019'. 'For' is followed by a duration: 'for three years'.
- ¿En qué consiste la falacia de falsa causa (post hoc)?
- Asumir que, porque un evento ocurrió antes que otro, lo causó. "Desde que llegó el nuevo rector, bajaron las notas" no prueba que el rector sea la causa.
- ¿Cuándo se aplica el teorema de Pitágoras y qué dice?
- Se aplica en triángulos rectángulos. La hipotenusa al cuadrado es igual a la suma de los cuadrados de los catetos: c² = a² + b².
- ¿Qué es la ósmosis?
- El paso de agua a través de una membrana semipermeable, desde donde hay menos solutos hacia donde hay más, hasta que las concentraciones se igualan.
- ¿Qué dice el Artículo 1 de la Constitución Política de Colombia sobre el Estado?
- Que Colombia es un Estado social de derecho, organizado en forma de República unitaria, descentralizada, con autonomía de sus entidades territoriales, democrática, participativa y pluralista.
- Why is 'actually' a false friend for Spanish speakers?
- It doesn't mean 'actualmente' (currently). It means 'en realidad' or 'de hecho': 'Actually, I disagree' is 'De hecho, no estoy de acuerdo'.
- ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre la tesis y un argumento de un texto?
- La tesis es la idea central que el autor defiende. Los argumentos son las razones o evidencias que la sostienen: un texto tiene una tesis y varios argumentos.
- ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre media y mediana, y cuándo usar cada una?
- La media es el promedio; la mediana es el valor central al ordenar los datos. Con valores extremos, la mediana representa mejor los datos porque la media se distorsiona.
- ¿Qué dice la ley de conservación de la masa en una reacción química?
- La masa total de los reactivos es igual a la masa total de los productos: la materia no se crea ni se destruye, solo se transforma. Por eso una ecuación química se balancea.
- ¿Cuáles son las tres ramas del poder público en Colombia y su función?
- Ejecutiva (gobierna y administra, encabezada por el presidente), Legislativa (hace las leyes, el Congreso) y Judicial (aplica la ley y resuelve conflictos, las cortes y jueces).
- How do you form the first conditional in English, and when do you use it?
- If + present simple, + will + infinitive. Used for real, possible future situations: 'If it rains, we will stay home.'
- ¿Qué función cumple un conector consecutivo como 'por lo tanto' o 'en consecuencia'?
- Introduce el resultado o la conclusión de lo que se dijo antes: señala que la idea siguiente se deriva lógicamente de la anterior.
- ¿Cómo se calcula la probabilidad de que ocurran dos eventos independientes?
- Se multiplican sus probabilidades individuales: P(A y B) = P(A) × P(B). Lanzar dos monedas y que ambas caigan cara es 1/2 × 1/2 = 1/4.
- ¿Qué establece la primera ley de Newton (ley de inercia)?
- Un cuerpo permanece en reposo o en movimiento rectilíneo uniforme a menos que una fuerza externa neta actúe sobre él.
- ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre Estado y gobierno?
- El Estado es la organización política permanente: territorio, población, soberanía, instituciones. El gobierno es el grupo de personas que administra el Estado en un momento dado y cambia periódicamente.
- When do you add '-er' to an adjective to make a comparative, and when do you use 'more'?
- Short adjectives (one syllable, or two ending in -y) add '-er': 'bigger', 'happier'. Longer adjectives use 'more' + adjective: 'more interesting', 'more difficult'.
¿En qué consiste la falacia ad hominem?
Study 20 flashcards right now
Open them, answer in your head, flip the card and rate yourself with the same four buttons the full app uses. No account, no email: the session below has all 20 real cards, mixed across the five Saber 11 subjects. Every time you rate a card, your browser saves when it should come back. Close the tab and return tomorrow, and the session already knows which ones are due.
The five areas of the Saber 11 exam
Every card comes from a specific subject and topic, not a generic list of vocabulary or formulas. Pick a subject below and the session filters to it.
- Critical Reading
- Fallacies, argument types, and what a connector like 'therefore' actually does: what makes a text convincing, beyond whether it sounds right.
- Mathematics
- Formulas with the condition that triggers them, not just the formula alone: when Pythagoras applies, when slope applies, when the mean stops representing the data and the median does.
- Natural Sciences
- Processes that get mixed up with each other, like photosynthesis and cellular respiration, plus the physical and chemical laws behind the rest of the exam.
- Social Studies & Citizenship
- Colombia's Constitution, the branches of government, and the historical facts the ICFES asks about most, explained without textbook padding.
- English
- False friends, conditionals, and the comparison rules that slip your mind right when the exam clock is running.
Your cards come from your own mistakes
An Anki deck doesn't know what you got wrong. Ours does, because every card starts from a real question in Sabero's bank: when you miss a question, or the tutor notices it was hard for you, that question can turn into a card. Never the other way around, and never from a generic 'ICFES topics' list someone else built. Starting from an empty deck, or one copied from a stranger online, means reviewing things you already know and things you've never seen in the same proportion: that's not targeted study, it's studying blind and hoping the order works in your favor. The 20 cards on this page are a curated sample so any visitor can try the mechanic with no account. Inside your account, the real deck grows differently: every card arrives already linked to the exact question that generated it, with its subject and topic attached, so you review what actually costs you, not what cost someone else.
An Anki deck doesn't know what you got wrong. Yours does.
- 01
- question you missed
- 02
- gets linked to a card
- 03
- lands in your deck
When each card comes back
Reviewing the day before the exam barely helps: by then you've already forgotten most of what you're trying to review. Reviewing every single day isn't the answer either: that's time you could spend on what's actually slipping, not what you already know cold. The middle ground isn't a hunch or an 'every three days' rule: it's an interval calculated card by card, one that stretches out when you remember easily and shrinks when it's hard. Press one of the four buttons on the card below and watch, with the real formula, how long it takes to come back and what happens to its easiness factor. Try 'Again' too: you'll see it doesn't punish you, it reschedules you.
Sample card
What is an ad hominem fallacy?
Easiness factor: 2.50
The four buttons, no mystery
Each button isn't a label for how well you did: it's a number that feeds directly into the interval formula. Again is worth 1, Hard is worth 3, Good is worth 4, Easy is worth 5, and those four values are the only ones the system understands. Rating yourself honestly matters more than getting the answer right: mark Good when you actually guessed, and the card drifts further out than it should, coming back right when you've forgotten it again. Mark Hard when it genuinely took effort, even if you got it right, and it comes back sooner. The system doesn't grade whether you were correct. It grades how solid your recall actually was, and only you have that data.
- Again
- Resets to 1 day and the card goes back to learning.
- Hard
- Follows the interval rule, but the easiness factor drops.
- Good
- Follows the interval rule and the easiness factor holds steady.
- Easy
- Follows the interval rule and the easiness factor rises.
The algorithm, in full
This is called SM-2, the same algorithm behind Anki and most serious spaced-repetition apps, and there's no hidden step: you can verify it yourself with the data on this page. When you get it right, with a rating of 3, 4 or 5, the first review comes back in 1 day, the second in 6 days, and from then on the previous interval is multiplied by the card's easiness factor. When you miss it, with a rating of 1, the interval resets to 1 day and the card goes back to learning, with no penalty beyond that. There's no magic: it's a rule you can verify with pencil and paper.
The easiness factor starts at 2.5 and gets recalculated after every review with the formula below, with a floor of 1.3: no matter how many times you miss a card, it never becomes infinitely hard to schedule, it just comes back more often.
newEF = EF + (0.1 − (5 − rating) × (0.08 + (5 − rating) × 0.02)), with a floor of 1.3
With an easiness factor of 2.5 and rating Good every time, the real progression is: 1 day, 6 days, 15 days, 38 days, 95 days, 238 days. You can reproduce it yourself with the formula above.
Forgetting isn't a lack of discipline
Your memory isn't a file that corrupts at random: it's a muscle that weakens without use, and strengthens every time you recall something right before losing it for good. Without review, the curve below drops fast, and most of what you study today is gone within the first few days. Reviewing at the moments the algorithm calculates (1, 6, 15, 38, 95 and 238 days), each review pushes retention back up, and the next drop is slower than the one before it. Repeated over time, that pattern is the difference between studying for three months and feeling like nothing is left exam week, or studying the same three months and actually holding onto it. A card that comes back at 6 days isn't an arbitrary system quirk: it's, almost always, the point where you'd start forgetting it if nothing reminded you. The Saber 11 doesn't measure how smart you are. It measures how much of what you studied you can still access on exam day, and that's trained with repetition at the right moment, not with more loose study hours.
No duplicate cards
What your progress view shows
Every card moves through four states, and your progress is simply how many you have in each one today: how many are new, how many you're learning, how many are in stable review, and how many you suspended because you no longer need them. With an account, the full history sticks around too: every rating you gave every card, with its date, so you can see not just how much you know now but how you got there. The coach checks how many cards are due each day and sends you straight to the session when something's pending, so you don't have to remember on your own.
- New
- You haven't reviewed it even once yet.
- Learning
- You missed it recently and it comes back soon, in a day, until it sticks.
- In review
- You've locked it in and the interval grows every time you rate it well.
- Suspended
- You marked it as something you no longer need to review.
Flashcards aren't everything
A flashcard helps you remember a fact, a formula, or a rule. It doesn't teach you to read a long passage and pull out the author's thesis, or solve a math problem you've never seen in exactly that shape: that takes practice with full questions, not loose fragments of memory. If what you're missing is understanding how a Critical Reading question is reasoned through step by step, or measuring how close you are to your target score, flashcards aren't the tool. Saying this doesn't take anything away from what's above: it just keeps you from confusing 'remembering a concept' with 'knowing how to answer the exam', which are different things, and you need both.
To practice full questions in the official format, there's the ICFES-style question bank. To measure your real score with a full timed mock exam, there's the mock exam.
Questions about the flashcards
No. The 20 cards on this page can be studied in full without registering. Your progress is saved in your browser, not on a server, so it only carries over on the same device and browser you studied on.
They come from Sabero question-bank items you got wrong or marked as hard. They don't come from a generic topic list: every card is linked to the exact question that generated it.
SM-2, the same spaced-repetition algorithm Anki uses. The full formula, with its interval rules and easiness factor, is explained in the 'The algorithm, in full' section of this same page.
The interval resets to 1 day and the card goes back to the learning state. There's no extra penalty: missing a card simply reschedules it so you see it again soon.
Because a 20-card session takes 5 to 10 minutes, enough to sustain the habit without it turning into a heavy chore. A pending deck of hundreds of cards is the most common reason people abandon a flashcards app.
They help you remember specific facts, formulas and rules across the five subjects. They don't replace practicing full questions or taking a timed mock exam, which is where you find out if you can actually apply what you memorized.
It compares the meaning of each new card against the ones that already exist, using the question and answer text itself, not just exact word matches. Two cards asking the same thing in different words get caught the same way.
- ICFES-style question bank3,000+ questions across all five areas, with full explanations and TRI-calibrated difficulty.
- ICFES mock examWhat the official Saber 11 exam looks like and why practising against the clock helps.
- How to study for the ICFES in 1 monthA week-by-week plan to organize your review before the exam.
Did you see how much you can study in 10 minutes?
With an account, your flashcards come from the questions you actually got wrong, not a generic sample like this one.