One of the biggest hazards of learning Morse is the Crib Sheet or Flash Card with the character and Morse equivalent written down for you to look at. You can learn Morse code with these aids, but you can’t use it and end up with the counting syndrome again which leads back to a previous post “Still Counting?“. Morse is a language and should be listened to.

The expert teachers tell us that any kind of printed dots and dashes or any other such pictorial impressions will only impede the student’s progress when he is beginning to learn the code. All such methods violate good pedagogy, because they do not teach the code as actual sound patterns, as it will be heard and used.
They also require the student to learn something (which he must later forget in order to advance) in addition to the sound of the code itself. While these methods may seem to make it easier at first, they actually make it much harder, or even impossible, to advance. The wise teacher and student will avoid these approaches.
Extract From Bill Pierpont’s book “The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy”