Clozemaster questions.

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mentecuerpo
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Clozemaster questions.

Postby mentecuerpo » Tue Sep 01, 2020 3:27 pm

How does it work for you?
Have you found it helpful in language learning?
In what way has it helped you?
Vocabulary learning and Grammatical structure?
How much time in a day do you devote to Clozemaster exercises?
Can you use the sentences as examples for applying chunking?

Note: I think chunks or chunking refers to learning a few words together that convey meaning. Clozemaster seems to give simple sentences that do that, at least at the beginner's levels.

Thanks.
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mentecuerpo
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Re: Clozemaster questions.

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Sep 03, 2020 2:50 am

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mentecuerpo
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Re: Clozemaster questions.

Postby mentecuerpo » Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:28 am

One of the appealing features for me of on Clozamaster pro subscription is creating your own cloze collections.

From the help guide of Clozemaster:
"Cloze-Collections:

Take complete control of your studies on Clozemaster - create and play your own sentence collections using sentences from Clozemaster or sentences you add yourself.

Add sentences manually or by searching and selecting sentences on Clozemaster.
"
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Lamonte
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Re: Clozemaster questions.

Postby Lamonte » Tue Sep 08, 2020 6:02 pm

I have used ClozeMaster continuously for nearly a year now. The total time per day is usually 30-45 minutes. I clear out the reviews first, then add new sentences when needed. I have 300+ day streaks in 7 languages.

The gamification for ClozeMaster is helpful for my motivation. It has sounds, awards, points, speed, and leaderboards. I can go through a lot of sentences in a short period of time. While Duolingo has a generic streak, ClozeMaster's streaks are language specific. I use that to make sure I "touch" each of my active languages on a daily basis.

ClozeMaster is helpful for learning vocabulary and grammar - to a point. Its strengths are also weaknesses. It is intuitive. Through CM I know German verbs often occur at the end of the sentence - but I don't know why certain ones do and others do not. Speeding doesn't allow for compare and contrast of other sentences. Points and leaderboards only give the illusion of progress.

I cut/paste the CM sentences into a file, and work with them using a pen and paper system. It is slower and even tedious, but I think the bulk of my learning occurs there. For me, it is a combination of the "fun" and the "work" that keeps me on track.

I rarely notice chunks when using ClozeMaster by itself. Repetitive phrases stand out more when I review and write the sentences. Then I search for these chunks in the file with the cut/paste CM sentences.
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betise
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Re: Clozemaster questions.

Postby betise » Tue Sep 15, 2020 6:11 pm

mentecuerpo wrote:How does it work for you?
Have you found it helpful in language learning?
In what way has it helped you?
Vocabulary learning and Grammatical structure?
How much time in a day do you devote to Clozemaster exercises?

Thanks.


Clozemaster's been pretty good for me. i really took to Lingvist when i was learning french at the outset, but that was when it was free. the idea between the two is basically the same, though Lingvist tries to be more science-y and elegant about it. they're just vocab frequency lists in cloze format. CM's ceiling is much higher, though i think this comes at the cost of simply using Tatoeba for content, whereas afaik Lingvist's sentences are their own. CM has the huge advantage of being available in many languages, however.

I would say it's been quite helpful in recuperating my french vocabulary after my long break, and as i work through the fluency fast track i'm starting to get some words i didn't actually really know before. as i progress that'll obvious happen more often, since it aims to bring you quite far down in frequency lists.

i can see myself continuing to use it for a long time, and am definitely going to use it for Spanish too (or whatever language i pick up). my only conflict is that it would be nice to have all my cards together, so i wish i didn't have ot use both Anki and CM. however, Anki is just way more powerful as a custom SRS, so that's how i use it. CM is just nice as a pre-packaged program of sorts. i like that the development is active, and that they have extras (like cloze-reading and the grammar challenges). i also enjoy the slight gamification (particularly the leaderboard).

i probably only do about 5 or 10 minutes a day of CM, though if i end up doing something where i'm waiting with nothing else to do, or watching some video, i'll probably break out CM and do some more.
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Cèid Donn
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Re: Clozemaster questions.

Postby Cèid Donn » Wed Sep 16, 2020 3:43 am

mentecuerpo wrote:How does it work for you?
Have you found it helpful in language learning?


I use Clozemaster for different goals with different languages. I have far too many Clozemaster going right now, so I shift my focus depending on what I feel I need or my energy level or available time. So ways that I have found CM helpful:

Reading practice -- this is more for my advanced TLs, in particular fast reading. Basically, read the sentence and type (or chose from multiple choice) to clozed word as fast as I can.

Listening practice -- the TTS is no substitute for real speakers, of course, and sometimes the TTS is just incorrect, but overall, I have have used the TTS with newer or more intermediate TLs and it has helpful me with getting my mind to connect phonology to the written word, which in turn helps me to recall, because I personally find it harder to recall words if I don't know what they're suppose to sound like. This was incredibly helpful with Russian--I really feel it helped jumpstart me with reading in Russian when I was struggling to get a handle on the script.

Learning new scripts -- Again, this was very helpful with Russian, because I struggled a long time with learning the script. Likewise, there are 4 other languages that I just do a little every day just to practice reading the script.

Practicing vocabulary in context -- I just have never been one to memorize word lists, and CM offers a way to learn and practice vocabulary in context, which is much more preferable to me, although CM does not present vocabulary is a particularly ordered fashion. Mainly, you get either random sentences or by collection of "Most Common" words which appears based on how common the selected clozed word appears in CM's sister site, Tatoeba, which is where CM crowd-sources the sentences they use. So it's not the same as "high frequency" words in terms of how frequent they are used by speakers. But generally speaking, in the bigger courses for more commonly studied languages, you will practice a lot of genuinely high frequency words.

Dabbling in languages just for fun -- I don't have any qualms about dabbling, so I do. It's nice to do it on CM because CM generally gives me enough to play around with that language that I don't need to dabble much outside of CM. It's just very satisfying to me to do a few sentences in a languages I'm curious about but can't study because of time constraints.

Vocabulary learning and Grammatical structure?


CM is the kind of resource that you kind of have to figure out how it best suits you and your needs, so if you need more structured or guided learning for either vocabulary or grammar, it's probably not the best resource for you, But if you want something to practice your acquired knowledge of a language, to better hone it and get a lot of reiteration to help with deep learning and developing a better intuition about word choice and grammar, then I think CM is very helpful. It's basically gamified reading practice, so it is beneficial in a much more open-ended way opposed to something more structured.

How much time in a day do you devote to Clozemaster exercises?


Honestly it varies a lot for me. Some days I do a lot, other days I do the bare minimum. In addition to whatever I'm doing language-wise outside of CM, my health has been up and down a lot, plus I have vision and hand difficulties that can make using language apps like CM difficult and tiring. I have several courses with streaks that I like to keep going, so depending on how I feel, some days I may do quite a bit of few course and maybe 5-10 sentences in all the rest, or some days, I just do 5-10 sentences in all my courses.

Can you use the sentences as examples for applying chunking?

Note: I think chunks or chunking refers to learning a few words together that convey meaning. Clozemaster seems to give simple sentences that do that, at least at the beginner's levels.


If i understand what you mean, yes. It does help you hone common phrases. Like today I learned "tõesti nii halb" which in Estonian means "really so/that bad" --I'm just dabbling in Estonian, but learning small phrases like that I find really helpful because you learn the language's syntax and can recognize what words are doing what in a sentence even if you don't understand the meaning of each word.

The other thing I will say is that I do use the Cloze-collections, with my more advanced Celtic languages and with Russian in particular. The main down-side of it is it's very time-consuming to do. Noentheless it is a really good tool if you are willing to put in the time and effort. It's like Anki--a lot of work but you get a customized resource that suit your particular needs. Like for Irish, I composed sentences for practicing some more advanced grammar and vocabulary, and with Gaelic, I use very advanced sentences from my old classes that I haven't looked at in years and are great for me to review at this point. With my Russian collection, it's basic stuff that I feel I need more exposure to than what I am getting with the main CM course. It's really a pretty versatile tool like that. I'm not going to tell anyone to sign up for CM Pro for it, but if you're looking for that kind of tool, yeah, I can recommend it.
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Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.


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