Uncle Roger wrote:Cavesa thanks. This memcode seems interesting, but I reckon that, when it comes to SRS for language learning purposes, step change will come from something such as a whole A-to-Z curriculum proofread and signed off by a competent publisher or academic authority. Not by incremental improvements on the Anki formula. Still nice to have, of course!
Except this won't happen. Not in the next decade or more. I am not an optimist here. Even those publishers trying to use digital flashcards (I've seen two or three attempts) create useless crap but for the opposite reasons. Sure, the content is likely to be more complete and precise than in the courses created by individual learners from a mix of resources. But the form suffers. The publishers prefer to have their own platforms made, instead of using the well spread and working ones. And those leave a lot to be desired, such as lack of the SRS mechanism (just dumb flashcards), no app, unfriendly design. It seems to be a somehow foreign idea to them, to just put the wordlist to Anki or Memrise and use it both as a support tool and publicity. Instead, they create their own useless thing.
Also, may I ask people what the fuss is all about with cloze cards/questions when it comes to language studies with flashcards?
Why not ask to translate the whole sentence? Is it because of certain untranslatable qualities of specific elements of certain languages?
It is basically the same thing as the fill in exercises in work books. It is a step in learning, not the whole way.
And one word instead of the whole sentence? This balances out the fact that there are usually various correct solutions to a sentence translation, which is a hell to deal with in a digital tool.
No, it is not about untranslatable stuff. It is about several variants to almost any sentence (except for the extremely simple ones you certainly don't need that SRS for). That is not that much of a problem, when it comes to just the viewing cards, you know whether you are just differently correct or making a mistake. But it is a lot of a problem, when you are typing and want the computer to check for you. Just look at Duolingo to see the catches. This whole "there is another correct answer" issue is a large part of course creation and maintenance there.
I might have created material that might be of cloze nature, say:
ENG: See you in an hour
ITA: Ci vediamo ____ un'ora
and the word to put would be "tra" (whilst you might get tempted to say "in" also in Italian, which would be very wrong)...
But I'd rather ask off myself a full translation of the sentence... It's more work, so it's better for me as a student.
Thanks
Uncle Roger wrote:Ok, but can you give me an example of a situation in which cloze really brings some advantages? Language learning, not general studies...
When I was writing so excitedly about the typing cards, I was not talking about this. I was talking about normal 1 word cards, just with typing instead of just viewing the answer or clicking in a multiple choice exercise, as I find typing much more efficient.
Yes, your example, or Ani's one, are great, so I am confused why you find this so weird. Asking for a preposition is a perfect example actually, as the usual one word translation card tends to be tricky (one preposition in language X usually doesn't equal one preposition in language Y). Such cards can be a good addition to a normal deck and help us deal with the words with similar meaning (I remember getting so many bad grades at school because I couldn't ever get tell/say right just based on the Czech equivalent and similar mistakes). Or the cloze deletion cards could also be very good for practicing noun declinations, and case+preposition or verb+preposition combinations.
There are just as many uses as the learners can imagine. But of course, such cards are not a necessity, almost nothing really is.
About "this is better because it is more work": well, it is often too much work at first. I am all for translation exercises with full sentences. But I think drilling stuff one problem at a time before getting there is a valuable strategy.
