How: as a supplementary resource. It is a good and fun way to enrich or review vocab in sentences. I only do the typing version, that's what I find valuable, I don't find multiple choice useful at all. I use it less than enough, I really struggle with being consistent with any SRS. So, it's been helpful, but it will be even better for the more consistent people.
Yes, I find the Premium version worth it. Partially because I got it on sale as a one time payment, I don't like the usual subscriptions to such services. But Clozemaster does the freemium right, in my opinion. It is already very good in the free version. The features of the Premium that I like: Freely choosing the amount of words in any single session (I really like that), also the option to manually override the SRS with a button "too easy" or "too hard" (awesome for a learner reviewing after a long break, or someone with differently distributed strengths and gaps than the author thinks), and the statistics are nice.
A response to some of the mentioned problems: Ignore or too easy solves the problem of too easy sentences at first. I'd reword it: I think there should be many more examples in the "more advanced" courses, because you sometimes learn as many example sentences for the first 500 words and for 3000 words later on. Clogging the backlog can be an issue, but I think Clozemaster also allows you to judge the revewed mastered sentences as hard/easy/too easy or something (I am not that far in general), so the SRS intervals can be prolonged. But should something become too easy and annoying: there is still the ignore button.
The mistakes are an issue, but they get progressively fixed, thanks to the not that beginner users reporting them. A feature I like is the possibility to edit a translation for yourself, I use it in some cases (usually when my brain with native Czech finds the English translation insufficient or nuanced differently than I need). But you can fix a mistake too. But I agree it is probably the most serious issue and likely to bother a true first time learner of the language. That's one more argument for "don't learn from just one source".
The pronunciation audio can be an issue. Personally, I don't care at all, audio is not what I want from an SRS. I am more after the cloze deletion typing. But yes, it can matter more to some learners.
mokiabo wrote:I didn't pay for the pro version. From what I understand Clozemaster is a fancy gamified UI for SR over the open Tatoeba corpus, on which TTS was slapped when the native recordings weren't enough. The idea is neat but not that neat that I'd pay a recurring subscription for it imo.
That's a pretty exact description, even though I'd actually say it is exactly a reason FOR paying, not against. In spite of the problems (such as mistakes in some sentences), this automatisation of exercise creation, and the huge and free tatoeba corpus, are the only thing making such huge courses possible. Even for the non FIGS languages. I am all for handpicked and more carefully created SRS cloze deletion products, like Speakly. But they teach only 4000 words even in German, not the 20000 I want. And there is no Speakly (or any of its competitors, like Lingvist which I personally don't like and consider the content low quality) for Hebrew or Romanian, which are languages I consider learning.
People sometimes argue, that Clozemaster is not worth paying for, because the real content is Tatoeba. But Tatoeba itself is worthless for my learning. How would I use it? Look up examples of words found elsewhere, at the pace of a few sentences per hour? I'd say Clozemaster is turning a theoretically valuable (but in everyday learning not that useful) Tatoeba into an excellent learning tool.
Unlike some people around here, I am not a programmer. I don't view the Clozemaster creator as someone abusing Tatoeba and getting money for nothing. I am not capable of programming such an interface to learn the content of Tatoeba, so the author of Clozemaster doing it has sold me a valuable service.
If you don't want to use Clozemaster there are instructions on how to import the Tatoeba dataset into Anki, and there is also an app called 10000sentences that basically quiz you in much of the same way Clozemaster does.
That's a seemingly good point, you can surely put tatoeba to anki, but I am simply not capable of doing it. Perhaps you'll consider me dumb, but I am totally incapable of understanding the instructions on making Anki accept my typing. Paying for Clozemaster has saved me many wasted hours trying to learn how to do such extremely difficult things for me. I have tried various times, but the best I can do are normal cloze deletions, and I write the answers on paper. This sounds nice (yeah, we all know how useful is handwriting for memore and blah blah blah), but SRS that makes me type makes me learn much faster, more efficiently, and it makes me write the vocab the same way I write most things in the real life.
And yes, there are other apps than Clozemaster, I am now looking at your recommendation (but the user reviews criticise some of the same things you dislike about Clozemaster, such as bad TTS). But Clozemaster gives more than one example per sentences at least up to 20000 frequency list, at least in the big courses. 10000 words with one sentence per word, that's nothing special, I prefer the amount offered by Clozemaster. And most of the SRS apps I've seen were on multiple choice, not typing, therefore a total waste of time for me. This app seems to be about multiple choice too, or perhaps there is typing too?