If I got a cloze sentence incorrect, I would like to see a message that says: “you got this one wrong last time!!” the next time I encounter it.
And/Or…
I would like to be able to mark a sentence as “HARD” and always receive a message saying: “sentence marked: HARD” in red letters, and maybe a ‘caution’ symbol next to it (that’s my vision). This alert would continue to show up until you went into the cloze’s options to manually turn it off. Having this feature in the app would be very useful. You could even provide a list of sentences marked “hard” in your stats. Personally, this would greatly help me guage my progress.
You might think; reminding learners of their failures will turn away beginners. Consider this perspective: if you answered a cloze incorrectly, then many days later, answered it correctly; would that not be evidence of your own progress? To have your memory/ word recall succeed where it once failed… A simple reminder that this sentence once caused you difficulties will increase your satisfaction once you are able to overcome it.
Another great idea: you could set a separate multiplier for HARD sentences. What I mean by this, is: setting a sentence to hard would make it appear sooner than originally set. You would be presented with this options:
“Hard sentences appear ____% sooner.”
So, if a hard sentence is scheduled to appear in 20 days, and you have this option set to 75%, that sentence will instead appear in 15 days. Having this sentence appear sooner will increase the likelihood of retention. Being able to customize this value will allow users to choose a value that suits their ability to learn best. After all, not everyone learns at the same rate. Some people may need a higher %.
All in all, I think this is an excellent idea that is worth considering. I’ve done Italian quizzes before on Conjuguemos, and they also have a “you got this one wrong last time!” feature. For some reason, I found this extra mechanic helped me learn the conjugations faster.
You can tell that you got a sentence wrong last time (that is, within the same round) by the fact that it’s in your review queue and is 0% mastered. You need to get it right at least once to exit the round. Then, the fact that the sentence is in your review queue and is 25% mastered will tell you that you got it wrong at least once in a previous round.
This is how I, and others, use the “Favorites” button. As others have noted, the title of the button is a little counterintuitive because these are often our least favorite sentences, but it provides the functionality you’re asking for.
Alright Alan, I’ma let you finish. But you’re forgetting one thing.
When you get a question wrong, it is replayed to you before you close the window. This allows you to put it back to 25% at least.
You’re saying that you can ‘just tell’ the ones you’ve got wrong because they’ll be in your review queue and set to 25%. So how would you be able to tell the difference between that sentence and a sentence that is 25% mastered that you haven’t answered incorrectly yet? You wouldn’t.
I use Favorites too. I have around 1000 favorites now. However, I don’t simply favorite hard or difficult sentences; I favorite them for a host of other reasons as well. There are plenty of sentences I wouldn’t describe as “hard” that I’ve favorites.
That’s true. And it’s also true that if you mark sentences as “Favorites” for a variety of reasons, you can’t use it to indicate solely the ones that you’ve answered incorrectly.
As an alternative, what would you say about having a visible count of how many days that have passed since you last processed a sentence? That would give an indication of whether the sentence is “hard” (a short time has passed) or “easy” (a long time has passed).
A day count would also be helpful when you come back to a collection after some time, having accumulated a review backlog: if you answer a cloze correctly at 25% after 45 days, you can safely mark it as 100%.