Hi. I am a big fun of context-related learning. Unfortunately many flash card apps have only words without any context. So I like that Clozemaster has a huge sentences database. But looking at other topics and trying to find the best way to learn with Clozemaster I have some thoughts.
It looks like there are actually 2 modes of learning:
1. Learning the new words.
In this mode I wish to build up my vocabulary. I don’t need to see any words which I already know well (meaning, spelling, pronunciation) but it is steel necessary to have a good context for the words I wish to learn. That means each sentences should contain word I learn in different meanings and in different collocations with correct prepositions, linguistic forms. My preferrable way of learning in this mode is to see word in native language (Russian) first along with the sentence in the language I learn (English) with cloze text. Optionally I’d like to see the full sentence in native language. I don’t need any options with translations and I usually don’t want to type text. I just try to recall English word(all sinonyms) and imagine how to spell it and how to pronounce it. Then I check the answer. If it is correct I want to press some button (like “Known word”) and never get any sentences where this word is marked as clozed (but it is ok to get sentences when it is opened of course). If I was wrong I wish to press “Learn” button to start spaced repetitions for this specific sentence and probably for all sentences where this word is clozed. Maybe it would be useful to have also the ability to mark a sentences (not words) as mastered. For example I want to learn some rare usage of well-known word. But here is the problem. If I see a popular meaning of some word first and mark the word as known I will not see any sentence where this word is used in rare meaning which I wish to learn. Maybe a decision is that after I mark word as well-known I can see all sentences with this word as clozed and still mark some interesting usages for learning.
In this mode I will learn only what I need without wasting time for typing which is very hard on mobile. I want to see my progress: how many words/usages of words I know and what are their frequencies. The target is to learn at least 12000 most popular words.
2. Learning the typical language constructions.
It is absolutely different mode. It is about learning some phrasal verbs for example, typical collocations like “take after”, “not at all”, “hit the road” and many others. All the words are known but the meaning is unknown. There is no sense to hide just one word in this case and translate only it. I wish to work with this mode in another way. It is implemented in the Android app “10000 sentences” but it has bad design and wrong SRS system. But the idea is to see native translation first and blanks instead of all words: “_ _ _”. I try to translate it, same as for words. There are two buttons “Know” / “Learn more” and maybe button for hints which opens words by one. In this mode I only want to see popular phrases in good context. Maybe in short dialogs. In this case the phrase is clozed but other parts of the dialog are not. But I understand that sentences from Tatoeba will not allow it so maybe just all hidden.
This mode is more complicated, it is more about grammar, fixed constructs, not just a separate words. I am not sure it is ideal way to work with it but I am pretty sure that currently these 2 modes are mixed in Clozemaster and it lead to less efficient way of learning with a lot of repitions where they are useless.
Sorry for my chaotic thougts but I hope some ideas could be adopted in future versions.
P.S. I just noticed that in mobile version I can mark word as mastered even after refusing to type in the translation but it is not available in web version. Why not? It was the only way to 1) not see any options and 2) not type anything. 3) quickly mark words as mastered. I don’t want to use ignored as semantically it is different thing.