The new tiered FFT is now available in the Japanese course for English speakers. So, I, as a native Japanese speaker, skimmed the sentence pairs in Level 1 and found inconsistency in many of them. For example,
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More than one words for {{cloze test}} – 帰り{{たい}}, {{飲みたい}} and {{話したい}} are inconsistent. ～たい means “want to” or “would like to” and always preceded by a verb. 帰り{{たい}} (meaning: “want to go home” or “want to return”) should be {{帰りたい}} including the verb if you keep {{飲みたい}} (want to drink) and {{話したい}} (want to talk).
The similar issue is found in {{よりいい}} and {{より}}優れています. より means “more” and is followed by an adjective. いい means “good”, so よりいい means “better” (literally “more good”). 優れています means “excellent”, so より優れています means “more excellent”. {{より}}優れています should be {{より優れています}} for consistency. -
More than one phrases for {{cloze test}} – {{素敵な笑顔}} in the new FFT means “beautiful smile”. Why do you set two words in {{one cloze-phrase}} while most of the cloze-words in the new FFT are still one word. 素敵な笑顔 isn’t an idiom nor set phrase. It’s just a general combination of an adjective and noun.
FYI: In the Most Common Words Collections (MCWC) and the “legacy” FFT, the cloze-word is usually set as {{素敵}}な笑顔 or 素敵な{{笑顔}}, and many Japanese learners complained about the unnatural word splitting system like {{素敵}}な笑顔 because it is equivalent to “{{beaut}}iful smile” in English. The root part “beaut” can become “beautiful” (adjective), “beauty” (noun) and “beautify” (verb) and Japanese has the same derivative forms. But no one sees {{beaut}} as a meaningful word. Likewise, {{素敵な}}笑顔 instead of {{素敵}}な笑顔 is the right chunk for a cloze-word. And {{素敵な}}笑顔 and 素敵な{{笑顔}} should be separately set as a unique cloze-word.
The more hideous cloze-phrase is {{笑顔が素敵な}}, which means “the person’s smile is beautiful”. Shouldn’t it be split into a smaller chunk? -
Word split by Particle – {{私は}} and {{あなた}}は are in Lv.1. 私は consists of 私 (I/my/me/mine) and Particle は (usually indicates that the preceded word is a subject/doer and functions as a quasi-suffix). あなたは consists of あなた (you/your/you/yours) and Particle は. Why do you sometimes include Particle は in the first-person pronoun but exclude は for the second-person pronoun from the cloze-word?
Another inconsistency regarding particles is {{私}}を (meaning: “to me” or “for me” as an object of action), {{私の}} (meaning: “my” as a possessive noun) and {{あなたの}} in Lv.1. Particle を is for objects of action and Particle の is for possessive nouns. Why do you exclude Particle を but include Particle は from 私 as a cloze-word? Why do you exclude Particle は but include の from あなた as a cloze-word? -
More than one sentences – I found two sentences using {{上}} (meaning: “upper side”) as a cloze-word in Lv.1. The “legacy” FFT gives only one sentence per unique cloze-word and that’s exactly what Clozemaster on the dashboard page defines: “The Fast Track has one sentence for each missing word.” {{それ}} (meaning: “that”) has two sentences too. {{なりたい}} (meaning: “want to become”) has three sentences.
I’m afraid some of the same inconsistency issues might be in the new Korean FFT as well because both Japanese and Korean don’t split words (or meaningful chunks of phrases) by space, and they both heavily use particles to agglutinate phrases.
On top of these inconsistency, the new FFT contains more obvious typos and errors than the “legacy” FFT sourced from Tatoeba. Isn’t it too early to release the new FFT as an “alpha” version? I don’t even assume that the content of new FFT is written by a native speaker.
