@Mike – Although this mostly relates to your other app, The Great Translation Game (TGTG), I am writing here in a Clozemaster forum because I think that we have more opinionated people here (… and I mean that in a good way) and active users.
I have been thinking, what if the next level of language learning after Clozemaster was that you could master the entire sentence after you have mastered a word. This thought always leads me to thinking about The Great Translation Game. I really want to love that app, but it is lacking something that Clozemaster isn’t. My forum discussion point is this: what if TGTG was more like Clozemaster. I mean, virtually the same thing as Clozemaster, but you are mastering entire sentences. You’re already pulling in all the sentences from Tateo here in Clozemaster. What if you did the same thing there, but instead of focusing on the cloze word, TGTG could bring you to the next level by focusing on cloze sentences - even better if they were the cloze sentences associated with the cloze words that you have already mastered.
As a developer myself, I understand that these things are often far easier said than done. However, this one might be worth exploring. TGTG is lacking something that this app doesn’t and it might just be the guidance that Clozemaster provides (by that I mean, pre-built sentences to work on, spaced repetition, categorization, etc). If you essentially replicated this format there, and gave the user the ability to use the sentences of their mastered cloze words, it would seem like a smoother transition to TGTG and a logical next step in your language learning.
Great idea. I’m currently doing something like this in Anki with sentences I get from textbooks / literature. I’d use something like this if it were added to CM.
@Floria7 I am curious to hear your thoughts about it when you do!
@6dDcHYgMAg I have tried doing it in both Anki and TGTG, but I get discouraged because it takes so much time to set it up. Plus, I struggle with deciding on the right content. I like the randomness of the Tateo sentences that Clozemaster uses.
Hi @dac573 It looks really good, perhaps for large chunks of translation. Not sure how to set it all up, looks a bit complicated. I do lots of writing in our Italian club (not too long tho) but find a good translator is really all I need. Stay well, sir.
I have already asked for an option to show the entire translation before displaying the target sentence. That may not be exactly what you are asking for, but it should be easy to implement. The benefit, as I see it, is that it would force one to translate the whole sentence, at least roughly, before concentrating on the cloze.
The beauty of using Tatoeba sentences is that they are already translated by humans, not by a machine (although sometimes you might wonder).
Thanks, @morbrorper … I am not sure if we are referring to the same thing or not. I should have been more specific since there are several different study options. I use Listening with Writing and manually reveal the translation when needed. So, for me, I listen to the sentence, type the cloze word, translate in my head, and then reveal the translation.
What I am suggesting for TGTG is to be able to do that same thing for the entire sentence. It would be listening with no words displayed, type the entire sentence (as opposed to just the cloze word in Clozemaster), translate in my head, and then reveal the translation. Basically, the same thing as here in Clozemaster, but over there you would focus on mastering the entire sentence.
@dac573 thanks for the post! Good points and that’s kind of where I ended up - TGTG was becoming Clozemaster except you have to type out the entire sentence instead of just fill in a missing word so I decided to continue focusing our efforts on Clozemaster for now. The import options for TGTG are quite smooth (if I might say so ) and include a way to quickly/easily import sentences from Tatoeba (in fact we should probably make the UI for creating collections on Clozemaster a bit more like the UI for creating challenges on TGTG) though I definitely hear what you mean that having predefined sets/challenges would be ideal.
I’m curious to hear if there’s a particular breakdown you have in mind (by Most Common Words for example, or something else?), and adding a way to both sign in via Clozemaster as well as import/sync your sentences from Clozemaster is on the to-do list.
We may also end up integrating TGTG into Clozemaster such that it’d be possible to type out entire sentences on Clozemaster (though that doesn’t quite fit with the “cloze” concept for Clozemaster, and hence our hesitation ). Perhaps what @morbrorper suggested could be a good middle ground - not quite typing out the entire sentence, but you have the opportunity to think through the entire sentence based off the translation before seeing the cloze-sentence.
My fellow users can probably come up with more creative suggestions, but here are my ramblings thoughts:
If you decide to keep TGTG separate, my suggestion is to keep the two sites as similar as possible with the main difference being that one focuses on mastering words and the other focuses on mastering sentences. I wouldn’t change the categories at all (Perhaps minor label changes like ‘Sentences containing the Most Common Words’). Additionally, if you did keep them “cloned” and separate, I would move some of the more advanced features like Cloze-Listening and Cloze-Reading over there and keep the import as one of those advanced features.
One note about the import from a user perspective. I agree with you that it is quite smooth. However, even though it is easy to use, it is still too much work for an application that encourages people to use it on a daily basis to maintain streaks and board rankings. Users are too busy trying to keep up with reviews and progressing with new words and sentences.
On the other hand, if you do pursue merging the two apps, I would definitely introduce the import as a new feature in Clozemaster. Then, to bring the sentence writing concept into Clozemaster, I would explore a way to provide a setting to assign the percentage of words to hide in sentences. Obviously, setting it to 100% would give you the ability to practice writing the entire sentence after hearing it or seeing the translation.
Merging them actually seems like a much bigger undertaking to me. Plus, as you mentioned, it would introduce elements into Clozemaster that don’t really fit in with the “cloze” concept.
