The wrong answers in multiple choice are almost always completely unknown words. Words I’ve never seen thus far. At least in the early stage of learning the language (500 most common words).
The correct answer becomes very obvious because of this: Simply select the answer that is the only word that looks vaguely familiar. Multiple choice becomes much too easy due to this because you don’t have to know anything.
@mike: It would be good if the wrong answers were drawn from the words you’ve already seen (as a cloze) so far, so that you actually have to think to find the correct answer.
Edit: I just discovered that there already is a discussion on the topic.
It’s even initiated by Mike. I should have posted there, had I known of it.
It’s a difficult problem to solve without human curation. Your suggestion is good, but it increases the risk of presenting more than one possibly correct answer; think about all the different Spanish verb conjugations that correspond to English you.
I must confess I use multiple choice all the time, but I switch to that mode only after first having seen the cloze in text-input mode and decided what I would like to answer; it’s faster that way.
That’s a good strategy. I use it too. With multiple choice mode, I often see the correct answer in my peripheral vision while I’m still reading the question, before I had the chance to actively think. Your strategy hides all answers, correct and wrong, until I’m ready to verify my own answer.
Would users other than myself like the idea of blurring/hiding all answers for the first, say, two seconds and only then show them, after a certain time has passed? Or would that be too disruptive (depending on the length of the time)? The time would be very short, just enough to read the question to avoid waiting for the answers to appear. The hiding and showing would be done in a non-janky way as to not distract.