I’ve been using Clozemaster for some weeks now (this account is new, but I’ve been testing the system with another one) and I’m pretty satisfied with the system. I can already notice some improvements even in this short time period, but I’ve also found some problems with the sentences. Sometimes the translation is wrong, sometimes the sentence itself is incorrect or appears twice. That is not a huge problem if you already have an advanced level in the language you are practicing, but I would like also to use the app to study languages that I still don’t know well and I’m kind of insecure doing that.
Because of that, I would like to ask you about your experience. Have you faced the same issues? Do you think this is a real obstacle to use the site? Has the sentence quality improved in the last years? What is the administrator’s plan to improve the quality of the sentences?
Please, don’t take me wrong. As I said, I’m very satisfied with this service and I even convinced my mother to sign for a premium account too. I also understand that this issue is more serious in the case of minority languages, but I’m still asking myself if this problem will not affect my language learning process in the long term. I’m particularly worried about the possibility of learning wrong patterns that will be very difficult to fix in the future when I had internalized them.
Hi marcos.rm, I enjoyed reading your post. I’m fairly new but had studied Italian before which probably helped a lot but I can say that I enjoy every minute I’m here on Clozemaster. As with all learning sites on the net (Duo, Busuu etc) there will always be the occasional error or inaccurate translation. I note it and report it, and move on. I don’t let it deter me from enjoying this excellent site which is worth every bit of the premium I paid.
Also, unlike certain other sites, “Mike” actually contacts its members and does a pretty good job in keeping everyone happy.
(I’m the same guy who posted the original message, but I accidentally have done that with the account I’m going to delete. This is the username I adopted for years on Memrise and some habits are difficult the leave behind…)
I’m glad to hear about your positive experience! You’re totally right, mistakes can be found on any method. I’ve already found some strange or outdated constructions even on respected collections like Assimil. My only concern here is with the frequency of these problems, but it’s already a very good sign that the creator of the platform is available here to support users.
I’m also very satisfied with the community. Of course, this is just my first impression, but I’ve found some great discussions here on the forum. Lots of users seem very serious language learners with an incredibly supportive attitude towards each other.
And good luck with your Italian! This was the first language I ever learned and it brought me tons of happiness and good friends (and some overweight when I went there to improve the language hahaha)
Which language pair are you using? Russian-to-English is pretty good. I do find mistakes, but definitely not enough to interfere with my workflow (perhaps one error per 100+ sentences, and most of those are problems with the translation rather than the Russian sentence). In any case, I report them here (which is not difficult), and report and fix the sentences at their original source (Tatoeba). I do occasionally receive notifications indicating that some of the errors have been fixed at Clozemaster.
I study a number of minority languages and I have to say that the representations of them in Clozemaster have mostly been pretty good. Particularly in Welsh and Cornish, with the complicated inflections for persons and initial mutations, I have quite often found myself stumped only to work out that Clozemaster had it right. I think that’s pretty good going. The mistakes that I do find seem less the product of systematic flaws, and more the type of silly mistake that anybody could make. For instance, in Indonesian I found a sentence whose translation said “I’m just going out for some air” - “Air” being used in the original sentence. However, in Indonesian “Air” means water!
Hi Harold, the real Harold;-) Me too, I did Memrise, (liked it a lot) then found Busuu (great for grammar) and needed to move on quickly from Duolingo. So now it’s just Duo for my streak, Busuu to help people with English and ClozeM for my learning and streak. I always ask if I’m unsure of anything and enjoy being corrected so any errors aren’t a problem. I love it here, and the forum. It’s good to be serious about our learning but humour is vital in these days of Covid isolation, so a little lightheartedness works well too. Language and laughter can go well together methinks. Best to you!
There’s a bunch of faulty sentences and not enough comments to rely on to detect them. That said, it’s an excellent occasion to be careful with what you learn, and ask questions to teachers or native speakers/tandem partners on any occasion. I have maybe five questions a day from clozemaster and try to find answers for the most urgent of them.
I would advise against learning a language from scratch with Clozemaster, especially if you don’t plan on reaching to natives for their help at some point. (But then what’s the point of doing clozemaster for clozemaster only?)
edit: if I were to be extremely indulgent with clozemaster, I’d argue that coming accross mistakes is part of “learning in context”
Agree. Your second para is particularly wise. Had I not learnt previously, I might have been a little confused. One also has to take into account some very “adult” sentences, one of which came in quite handy in the car yesterday when some idiot cut me up! I really felt very Roman;-)
I agree. I went through the fluency fast track for Spanish (not 100% mastered yet) and there were very few errors, most of which were with the English translations, not necessarily with the Spanish itself.
I’d send pictures to my native friends on Whatsapp and ask if it’s OK or sounds weird if I wasn’t sure. Clozemaster is in its early stages in my opinion as we all use it and improve it together, it’s only going to get better.
Out of the 20,000 sentences, I’d say 99% were OK. (just speaking for Spanish). I can read fairly well, but I still have stuff I can’t read or say right; especially technical stuff LOL
I think ironing out errors just comes with practice, native resources, etc.
It’s kind of like how native English speakers use incorrect grammar and spelling errors constantly (your vs you’re etc.) and we think nothing of it most of the time. Granted my goals are to
French from English has quite a few errors, but I doubt it’s more than 1-2% of the total sentences. Over the past few weeks, I’ve received about 25 emails telling me that sentences I reported have been corrected, so it seems like they’re finally starting to improve the sentence quality.
All of the sentences I reported were from the first year I used the site. I quit using the report function when it seemed like they weren’t being used, but now it seems that it is worthwhile to do it.
I must respectfully disagree, having started both Kernewek and Finnish from utter zero and finding myself now with strong footings in both, without having engaged with a fluent speaker as yet (although that will happen). The haptic headrush of CM, free from the abstractions of theory, have given me a confidence I never came close to achieving through more traditional methods. I would unreservedly recommend CM to anyone who like me feels alienated by “structured learning”.
I would say it largely depends on the quality of the language pairing: if there are good direct translations you will be OK, but otherwise you may find yourself using “her” for “them” and using the wrong tenses and the like.
True, though given most of us are here to learn other languages, most errors might not be spotted and consequently reported unless a native speaker were to do the reverse pairing. I would love to help out in any way I can with spotting errors, but aside from adding the reverse pairing, I really don’t see an easy way to do it, unless someone has already commented on the sentence previously with a query (of which there were very few for for example Dutch and a lot of languages have none).
Exactly, I tend to have more issues with the provided English translations.
While I haven’t come here starting from zero, I would definitely use Clozemaster in future for any new languages I’d want to learn. I really don’t like the way most other methods (including more “traditional” ones like the Rosetta Stone) always start off with the same old “The woman eats the apple” repeated ad nauseam. Sure, if you just want to pick up some tourist phrases like “One coffee, please”, “I would like a seat next to the window”, “I have lost my passport”, etc. with minimal time investment, then Clozemaster is probably not really going to be able to provide that, but otherwise it’s more likely to cover words you’ll actually encounter in general conversations.
True, this is one of the things I fear most for in Italian between all the different verb tenses, formal/informal you, genders, etc. in Italian - even if the translation is correct, it’s generally too generic to be able to discern these kinds of differences without any actual information on it. I’d love if, after having solved the cloze, it would show you specifically what situation that sentence applies to and/or the alternative forms that would also be correct given the provided translation, though I realise neither of those are probably anything that would be possible to add in any way.