|
 |
Confused: Massive-Context Cloze Deletions | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3863 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 11 01 November 2013 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Hi
I was reading an article about the Massive-Context Cloze Deletions technique. This seemed to suggest that you should make cards of the following format, using sentences from real native sources. (I may have this wrong, the article examples were in Japanese, of which I don't understand even the basics). FRONT: Juan tiene un conejo _____. BACK: Juan tiene un conejo blanco. What I don't understand is this: there is no "right" answer to this. "Juan tiene un conejo negro" would be just as objectively correct. What is the value of memorising "blanco" in this context when any other colour adjective would be just as correct? I know this is a contrived example, but I think this will hold true for most more realistic sentences as well. Wouldn't this make more sense? FRONT Juan tiene un conejo _____. Juan has a white rabbit. -------- BACK Juan tiene un conejo blanco. -------- Would anyone care to have a go at explaining what the thinking behind MCD is, because at the moment I don't get it at all. Edited by samfrances on 01 November 2013 at 1:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 11 01 November 2013 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I don't think MCD has ever been explained particularly well, at least not for people who don't read Japanese and who don't buy one of Khatzumoto's products (either the MCD kit or Neutrino).
But it actually seems like a pretty promising format, and I've experimented with different variations on the technique. None of this is official! But maybe some of it will help you discover some more useful card formats. First of all, I have the most luck with cards where there's one unambiguous answer. For example:
The only word that fits there, at least in the US, is "sack." There's a surprising number of sentences out there where one word fits especially well. As I understand it, many words in Chinese and Japanese are built from multiple character compounds. This allows you to make two cards, each of which gives half the "answer":
You can do something similar with multi-word connector phrases in many languages:
However, all these examples have a weakness: They're short and boring, and they have no context. The "massive context" part helps a lot. Using an ereader or copy-and-paste, grab an entire paragraph from a book you really enjoy. This will narrow down the possible answers considerably, and you don't necessarily need to read the whole card. You can certainly put English hints on the front side of the card. (I think the Anki syntax is {{c1::answer::hint}}, using one of the cloze templates.) But there's at least a few people out there—I'm one of them—who find that translating between two languages is a highly counterproductive reflex. I find it much easier to avoid interference if I can "shut my English down", and allow my French to stand on its own. But I think this is one of those things that varies from person to person. But this is why I love monolingual card formats with unambiguous answers. I also make a lot of regular sentence cards, with one word in a sentence highlighted on the front, and a definition on the back. When reviewing the card, my goal is to understand that word in context. This is handy when I already know a couple of ways to say something, but I want to passively recognize a larger number of synonyms. Edited by emk on 01 November 2013 at 3:22am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 11 01 November 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Yeah I would say it works like this:
1. read 2. guess the unfamiliar words from the context 3. pick a fun sentence 4a. if the gap doesn't make it ambiguous, make a one-sentence card. 4b. if massive context is needed to make it unambigous, make a massive context card. 4c. if it's still ambiguous, make a recognition card. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 11 01 November 2013 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
BTW my personal preference is to make the cards small enough that I will read the whole thing. I know I don't have to, but that's what I prefer :) Another preference is that I don't use definitions just for the sake of it. I don't mind including individual translated words in the answer. Btw random tip: if you like typing up the answers, best have a separate field for that. In the answer field, copy the whole sentence and bold the "interesting" part. don't have a single word in the answer field. Edited by Serpent on 01 November 2013 at 2:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5039 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 5 of 11 01 November 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hmm, but how can you know that there's only one word that goes there? Like, if I was learning English, I might happily say "bag" to answer that and have no idea whether or not that's appropriate. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 11 03 November 2013 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I think there's nothing wrong with specifically stating that it's not the simple word you already know, like "not bag" or "don't use the word take" or some such. Just don't expose yourself to grammatically incorrect forms/phrases/collocations. don't make a card like this:
I ____ the bill. (not "payed") Better add "it's an irregular verb". Edited by Serpent on 03 November 2013 at 1:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 11 03 November 2013 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is a very good question. The answer has two parts, I think: 1. When you're a beginner, just go ahead and trust the sentence, as you originally discovered it. But when you're reviewing the card one day, and you realize you know two words which would fit just fine, feel free to discard the card. It will have served its purpose. 2. As you get better, you should really start to develop a sense for what works and what doesn't. Almost everybody who succeeds with SRS is also doing a huge amount of reading. The AJATT site has some horror stories about what happens when people try to learn a language SRSing 10,000 random sentences without ever reading fun books. So when I read that Santa threw sa hotte over his back, I said, "Interesting. I've never seen somebody use that word in French. I would have guessed son sac, which I've seen used to refer to bags a few thousand times. Une hotte must be a special-case word for 'bag' that only works in certain contexts. And does Santa ever carry a sac? Let's keep my eyes open." Also, it's never worth getting all hung up over one particular SRS card. If you're uncertain or annoyed or simply sick of seeing that card, go ahead and delete it. If the word was important, and you're reading enough, you'll run into again anyway. If you read ebooks and you figure out a good workflow for dealing with highlighted sentences, you ought to be able make 150 good cards on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Ideally, good cards should be available in vast quantities, and they should be entirely disposable. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 11 03 November 2013 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
YES. Here's a post from ajatt about the importance of deleting cards.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
