I strongly believe that studying with sentences is an effective way to learn new vocabulary. If this is something you are interested in, I recommend checking out Clozemaster – a website and app that is built around this concept. It is designed to complement the use of other sentence based language learning apps like Duolingo.
There are a huge variety of language pairs available, with new ones being added all the time!
The “cloze” of Clozemaster relates to a cloze deletion test, where you are given a sentence with a missing word and you need to identify what the missing word is. Cloze tests are therefore a great method of learning to use words and grammar in context.
How does Clozemaster work?
Each language has its own bank of sentences, the number of which does vary depending on the language pair. For many of the popular languages, you can follow the Fluency Fast Track, which is designed to cover the most frequently used words in that language.
As I mentioned above, Clozemaster is all about filling in the correct missing word from a sentence. These sentences then have the most common word within that sentence missing, which is what you have to fill in. You are given a sentence in Japanese, and the clue for the missing word will be in the English translation of the sentence below the Japanese. In the free version, clicking ‘PLAY’ above, will start a round of 10 sentences to review.
You have the option of multiple choice or text input before you start each round. If you are in text input mode and get stuck, just click on the “?” button to the right of the Japanese sentence to view the 4 multiple choice options. Writing the correct answer earns you points – the closer you are to mastering the word, the more points you earn. Text input gives you twice as much points compared to multiple choice, so this is what I choose unless I only have a very short time to practice.
At the end of each round, you get some quick stats on how you did:
As you can see from the image above, you can set yourself a daily points target and email reminders to get in your daily practice too. My daily goal is 200 points currently, but I normally aim for 500-1000 depending on how much time I have.
Studying using the Play button is for learning new words (although some words that you have encountered before will appear too). For words that you have seen before, you will want to click on Review instead.
The Review function is based on spaced repetition intervals like those used in Anki and Memrise – the more often you answer correctly, the longer it will be before you see that same sentence again. Reviews tend to earn you a lot more points than studying new sentences.
Clozemaster also has a listening practice feature called Cloze Listening, as shown above. To access this, click Play and then choose “Listening” from the drop-down menu (the default is vocabulary). Cloze Listening is where you hear the sentence first, then have to fill in the missing word in the sentence. I think this makes for great listening practice as well as for learning vocabulary in context. Unfortunately, having a free account only allows you to do one round of 10 sentences to do every day.
The points you earn from your study sessions allow you to level up. Every time you do level up you get a fun little gif as a reward, which never fails to put a smile on my face! There are two types of levelling up – one for your whole account and one that relates specifically to each of the language pairs you study.
Every language pair has its own set of leaderboards, where you can try and score the most points for that week. I didn’t think that I would care about scoring highly on the leaderboard, but if there is someone I am close to in terms of points I tend to get motivated enough reviews to overtake them!
The Clozemaster App
I tend to use the web version of Clozemaster, but there are apps available for iOS and Android. I have used the Android app and I do not have much to say about it. I mean that as a good thing – because I have not had any issues using it at all. The fairly plain style of the website translates well into an app, and having the app is really convenient for a quick study session. It is synced to your account, so it is easy to switch between the website and the app if you need to.
Make sure you have some sort of Japanese keyboard installed though!
About Clozemaster Pro
Clozemaster is another freemium site – it is free to sign up and practice any language. However, you need the Pro version to do things like:
- Customise the number of reviews you want to do in each session and control how often you review new words.
- Get unlimited access to cloze listening practice
- Download the Fluency Fast Track sentences or sentences you mark in your Favourites for offline study.
- View more stats related to your study sessions
- The ability to click on any word and search for the meaning using Google Translate
- Get access to additional features such as Cloze-Reading, Cloze Collections and Pro Groupings.
Cloze-Reading is designed to help you boost your reading skills. This is where there are several missing words from a native piece of text in your target language which you then need to fill in.
The Cloze Collections function is in beta currently, but allows you to curate your own bank of sentences. This can be a mixture of sentences from within Clozemaster and sentences that you add yourself. I think this would be especially useful for language pairs that do not have a large number of sentences already on Clozemaster.
Pro Groupings allows you to break down the large bank of sentences into smaller ones. For Japanese, Pro Groupings gives you the ability to focus your learning on words from different levels of the JLPT.
My thoughts on Clozemaster so far
After using the free version of Clozemaster for a couple of months, I have found it to have more pros than cons:
Pros
- A huge range of languages to choose from
- Sentences use words in order of frequency, so you learn important words first
- Able to expose yourself to a range of sentence patterns
- Can practice both reading and listening skills
- Review intervals are spaced to help you retain vocabulary
- If you’re competitive, the leaderboard will motivate you to get your score as high as possible
Cons
- Japanese sentences and English translations are taken from the Tatoeba database, which is known for not being 100% accurate.
- You have to type most vocabulary in kanji (as opposed to hiragana), which might be difficult for complete newcomers to Japanese.
- No audio for Japanese within the vocabulary review section yet (this does exist for the most common language pairs)
I’m sure that the cloze deletion sentences can be replicated in something like Anki easily, which is what I would recommend to people who like a high degree of customisation. There are also excellent websites such as Delvin Language and Supernative which are specifically for Japanese and do have audio to go with their sentences.
However, for me Clozemaster is great because of the gamification aspect, as well as the fact I can practice on the go via the app. I would also give Clozemaster a go if you are learning (or maintaining proficiency in) a number of languages, as it is super simple to switch between languages and track your progress in each.
I really like Clozemaster, but I am not sure that for Japanese the features are fully fleshed out enough for me to justify the subscription cost of $8 per month at the moment. Having said that, there are new features being built into Clozemaster all of the time and I will certainly keep an eye out for any which might change my mind.
The good thing about Clozemaster is that you do not even have to sign up to try out the site – just choose a language pair and click Play to get started (which is what I did for a few days before even signing up)!
Whether you find that Clozemaster is useful for you or not, one thing I recommend checking out is the Language Challenge of the Day (or LCOD for short). These little challenges are fun ways to use your target languages in different ways every day.
Do you use Clozemaster? Do you find the website/ app useful? Please let me know in the comments!
Kotobites Japanese 