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Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

clozemaster.com

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Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#31

I am a regular Duolingo learner but I have yet to see how this is better in a significant way (I am not trying to be a dick but just giving honest opinion - sorry :( ). Or maybe I just missed something. I played around with your product and I've found that I need to enter words or select missing ones like in Duolingo. It seems a bit more difficult than Duolingo though. The biggest problem to me with Duolingo that it…

Language learning also isn't about finding the one app to rule them all. It's about using various different approaches in parallel that, together, expose you to the breadth. This doesn't need to be better than Duolingo, it just needs to work a different part of the brain. One problem with Duolingo is that its fill-in-the-blank always comes with a word bank which makes them all pretty trivial. You don't need much unde…

True. Learning a language just from a single app is a lost cause (at least for now and, IMO, for foreseeable future).

>Open-ended cloze tests, on the other hand, actually force me to think. In this regard, the Duolingo web-app fares much better, because all the answers you have to type in. After you get used to that, using mobile app feels like cheating :).

>Didn't Duolingo remove speaking tests from their app recently because everyone toggled them off? They are still there. Web app has even a version of that on steroids - they give you a sentence in English and you have to vocally translate it.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#32
post #2

Hi Hacker News! My name's Mike. I'm the creator of Clozemaster. Clozemaster is language learning through mass exposure to vocabulary in context. The goal is to fill in the missing word in a given sentence. The missing word is the most difficult word in the sentence according a frequency list for that language, and the sentences are from the awesome dataset at Tatoeba. I started the site just under a year ago to answe…

Several years ago I started something similar. The idea was to create cloze test flashcards. That never really took off, but some teachers liked the general idea so I rewrote it to become a cloze quiz creator tool which is now http://www.learnclick.com (it now offers much more than cloze quizzes). Congratulations Mike for coming up with something for the individual learner. I think having premade cloze sentences was what was missing with my original solution.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#34

I am a regular Duolingo learner but I have yet to see how this is better in a significant way (I am not trying to be a dick but just giving honest opinion - sorry :( ). Or maybe I just missed something. I played around with your product and I've found that I need to enter words or select missing ones like in Duolingo. It seems a bit more difficult than Duolingo though. The biggest problem to me with Duolingo that it…

Your problem learning German probably stems from "Deutsche Methode", i.e. throwing you without any preparation into talking in a strange language without explaining anything, not even meaning of words very often. For some reason this is extremely popular and distinguished method in Germany, maybe stemming from German masochism formulated in "if it doesn't hurt, it doesn't count", which you see around here everywhere. More pragmatically it probably brings Goethe Institut much more money than making the language more accessible (which is certainly doable).

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#36

Hi Mike, Love this app, love the simplicity of the user interface. Do you know of a way to quickly save words to a file? (I ask because I'm brushing up on my chinese and have noticed I've forgotten some words.) Thanks. (^-^)

Answered my own question: http://www.heapnote.com/ -has a chrome browser extension, saves the word (hanzi!), and marks the date. Sweet!

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#38
post #27

Hi Mike, loving the app so far. Any thoughts on a one-time lifetime payment for pro?

Glad to hear! Yep I'm definitely considering a one-time lifetime payment for Pro, just trying to decide how best to price it - looking to make it available within the next few months.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#39

Hi Mike, Love this app, love the simplicity of the user interface. Do you know of a way to quickly save words to a file? (I ask because I'm brushing up on my chinese and have noticed I've forgotten some words.) Thanks. (^-^)

Answered my own question: http://www.heapnote.com/ -has a chrome browser extension, saves the word (hanzi!), and marks the date. Sweet!

Nice!

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#40

I am a regular Duolingo learner but I have yet to see how this is better in a significant way (I am not trying to be a dick but just giving honest opinion - sorry :( ). Or maybe I just missed something. I played around with your product and I've found that I need to enter words or select missing ones like in Duolingo. It seems a bit more difficult than Duolingo though. The biggest problem to me with Duolingo that it…

Thanks for the feedback! always_good's response is really on point. Clozemaster isn't intended to be better than Duolingo, rather it's meant to be a complement and another tool to add to your language learning toolbox. Speaking is also beyond the scope of Clozemaster at the moment. I'd totally recommend Clozemaster to help get more exposure, expand your vocab, and improve your comprehension, but for speaking - something like italki is probably your best option. Regarding learning sentence by sentence vs. getting a "full picture" - I would like to try to expand Clozemaster to include short texts at some point with a missing word per sentence. Hopefully down the line!
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