Has anyone had success with Massive-Context Cloze Deletion (MCD)?

[Friday]

Massive-Context Cloze Deletion (MCD) was a study method that appeared a year or so ago. In this method, students create Anki decks that are just sentences with words randomly removed, e.g.:

• 我要买一条_。

While studying, the student tries to remember which word goes in the empty space, e.g.:

• 我要买一条裤子。

Even though the cloze could have many potential answers, the student must memorize the exact answer in the deck.

When this method first appeared, I decided not to use it, as it was untested, seemed to have several problems, and I could not understand any benefit.

But now, it has been around for a while. Has anyone tried this for at least a year? Is it difficult for you to remember the answers after the card spacing grows to several months? Did you find any benefits to using this method?

[dtcamero]

this was a technique that Khatz from AJATT came up with for SRS'ing japanese...

a few things to point out:

1- rather than randomly replacing words with blanks, Khatz mostly focused on two-character vocab and/or grammatical constructs.

2- the example you posted would be a normal close-deletion card. a massive-context close deletion card would have a large section of text, e.g. a few paragraphs, with which to better contextualize the missing piece. the idea was that it would be handicapped reading practice, while also making the question easier.

3- with the help of massive context, there should only be one possible answer implied in the blank, not many potential answers.

i used these for a while. they are useful and interesting (especially for grammar) but not the end-all-be-all for me personally. I think we should all try as many types of srs-formats as possible and see what works best for us all individually.

regardless, here are the original articles explaining from the source what the whole mcd idea was about: (it's for japanese but could be used for chinese equally well imho)

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-it-about-these-mcds-part-1

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-it-about-these-mcds-part-2-the-awesomeness

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-it-about-these-mcds-part-3

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-it-about-these-mcds-part-4-the-active-output

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/what-is-it-about-these-mcds-bonus-the-easy-button

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/12-free-mcd-examples

[Eliot]

I would unequivocally say that, yes, they have had a major positive impact on my Chinese ability.  Prior to MCDs I used traditional front-back flashcards and found that I was really just training myself to recall English definitions from Chinese words and vice-versa.  This is useful, but I ended up thinking in English when I wanted to speak in Chinese.

 

My biggest concern switching to MCDs was that I wouldn't reliably memorize a word's English definition.  After all, a proper MCD has no English on it at all.  But I found that whatever loss there was in not memorizing English definitions was more than offset by the huge improvement in my ability to construct native-sounding Chinese sentences and my intuitive "feel" for what Chinese words were appropriate to use and when.

 

I was so impressed by the impact MCDs had for me that I actually spent the last 5 months building a website that allows you to read Chinese source material and turn any word into an MCD with a single click (epicmandarin.com).  I'm working with some friends in China to produce the content, and since we just started publishing a few weeks ago there's a very limited amount.

[Eliot]

Small correction to my previous post:

 

I stated that a proper MCD should have no English on it, but Khatz states on his blog that it's perfectly fine to have English on your card if you're a beginner: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/12-free-mcd-examples.

 

I personally prefer the entire card to be in Mandarin.

[112233]

Hi Friday, I've used this method for quite a while and have been happy with it. I started off by doing standard sentences (i.e. no clozes) and shifted to this later on. The main benefit I've found is that the recall is more "active" rather than passive. Rather than just simply reading out the sentence and moving on if you understand it, you have to really think about what word / character goes in the spot. I've found I'm more likely to remember the sentence / word i'm trying to study using the cloze method. You can also use it to improve your character writing / recall by writing out the character / word on a piece of paper each time you come across as a cloze. Takes a bit more time than the regular sentence method but definitely worth a shot. 

[ChTTay]

I have been doing 'sentence flashcards' where I delete a word (cloze) from the sentence or a key structure. As the moment, I'm writing the English definition at the end of the sentence.

 

Maybe it's worth not adding the definition? What do you think?

[imron]

I think if you can do it without the English definition, then that's a much better way to go about it.

[Eliot]

Hi ChTTay,

 

I second imron's advice.  Last summer I wanted to see what it would feel like to study a language from scratch using MCDs without any English.  So I took Japanese, which I had no prior experience in, and made about 150 MCDs over the course of the month.  Granted I only did this for a month and haven't spent any time on Japanese since, I found that I was able to do my reviews accurately and timely without any English whatsoever on the card.  

 

Note that I put audio files on my cards to match the full card text, so if I forgot the answer to a cloze I could listen for the answer in the audio.  I don't think this is "cheating," especially as a beginner, because it's essentially SRS listening practice.