Cloze Style Reviews vs Flash Cards for Vocab

Bunpro
#1

Hey all,

Up until recently I’ve been studying the N5 vocab deck using the traditional flash card style and was happily chugging away with 10 new cards a day. I recently switched to the “cloze” style reviews and found I was completely blanking on words I recognized instantly in flash cards (e.g. at seasoned level). The reviews also take like 10x as long so I’m getting buried with orders of magnitude more reviews a day than I can handle.

My thinking was that while cloze is slower, I’m getting reading and listening practice at the same time (via the example sentences), so maybe it’s ultimately more productive than flash cards. I’m also hoping it will help with speaking because while I can read relatively well, any time I try to form sentences I blank on tons of the words.

Has this been anyone else’s experience? Does this theory sound correct or does it sound like I’m wasting my time with the close system? Just curious to hear others’ opinions.

Thanks!

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#2

Taking advantage of the example sentences for each word is the best way to make use of Bunpro’s vocabulary decks IMO. The sentences tend to give a good range of contexts in which the word can be used as well as reinforcing grammar and other vocabulary.

Personally I use the Reading Question / Reveal and Grade Answer review method rather than the cloze style of filling in the blanks myself. There are a number of reasons, but the biggest is that there are words that get used in contexts I wouldn’t anticipate from the basic English definition given. For example, the word 掛ける, “to hang up”, has the example sentence

車のハンドルに手を掛ける。
To put your hands on the steering wheel of a car.

Although I can see the logic in Japanese, in English it’d be unusual to say “I hang my hands from the steering wheel,” so I wouldn’t anticipate the usage of 掛ける in this context before I had already seen it. So I’ll use the example sentences as ways to flesh out my understanding of each word, rather than attempting to test my recall and production.

Of course, there’s merit to the cloze system, and it’s certainly worth getting practice in production so you can put together your own sentences. But my opinion is that, especially at the beginning stages of language learning, it’s better to spend time learning to recognize a bunch of basic vocabulary than on trying to produce a smaller number of vocabulary words. Either way, learning words in context is definitely better than just word-definition flash cards.

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#3

Honestly in my opinion, I would keep doing the traditional style of reviewing vocab, although cloze does cover the variety of use cases for the certain word and its pretty strong, however I think immersion would usually tell you how its used. Like the word 掛かる (to hang, to come into view, to take), using immersion you could tell with context what that word is trying to convey, plus how its used. And I feel that immersion should be the one taking up most of of your time and not just studying imo, but cloze has its merits like what HosannaEx said.

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#4

So, cloze is harder than reading. I would pick depending on need.
I do most of my vocab on the ‘reading’ type review. I look at the word, think the english meaning and hiragana, then flip to see if I’m right.
Some exceptions: I have the prompt “write your address” and then check what I wrote becuase I need to be able to write my address, not just read it.
[My JET Handbook told me to do this when you move to Japan]
If there is someword you want to type (like: 東京 or 募集? I can read it fine, but when I go to type it I don’t remember where the う goes) use cloze

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#5

In my personal opinion, either cloze or reading/reveal are the best methods by far. You’re building a lot more mental associations of words that will be seen in a similar context, which gives your brain something to latch onto in terms of giving that word some ‘real’ meaning, rather than just being able to identify them.

There is a lot of research on the topic of memory science, and while SRS is a basic method, anything that actually helps you build associations is going to be far more effective in developing long-term memory. The most effective of all are things that drive emotional responses (you only need to be punched in the nose once to remember the person who punched you in the nose forever, for example).

As a method of optimizing my time, I would personally choose the reaading/reveal method, as I get the benefit of reading and absorbing a lot of Japanese, but don’t need to waste all the extra time thinking about the word. Cloze is great when you want to practice specifically for production/being able to remember words to use in your day to day life.

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#6

That’s interesting, Bunpro has been my first introduction to “cloze” and while I used the reading/reveal method before. I really like cloze. It’s as you said, it feels like I’m placing things into long-term memory. When I jump into reviews, I find myself being able to build out the clauses more naturally and I’m able to think of ways the sentence can be conjugated, I feel more comfortable playing with other words to see if they can be conjugated in the same way.

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#7

Thanks for the feedback everyone, this discussion has been really helpful. I switched to the reading/reveal method for now with the plan being to “bootstrap” myself with as much vocabulary as I can and then work specifically on production later, maybe after finishing the N5 deck. Because the reviews are so much faster than cloze, I have bandwidth to add 5 words while maintaining an empty review every day.

For context, I need to eventually practice production as well because I’ll be going to Japan next year and want to be able to speak as well as read. I think at the pace I’m going with the read/reveal method I should have time to learn to read the words first and then practice production later on (I hope)!

#8

@algebro
If you want to stick to reading/flashcard cards then I would suggest using bunpro mobile app with gestures enabled.
Doing reviews like this feel very intuitive and fast.

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#9

I recomend reading the sentence outloud to practice pronouciation. There are other tools but this is the only speaking practice I get cause I’m lazy :stuck_out_tongue:

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#10

Yep. I read every card out loud, try to translate it, answer it, then check. Unfortunately a lot of the sentences use words and grammar I don’t know but I figured this would be an effective way to use the tool.

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