Cloze tests for lessons

Open Forum
1

Suggestion: as one of the tasks people are asked to complete for each lesson, how about a fill-in-the-blanks exercise based on that lesson? I know we currently have them for the LingQs created from a given lesson, but that’s slightly different in that the sentences are drawn from all the lessons that a student has studied. I’m talking about a Cloze test where the sentences come from the current lesson only, and the word choices could be different inflections, or misspellings, of the word being learned, or similar but different words.

That would make those people happy who don’t feel like they’ve got closure (excuse the pun) on a lesson until they’ve passed a test based on it.

2

I am not a fan of all these tests, but I think it may help to keep bigger percentage of newcomers stay on. Unfortunately, people get used to the scheme ‘learning = passing tests’. When I was a pupil, my parents always said: ‘It does not matter what marks you receive. Our final goal is knowledge.’ But for the majority of people learning goal is passing tests. They do not feel that they have learned anything until they pass some test. Some of them are even addicted to tests, I think.

And when people, assuming that there is no language learning without tests, come to LigQ and see

  1. Read & Listen
  2. LingQ New Words
  3. Submit Writing
  4. Speak to a Tutor
    they don’t think that this site is serious and using this site can help them to learn language. So, they even don’t try to understand the system and go out.

Perhaps it would be nice to have several tests:
i. vocabulary tests

  • fill-in-the-blank test
  • listening comprehension (mmm… a student listen to lingqed word and have to choose right hint)
    ii. grammar tests, like Helen has suggested above.
    iii. content understanding (who is taller? Who is younger? for the second (?) episode of ‘Who is she?’ for example)

The last two tests can’t be composed automatically, that’s why they need to be composed manually. And it will be up to a provider/editors to create these tests. But I think that having such tests for a beginner content (especially for lessons from the English section of our library) will help to increase percentage of newcomers who give LingQ a try. They will see the sequence of tasks they get used to

  1. Read & Listen
  2. LingQ New Words
    (Perhaps, it would be wise to add ‘Flashcard your lingqs’ task, to be sure that newcomers learn about this possibility from the first glance on any lesson)
  3. Test yourself
  4. Submit Writing (quick suggestion: it would be nice if providers and editors could define several default topics for a lesson. So, submitting writing for the lesson, a student can choose one of suggested topics or any other topic)
  5. Speak to a Tutor

Also average test score can be added to lingq statistics. Average test score for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month.
Oh! And graphics of your activity! For a last 6 months, for example. You can see the dynamics of your created and learned lingqs, read words, test scores, so on monthly, weekly, daily.

It seems I should stop now :slight_smile: I have too much suggestions. I understand that some of these suggestions do not correspond with LingQ method, but people get used to this way of learning languages. We can’t break all this paradigm in first 5 seconds. Newcomers look at LingQ lesson first 5 seconds, do not understand the paradigm LingQ is based on, close the tab and never return. But if we pretend to be ‘a serious language learning site’, newcomers perhaps will stay for some longer period. Later, they will understand and adopt this method of language learning and will become addicted with LingQ :smiley:

So, my opinion is: LingQ need to pretend to be ‘a serious language learning site’. (My coworkers call LingQ “шарашкина контора” — English-Russian Multitran dictionary )

3

Also I think that sequence of tasks can be dynamical. If a lesson have a video, the system can add ‘Watch a video explanation’ to this sequence. In this case it would look exactly like ‘a normal language learning process’ :slight_smile:

4

Interesting.

5

The grammar test I suggested could I think be generated automatically (though I don’t know how). But you are right Rasana, some comprehension questions at the end of the lesson would make the textbook junkies happier :wink: I guess it’s up to the lesson provider to write them when they share the lessons.

6

Ooh…another idea! When students choose to do a piece of writing based on a lesson, it would be good to steer them towards practicing the vocabulary and the grammar presented in that lesson. I think LingQ already does that in that you get shown a list of the LingQs that are included in that lesson, but the point could be emphasised if, when you save or submit your work, a sentence pops up saying “you have used [number] words contained in the lesson in your writing, well done!” or some such.

7

These are some interesting ideas, and perhaps some things that we’ll consider implementing in the future. In any case, it’s great to have so many ideas rolling in :slight_smile:

8