When to cloze phrases?

From: SuperMemoUser
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Subject: When to cloze longer phrases?

Question:

In your "struggling with incremental reading: treasury yields" video and also the WW2 incremental reading video you seem to cloze mostly single keywords. For example here https://youtu.be/_5pJp1W9Z1Y?t=472 (treasury yields: 7:52) you cloze only word "face" of face value. I'm struggling to see the benefit of this cloze. How would one use this in real life?

I want to know thought process of when to cloze longer phrases and when only single keywords.

For example, in the same treasury yields video there is this phrase: "Treasury yields are total amount of money you earn by owning U.S Treasury bills, notes or bonds".

I would cloze it like this:

Q: Treasury yields are [...](what?)

A: money you earn by owning treasury bills/-notes/-bonds.

I used to cloze only single keywords but i found they were not very effective on leaving sufficient memory trace (or at least it felt like so).

Answer:

Even highly experienced users will frequently make bad choices while generating cloze deletions. Those choices are usually quickly corrected at first repetition and/or at first failure. Experience makes it possible to predict problems. However, it is also often convenient, speedy, and less costly to make fast and liberal choices at first, and make corrections later. Decisions at first passive reading are much harder than later decisions while focusing on the attempt to answer a specific question separated from its context.

The way you cloze will depend on your knowledge, comprehension, goals and many other factors. If your answer is money you earn by owning treasury bills/-notes/-bonds, you add complexity and you add difficulty. This may increase the cost. However, if you are fluent in the subject (i.e. "not struggling"), the item may turn out easy and more valuable. What others do may serve as an inspiration, but you always need to make your own decision and observe your own feedback. If you start forgetting your "harder" cloze, you will know that something went wrong. If it stays healthy in learning, it will certainly provide more benefit than single word cloze that may be easier to guess. Clozing "face" in "face value" may be a typical effort when the student struggles with comprehension. It may serve to remember the name "face value", or help understand how bonds work. It may equally well turn out wrong and be hard to remember or answer. It may require extra cue or rewording or formulating as a straight question. Only that particular student will know how the item fares in the process to meet his particular needs.

This text and video are used to explain SuperMemo, a pioneer of spaced repetition software since 1987. For other videos see: SuperMemo Video