Cloze Deletion Flashcards: What They Are and When to Use Them

A cloze deletion card is a sentence with a word or phrase blanked out, and you supply the missing part. El agua está ___ (cold). The answer is fría. It's one of the simplest ways to make a card that tests recall in context, and Woźniak's "20 rules of formulating knowledge" calls it "easy and effective".

Why cloze works

A front-and-back card tests a fact on its own. A cloze card tests it where it's used: the sentence around the blank supplies grammar, collocations and meaning, and you still have to produce the answer yourself rather than recognise it. That makes it especially useful for:

• Verb forms: the sentence decides which form is needed.
• Grammar words: prepositions, particles and articles that don't translate one-to-one.
• Vocabulary you can recognise but can't produce yet.

How cloze is written in Anki

Anki marks a cloze with double braces: `{{c1::fría}}`. The number lets one note produce several cards: `{{c1::...}}` and `{{c2::...}}` in the same sentence become two cards, each blanking a different part. In Decks you select the word in the card editor and mark it as cloze.

When not to use it

• When the sentence gives the answer away. If only one word could possibly fit, the card tests reading, not memory.
• For isolated facts with no natural sentence. A plain front-and-back card is clearer.
• For too many blanks at once. One blank per card keeps each card a single question.

Decks with cloze cards

Spanish Conjugation (4,000+ verb-form cards), Spanish 9000 Sentences and Japanese Core 6000 all use cloze cards.