<nothing> as a legal answer in JCloze

[Sean Penney]

Short version:

In a HotPotatoes JCloze actvity, can a correct answer be <no answer at all>?

Long version of same question:

I want to make a JCloze activity where the student has to decide which preposition to put between a conjugated verb and an infinitive in French. Sometimes the answer is "à", sometimes the answer is "de", but sometimes the correct answer is no preposition at all.

When making the JCloze activity, HotPotatoes will gladly let me code in a preposition as the correct answer, but how do I code in <nothing>?

One workaround is to make a Drop-down list JCloze activity and use "..." or "(aucune préposition)" or "√" as the correct answer. A caveat with this approach is that when the student checks their work, HotPotatoes will elegantly place the correct answer in the sentence, and I would want to avoid:

1. Elle veut ... voir la carte.

2. Ils aiment (aucune préposition) la salade.

3. Je déteste √ attendre l'autobus.

Another workaround is to make a Drop-down list Cloze activity and include the preposition and the infinitive (or just the infinitive) as possible answers. This would allow HotPotatoes to make elegantly readable sentences after checking, but I wouldn't want to try this with a regular Cloze activity (and have to teach the students to type in the preposition and the infinitive where necessary).

Any other workarounds out there that I'm not thinking of?

Hmm, while I'm thinking about it, can you have <nothing> as a legal answer in a Fill-in-the-blank JQuiz activity?

Happy New Year to all!

[Martin Holmes]

Hi there,

An answer of nothing at all is a bit difficult to handle because the fact that there is an answer of nothing at all has to be signalled to the student somehow.

I think in this case I would append the following word, so the choices become:

3. Je déteste _____ l'autobus.

attendre
d'attendre
à attendre

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Martin