YC-Funded Lingt Uses Games To Turn You Into A Language Learning Addict
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
<span style="font-size:24px;" class="blue">Learning is a game.</span>
look like they ought to be links to describing the features (they're blue!) and so sent me needlessly changing NoScript settings, to no avail. If this is just unimplemented, then OK, but otherwise you should change the colour scheme before leaving beta, or your users will be wasting precious seconds on the front page. (Apologies if you already knew!)
Human Japanese - basically an interactive textbook, with audio clips and interactive quizzes. Probably the best of the bunch.
Pocket Japanese - based on several series of podcasts, for different skill levels. Each lesson has a ~10min podcast, sentence by sentence breakdown, ~1-4min review track, vocabulary flashcards, and written grammar lesson. Interface can be a bit annoying, but the content and features are good.
iKana - for learning Hiragana and Katakana
AccelaStudy Japanese - for pure vocabulary cramming, very polished.
To the Lingt team - if an iPhone app isn't already on your roadmap, it definitely should be. It's a ridiculously convenient way to learn a language.
I wonder if there are as many resources for korean.
That said, I love the trend, from Yelp to all these YC companies, of deliberately planning the user experience to include these systems.
I don't thing games deserve as much credit as they sometimes get, either. I went to a Cub Scout troop where we had the same kind of points, rank and achievements that are typically denoted as "gameplay elements" today.
1) Perhaps there are theoretical reasons for this, but it surprised me that the characters are always presented in conjunction with their pinyin. I would have thought it would be better to train for recognition of the characters unaided by the pinyin, some of the time.
2) It was taking a long time to respond to my input, at times, and this was resulting in input I didn't intend. E.g., I would go to click "I don't know" right near the end of the allotted time, and this would get translated into a click on the subsequent round. Usually, that click would be in the wrong area for that round. There were also a couple of times where the answer it offered was clearly wrong, based on what was presented on the screen. If you want to find these cases, you may be able to get it from your analytics. My username is throwaway, and this happened between 8pm and 10:30pm EST last night.
3) You need a better way to highlight availability of the vocab lists, and more information about what each list contains.
4) The entry mechanism is going to be confusing for many people. Most people don't know how to enter a "ü" for instance. The fact that it is case sensitive is also going to be a problem. Also, the focus shifts are confusing. If you click on "I don't know," the focus is still on that button when you go to the next round, not the input field. Similarly if you click on "pause."
5) You need some way do disambiguate when there are synonyms in the vocab list.
Since you are in beta, I would find it helpful if there was a "report bugs" feature. For example, sometimes I noticed I would have something typed in correctly, but the application didn't recognize the tone marks I had (correctly) entered, which causes me to second guess myself. Or the voice recognition having trouble with certain words. I probably tried to pronounce the word for ten at least a hundred times unsuccessfully. I would expect to work at least once by accident. It would be great if I could just report this from within the app.
Other than that, I think the interface is great, and it's really FUN to use. Great job so far.
I sometimes know the mistake I made, it's minor, and I want to move on, so click the "Don't know" button in frustration. This then registers for the next question, rather than the one I was on.
I wish there was a non-click-through-a-list way to get the vocab. I'd like to be able to look at the words a little more systematically before even trying the interactive bits.
The pinyin below the symbols isn't big enough - I find myself frequently getting a word right, except I have no clue what the inflections are because they were too small to notice.
Also, maybe make it a little more clear up front about inflections - I knew Chinese was inflected going in, but some may not.
Also, for the part of the learning where you type in the pingin, it doesn't read English language characters as correct unless they have the little symbols on top of them. I can't find those characters fast enough to type them in!
For pinyin input, there's a page that explains the input system linked to at the bottom, though we need to make it a bit more prominent. Basically you type a number 1-5 after each syllable to apply an accent to it.
Why is the image for "eight, 8" a glass of... very translucent-ish milk?
Not coming across in a negative way, at first I thought his site had a revamp. Now im just confused.
You are focusing on the easier part of learning a language - listening and reading. All of my past students struggled far more with pronouncing and writing.
Of course recording the users' pronunciations and handwritings, and then verifying them is a lot more technically challenging, but still doable. It will surely impress a lot of people. (Maybe that's in your long term plan?)
Not saying what you made is not useful, it certainly is. But it's not where the pain is in learning a language. Depending on the curriculum, it may not make that much of a difference on each student's language ability. But then again, our current education system is not making that much of a difference either.
ni3hao3 for instance.
There's a link down the bottom of the page during those sequences that explains how it works and how to practice.
It reminds me of Rosetta Stone but without the pictures. I'd pay for this service.
Regarding the approach (type in a translation for the requested term), I am a bit sceptical. It seems to require that there is one unique translation for each term. Maybe multiple choice would be better? This would also solve the irritating keymap for foreign language problem (http://smart.fm solves this nicely with a custom input mechanism in flash).
And I use a custom js-based keymap that works on all os'es, and teach students how to enter accents.
That being said, I'm almost still tempted to run through the intro vocabulary due to the achievement system.
Would definitely use something like this were it available for Italian and Spanish as well.
This is going to do very well. I'll go through the entire course.