Comment by dkaleta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkaleta | Hacker News Reader

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> used Duolingo to help me learn Spanish, and I was struck by how artificial it is.

I've had the same experience with Duolingo and long story short decided to experiment with what would be the best way to learn the language if you're not advanced enough to consume content for natives. I wanted to created something that would have the same value as content for natives (interesting and real), but would be comprehensible to non-advanced learners.

Just last week I opened up access to my app (with over 50 videos) to Beta testers. If anyone is learning Spanish and would like to try it out and give me feedback, I would appreciate it.

Obstino U is an app that mimics a real university where you take classes about the things you are interested in like climate change, the history of china, cognitive biases, diets, investing, etc, but you do it in the language you want to learn.

Simply put, you learn things you are interested in and in the process, you learn language mostly subconsciously.

We use simplified language, gesticulation, and drawings to convey powerful and rich stories so that even beginner students can understand them.

https://www.obstino.com

EDIT: This is an iOS app only for now.

EDIT 2: I just added a sample video we make on YouTube in case you don't want to install the app but want to take a look: https://youtu.be/N2fiVLUJGvM

Why is this an app at all as opposed to a website?

Why should it be a website as opposed to an app?

Making it a website would allow people to use it on platforms other than iOS.

In short, Develop once, use by everybody everywhere.

It's not everybody's first thought. My sister was working with local university to build content to support access and awareness of accessibility resources (mostly for parents of disabled children) . She couldn't even parse the notion of making a website as opposed to an app. Who doesn't use an iPhone these days?? Who uses a computer to do stuff??? Ironically, it kills so many screen readers too. Plus you need specifically iOS developers instead of generic web developers. And redevelop multiple times if you want multiple platforms. Plus some people are wary of installing apps so there's an overhead loss there.

Just... A massive amount of unnecessary constraints if your goal is simply to get information out there. But apps are many people's default way of thinking, and certainly many companies are pushing it due to lock in benefits.

Edit : the original post now has a "here's a YouTube video if you can't / won't install an app", which, y'know, exemplifies it perfectly :).

Now, this looks like a labour of love so more power to author to use whatever method of getting it out there that they are comfortable with. But app has drawbacks over a website as well as benefits, is all :)

> Why should it be a website as opposed to an app?

Is this a serious question at all?

For starters, websites provide the lowest barriers to entry, and don't expect users to grant intrusive access to their personal systems.

I use very few apps, even on my phone. For most things I prefer the website. And most apps aren't substantively different than the website version anyways, in which case I will never use the app.

Man I wish I could automurder every single website dialog that tries to get me to use their shitty app for "the best experience"

Not the creator, but I did download it to try it. One feature it has is a custom video player that displays Spanish subtitles and you can tap on any word in the subtitles show the English translation of the word. I’ve never seen anything like this before and there’s probably no web standard for this. Complex touch interactions might be easier to add to an app.

Also, I’m not sure if this app has notifications yet, but notifications and badges are a good way to get people to come back to your app every day. I think websites can do push notifications now, but not badges.

This website does something similar

https://3ears.com/

Also, Duolingos useless and constant notifications made the app worse then it already was.

Also, how can a website not have badges? It's just a table that gets updated with pictures when a user performs a task.

This gamification stuff is rather annoying because it seems to forget that the user has to want to learn the thing they want to learn.

I was excited to try this out, but the pace of the videos are way too slow for me.

This is probably good for first time learners, but for me, it was painful

Maybe there could be a speed control? Of course it changes pitch of the sound, but aren’t we already used to listening podcasts on 2x speed anyway

Yes, so far we’ve made videos for beginner and intermediate students. None for advanced.

It sounds like you would be a good fit for advanced videos or perhaps you should start watching content made for natives (real podcasts, Netflix etc)?

Speed controls don't normally change the pitch of the sound, eg https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaEl...

I don't understand why people speed up podcasts.

"Consume more, faster!" - yeah, screw that. If I'm listening to something, it has my full and undivided attention, and I want to experience it at the pace it was created for.

I listen to them sped up because my comprehension is the same if not better. A lot of content is paced very slowly which is distracting/frustrating.

That's fine for you. I do not have the same experience.

Right.

So that's precisely why variable speed is important - otherwise a recorded lessons will work for one type of learner only. It's crucial to recognize exactly what you mention - different people's experience and preferences differ :). Ability to vary speed doesn't remove your option to listen at default speed, all it does is provide options for others who may have different preferences and different natural pace of speech or listening :).

>>"I don't understand why people speed up podcasts."

If your goal is to actually understand others, then fwiw, my own thoughts: I personally normally far far prefer articles to podcasts. I can go at my own speed and enjoy the way I want to. If a video or podcast is the only way for me to learn something or experience something, variable speed is the price of entry for me. Podcast or video is NOT a quiet relaxing interesting night with friends, (and most of them are not precisely planned artistic endeavours whose brilliance will be missed at different pace:) . I don't get a say, I don't get to ask questions, to interrupt, to change topic, to go on a tangent. The very basic agency affordance therefore is speed - whether slower or faster. It's not about "consume more faster". It's about pace that works for me the consumer

For lessons specifically, typically they are recorded far slower than holds my attention. Think of all the udemy classes - at recorded pace, I mentally check out after 3 minutes on average :( . So for recorded lessons, if I don't have control over speed, I'm extremely unlikely to make it.

Because most content has people speaking way too slow and it is boring, leads to distraction and hurts comprehension. It costs significant effort to concentrate on something that is too slow, which can easily be avoided by speeding it up. It's not about consuming more, it's about matching my comprehension speed and avoiding distraction.

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