https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...
I'd really appreciate any ideas or suggestions.
At the very beginning, it's very hard to find texts I can grasp, given limited vocabulary. A collection of interesting texts that ease in vocabulary and grammar would be a godsend. Forget formal grammar training, forget spaced vocabulary repetition. Vocabulary extends naturally when reading texts, formal grammar is much more obvious after I've spotted the pattern on my own (and a drag before).
It seems like it's difficult to make much money unless you are one of market leaders. Check out mindsnacks if you haven't already.
Include phonetic training. Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair in the language, possibly even every single syllable in the language. This is simple, but rarely done.
Include an extensive reading component. This is a monumental task that could be broken into many apps or many short stories that are in app purchases.
Good luck! I'm really, really hoping to see something better than the very low bar hit by existing apps!
I have so much trouble spelling words like definately^W definitely, because they sound the same to me ;)
What I was suggesting was aural training—learn to distinguish words such as "his" and "he's", to hear the differences between bat, bet, bit, bot, but, bait, beet, bite, boat, and boot, etc...
Various idiosyncrasies of an orthographic system are far less important than being able to hear difference between the sounds of a language.
I believe that this is very good advice.
The realization there are actually different sounds in different languages has came as surprise to me. I always naively assumed that the same sounds where just combined differently. Obviously this has had a negative impact in my learning.