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My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

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Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#11

Post by miguelrochefort »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

This is a tragedy. Why do people keep reinventing the wheel like that? Why don't we just have one system/app that does everything (buy/sell books, find roommates, cost splitting, etc.)?

Hopefully what I'm suggested is not step 11: https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#12

Post by theDoug »

bpicolo wrote: post #9
djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

Don't forget static blog engines

You gotta support that Markdown or else you're nothin'!

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#13

Post by austinl »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #3

Personally, I would love to learn a language by watching movies/videos with 3 subtitle tracks: (1) What they are speaking - IN their script (this is called SLS: Same-Language-Subtitling and has been quite successful for literacy programs for one's own language) (2) What they are speaking - IN my script (3) What they MEAN - IN my language (i.e. translation) Data for (1) is easy to find. (2) could theoretically be gene…

This is the way FluentU works (https://www.fluentu.com/). They have content with 2-3 subtitle tracks that can be toggled on and off. Then you can click on specific words in the subtitles that you don't know, it'll show a definition, and you can add it to a list of words to review.

They've got several TV series (although they might not be your favorite series), depending on the language.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#14

Post by the_af »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

Excellent. You forgot that each step must be announced on HN with a title like "Walking my dog was hard. So I wrote this app."

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#15

Post by newusertoday »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

while i enjoyed the rant ;-) please also share the list of boring problems that business will actually pay for..

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#16

Post by dilap »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #3

Personally, I would love to learn a language by watching movies/videos with 3 subtitle tracks: (1) What they are speaking - IN their script (this is called SLS: Same-Language-Subtitling and has been quite successful for literacy programs for one's own language) (2) What they are speaking - IN my script (3) What they MEAN - IN my language (i.e. translation) Data for (1) is easy to find. (2) could theoretically be gene…

Netflix will give you (1) and (3) for a bunch of their newer stuff

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#17

Post by erikpukinskis »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

You say this snarkily, but I don’t see what is wrong with someone growing up and wanting to try to use coding to solve problems relevant to their stage of life.

It turns out some problems are complex, but so what? I’ve been working on “programming interfaces for beginners” for 12 years and still haven’t succeeded. That’s not because I’m dumb, nor is everyone who thought it would be easy and failed.

It’s because there are building blocks that don’t exist yet, so when you try to make the thing you end up getting distracted making a building block—or eight—and then your schedule gets shot and this kills the project.

But there’s no shame in that. If we’re lucky, you made a new building block which will eventually mature, in one form or another, maybe just in conversations with other devs who are closer to cracking that low level problem.

And then guess what... time is ripe for a hubristic person, young or old, to step up and try their hand at your original problem, now with one more building block. There’s now a 5% higher chance of success. Eventually someone will hit a threshold.

Is your post meant to be more than classic HN stop energy?

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#18

Post by primitivesuave »

I highly recommend trying the app. The user interface is beautiful and the approach seems effective. I could actually see this being used in a German language school to supplement the curriculum, unlike pretty much every language app I've seen so far.

I find Pimsleur to be a highly effective spoken language acquisition tool, but the writing/reading aspect is abysmal and quite demotivating. Chatterbug seems to be doing spaced repetition, and does it much better than Pimsleur audiobooks because I can zoom through the things I remember and get as much time as I need to repeat questions and think about the answer.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#19

Post by gramie »

I have been using http://www.languagetransfer.org to learn Spanish, and it is the best language system, aside from total immersion, I have ever used (I speak five language with varying degrees of fluency).

It is a series of audio files, typically about 10 minutes each, and all you do is listen to them, answering questions when the instructor asks.

German, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Swahili, Spanish, and others. It's a labour of love by Mihalis, who asks for donations but otherwise does it all for free!

I haven't tried Chatterbug, but I am completely sold on Language Transfer, because it sidesteps the rote memorization that so many other systems use.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#20

Post by newsbinator »

bpicolo wrote: post #9
djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

Language learning apps are step 5 in the ten step process of achieving programmer hubris nirvana. 1) I'm in college and I'm going to build an app to easily buy and sell books 2) Off campus housing is hard, I'm going to build an app to find roommates 3) Splitting bills with roommates is hard, I'm going to build an app for cost splitting 4) All my previous apps sucked because they weren't social, I'm going to build a s…

Don't forget static blog engines

Here's a new JS framework that's exactly like Vue, but with much less functionality, making it faster to learn.
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