Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

chatterbug.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 134 posts

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#51

Post by schacon »

foobaw wrote: post #47

I speak three languages fluently and I can attest to Chatterbug's methodology. However, there's still much research to be done in the field. I participate in a lot of linguistic research since my case is a slightly more unique than others. Also, I'm curious if they're hiring and/or have plan to scale. There are so many features they could add.

We aren't currently hiring, but we would love to talk to you for future reference. We have many plans to scale. :)

I agree that there are a lot of features we can and will add. This is only the very beginning of what we can do to improve this process, I think. I would love to hear any ideas.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#52

Post by xeromal »

newusertoday wrote: post #15
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..

Build them a website, an API, and a couple of services.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#53

Post by kmatt »

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…

I've been working on something similar. Check out Flowlingo (iOS or Android app stores). You watch videos and read books to learn a language. Currently in Spanish only. If you have any feedback, please let me know!

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#54

Post by avn2109 »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #28
erikpukinskis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not meant to be snarky at all. Though I do wish my comment wasn't the top voted one. People, please upvote the other on topic comments or have the mods bury it. FWIW this is basically my path. I've done pretty much all of them to some degree and a few in earnest. In fact I'm working on my own language learning "tool" while I wait around for #10.

Any discussion of computerized language learning is woefully incomplete without a mention of [0], which has an interesting combination of properties.

It is:

* A) run by people who suck at SEO and marketing

* B) technologically and graphic-design wise really janky

* C) harder and less fun than e.g. Duolingo

* and D) drastically, overwhelmingly more effective than every other system I've ever seen at actually teaching you a language (for people with almost all common linguistic-cognition neurotypes aka nearly everyone)

The first 3 attributes mean that almost nobody has heard of it/uses it.

The downside is that for most languages they didn't build out enough curriculum to get you to fluency. It'll take you roughly a third of the way there. I'm building an open source clone (with longer curriculum) for the other two thirds of the way.

Also, L101 should be paired with Yabla, which will train the skill of listening-and-understanding in your target language.

I'm not affiliated with [0] in any way other than by being a happy customer and by the fact that I'm writing an open source clone of their stuff.

[0] https://language101.com/

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#55

Post by avn2109 »

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 Yabla (almost)

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#56

Post by avip »

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…

Could you add expected stage half-life? I'm stack @8 and would like to advance to 9 ASAP.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#57

Post by nnd »

Learning a language is simple. Immerse yourself in the environment where everyone speaks the language (travel to that country) and force yourself to speak that language only at all times. This is the key. I’ve learned German like that in two months.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#58

Post by casey_lang »

I've always wanted to be fluent in a second language and have tried in the past, but I always end up with the same problem.

While I recognize that the only way to gain conversational skills is to actually have conversations, they terrify me. Engaging in small talk with strangers in my native language is hard enough. Trying to do it in a second language seems impossible. Even watching the demo video from the link, all I could think was "this is awkward".

I would almost rather there be a sort of script or game around the conversations, so they're not relying on my ability to be interesting while also trying to do it in a different language.

Re: My Journey to a Better Language Learning System

#60

Post by panglott »

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…

Learning a language (or any skill) will always take a lot of personal work and commitment. But this is a problem where we need better tools and solutions, even as our tools and solutions have been improving rapidly. More people trying to innovate in this space will only improve them further.

Look, 100 years ago we only had dry books with conjugation tables for mostly classical and European languages. Most of the world's languages were barely described, we barely had adequate tools to describe them, and most policy was bent on eradicating them. Move forward to the mid-20th century, and we learning tools like the FSI courses and Pimsleur courses, which are at least getting decent audio out there. Then the Internet occurred, which has completely transformed our ability to access authentic spoken and written material in major target languages. Online dictionaries and apps are better than ever. You can look up a page in Wikipedia and see the target language version, which reveals so much more than a dictionary can. Machine translation helps you see how words are strung together. Now we have Duolingo and things like Anki and Tofugu.com, which of course do not take you all the way, but are still a huge improvement over the tools we had before. Even better is coming.

Post reply on HN