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Building an app to learn languages with short stories

purplehoisin.com

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Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#31

Post by technotarek »

technotarek wrote: post #27

As a French language learner, one thing I’d love to see is more interesting ways of practicing a specific area/skill (eg in French that might be the passé composé or l’imparfait). There are tons of lessons on line, but they’re boring and uninteresting. They don’t motivate you like a short story or short film where you get both practice and pleasure. It seems very doable to use LLM technologies to transform a given sh…

To elaborate on my Duolingo critique… I find it too linear and strict. I can’t really get it to focus on the skills that I’m struggling with or most want to focus upon at a given time. This is especially true when you’re learning using a combined, multifaceted approach (eg YouTube videos + kindle stories + Duolingo + classroom instruction).

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#32

Post by famouswaffles »

westernaccess wrote: post #21
zeta0134 wrote: post #4

I'd be happy to pay for such a service if the stories were written by a human, but once I learned the stories are AI generated, I bounced. Even if they're edited by a native speaker, something about that feels off. I want to learn from other humans, not from a language model.

Totally agreed. I'm biased because I learn languages to mostly read texts in original languages. Narratives with well-crafted prose can have hundreds of years of linguistic and stylistic histories, as well as contemporary vernacular, which can tell more about a language than just understanding the plot of the story. I don't think that can ever be fully replaced by an LLM. There are thousands of short stories at every…

>Narratives with well-crafted prose can have hundreds of years of linguistic and stylistic histories, as well as contemporary vernacular, which can tell more about a language than just understanding the plot of the story.

This seems like a werid hangup for what is essentially a substitute for graded readers for language learners. You're not getting any of the things you mentioned going the "human" route.

No one is saying go read these stories over full blown novels. There's no complexity difference between full blown novels and most native short stories either, just length so that's not really an option.

If you could read at that level, you wouldn't be using this or the non-LLM alternative anyway.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#33

Post by Shorel »

zeta0134 wrote: post #4

I'd be happy to pay for such a service if the stories were written by a human, but once I learned the stories are AI generated, I bounced. Even if they're edited by a native speaker, something about that feels off. I want to learn from other humans, not from a language model.

I think it is definitely the other way around.

An AI will generate the kind of simplistic stories I need for my current level of proficiency in my target language.

An actual human will more often than not slip some complex grammar and vocabulary before I am ready for it.

When you are at B2-C1 level, then you can appreciate the nuances of human generated stories, but for A1-A2, what difference would it make?

The AI is better because it will make all the content I can consume, immediately and ready.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#35

Post by swatcoder »

zeta0134 wrote: post #4

I'd be happy to pay for such a service if the stories were written by a human, but once I learned the stories are AI generated, I bounced. Even if they're edited by a native speaker, something about that feels off. I want to learn from other humans, not from a language model.

Yeah, this is an example of where AI enables a new product by reducing standards of quality and marks of effort.

Rather than doing the work of curating stories with specific educational goals, chosen or crafted by native speakers and perhaps even noted authors, which might be an ongoing process with months of preparation and numerous humans working together towards a common vision, one hobbyist can spend $.035 at a time to accumulate a cache of "good enough" stories in countless languages.

For some, it's exciting to see the barrier to entry lowered so that one hobbyist can create a tool with so much content behind it and dreams of social uplift ask us to cheer when stuff gets cheaper because it becomes more broadly available. So there are real upsides here, but of course those upsides are coming as part of a tradeoff against quality when we look at current/near LLM technology. Those quality tradeoffs aren't going to be suited to everyone, especially those who have the luxury to pay more for better things.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#36

Post by bavarianbob »

istjohn wrote: post #23

I can't wait to get access to ChatGPT with voice so I can practice my Spanish. I suspect that the utility of vanilla ChatGPT for language learning will soon obviate the need for any custom apps.

I've been thinking about a layer on top of these chat apps that augment the experience for learning in particular. I've found that once you dig into the problem, a key element to solve for is reinforcement. The "provide information" part is easy, now how do you make it stick and how do you continue over an extended period of time?

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#37

Post by Shorel »

fersarr wrote: post #29
bluGill wrote: post #7

The hard part of this is finding stories you want to read. Looks cool, but The one story i read was maybe 5 minutes. To make progress you need an hour or more per day. Well you can make progress on 5 minutes per day, but 500-1000 hours is what it takes to be useful and so 5 minutes a day just doesn't add up fast enough.

Thanks for the feedback! Hopefully at some point we can add more stories, quickly. I'm also looking into other methods of learning, we should have a few more soon.

That is true. At first I thought the stories were created on demand. Some of us are compulsive readers once we get used to it, and I'm looking forward to being able to do that in my target language.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#38

Post by bavarianbob »

technotarek wrote: post #31
technotarek wrote: post #27

As a French language learner, one thing I’d love to see is more interesting ways of practicing a specific area/skill (eg in French that might be the passé composé or l’imparfait). There are tons of lessons on line, but they’re boring and uninteresting. They don’t motivate you like a short story or short film where you get both practice and pleasure. It seems very doable to use LLM technologies to transform a given sh…

To elaborate on my Duolingo critique… I find it too linear and strict. I can’t really get it to focus on the skills that I’m struggling with or most want to focus upon at a given time. This is especially true when you’re learning using a combined, multifaceted approach (eg YouTube videos + kindle stories + Duolingo + classroom instruction).

This comment is chefs kiss. Amen. This is what I'm building a solution for.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#39

Post by bavarianbob »

zeta0134 wrote: post #19
bavarianbob wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similar, have any thoughts on what it would take for you to learn from a language model? I think for me, it's some sort of review from a native speaker. If they gave a stamp of approval, I wouldn't think twice about learning from a human versus model.

I don't think there's any claim you could make about the language model, factual or otherwise, that would resolve my primary hangup. As a non-native learner of a new language, I do not have a trained bullshit detector for that language. I cannot, by virtue of still being a novice, determine if the sentence structure sounds "weird," and I certainly can't determine if that weirdness is a limitation of the language mode…

Really great food for thought here, I'm going to have linger on it some more. I don't know enough about LLMs to know how to counteract hallucinations, but I wonder if you could construct an LLM against a vetted corpus (much like Anthropic does with Claude) in which it solves for the problem of generating robotic speech patterns. I do agree with you a lot on the "sound" problem because I don't think I'd advise a non-native English speaker to blindly trust ChatGPT as a learning mechanism based on my experience of using it.

So, in conclusion, I'm curious to learn whether this is a solvable problem or if LLMs are inherently not the right tool to use.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#40

Post by kebsup »

Warning: shameless self-promotion

I'm currently working on German vocabulary learning app, https://vokabeln.io/, which uses LLMs in a similar way. The app allows you to paste text and extracts the vocabulary to learn. The vocabulary is then repeated with spaced repetition, audios are generated and users can generate infinitely more examples.

I might have made something that works only for me, as getting users seems to be extremely difficult, but I enjoy it much more than anything else I've tried.

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