leosmith's recent posts

DG.Gardner wrote:

Song in the beginning?

I have no idea. Daniel liked to use different songs for every passage, and I haven't talked to him for years. No lyrics, so we can't google it.

Hi Alec,

This is not actually one of ours. It was created by Joseph.Adams, so hopefully he will see your post and fix it.

(edit - he just fixed it!)

henry.james wrote:

When encountering a word or phrase that a user does not know, they can mark it as "unknown" to indicate that they are not familiar with it.

Are you talking about re-visiting a passage you have already read? Because new words show up as unknown (peach) when you import/open a new passage, so you wouldn't need to mark those. An alternate way of looking at the states is:

Peach = new

Green = learning

White = known

Sorry that it's not fixed, but I'm glad to hear that it's no longer a problem for you. We will still try to fix it (and the other issues you brought up) just in case it bothers other users.

c.gan wrote:

Thank you Leo, the bug seems to be gone now.

great!

Joseph.Adams wrote:

The Playlist on the Android App is not working for me.

Sorry about that. Ticket written.

c.gan wrote:

sometimes the reading tool will produce a translation of text from another part of the passage

Hi c - I think this is fixed now. Can you confirm?

Sorry about that - I just wrote a ticket.

Jori wrote:

Thanks for the support, have a nice day

Hi Jori. I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Donkey.Kong wrote:

I've noticed that some Thai words on the Android app are only displaying their first 1 or two characters

I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Jacob.M wrote:

On my phone, I have to use the mobile site though, because Thai script isn't rendered correctly.

Jacob - I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Ah, I see. I've had the same thing happen to me several times, so fortunately I'm conditioned to immediately suspect the filters.

This is for the reading tool. It pulls word definitions from Google Translate, but it will also have the option of giving you definitions from your favorite dictionaries. So if you have suggestions of dictionaries to add, please list them here.

Complete list:

Amharic 

https://dictionary.abyssinica.com/ https://glosbe.com/am/enCantonese

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/parse_chinese.php

Cebuano

http://www.bohol.ph/wced.php

Dutch

https://glosbe.com/nl/en

English

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

French

http://www.wordreference.com/fren

https://www.linguee.com/english-french

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionnaire:Page_d%E2%80%99accueil

German

https://dict.leo.org/german-english

https://en.pons.com/

https://tureng.com/en/german-english/

https://www.linguee.com/english-german

https://www.dict.cc/

Hebrew

https://www.morfix.co.il/en/

Hindi

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-hindi 

https://en.bab.la/ 

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/caturvedi/ 

http://hindi-english.org/ 

https://www.shabdkosh.com/ 

Hungarian

https://topszotar.hu/magyarangol/ 

Indonesian

https://www.kamus.net/

Italian

https://context.reverso.net/translation/italian-english

https://www.wordreference.com/iten

Japanese

https://jisho.org

http://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic

Korean

http://dic.daum.net/index.do?dic=eng

https://ko.dict.naver.com/

Mandarin

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary

https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

Nahuatl

https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org

https://gdn.iib.unam.mx

Portuguese

https://dicionario.priberam.org/

https://www.dicio.com.br/

https://www.linguee.com/english-portuguese

https://www.infopedia.pt/dicionarios/lingua-portuguesa

Spanish

http://www.thai-language.com/dict

http://www.spanishdict.com/dictionary

http://dle.rae.es/

http://www.wordreference.com/

https://es.thefreedictionary.com/

http://context.reverso.net/translation/spanish-english/

Russian

http://www.wordreference.com/ruen

https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/слово

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/слово

https://context.reverso.net/translation/russian-english/

https://de.langenscheidt.com/russisch-deutsch/слово

https://dict.leo.org/russisch-deutsch/слово

https://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung/russisch-deutsch/слово

Swahili

https://africanlanguages.com/swahili/

https://en.bab.la/dictionary/swahili-english/siku

https://glosbe.com/sw/en

Scottish Gaelic

https://learngaelic.net/dictionary/index.jsp

Tagalog

https://www.filipinolessons.com/dictionary

Thai

http://www.thai-language.com/dict

https://www.thai2english.com/

https://www.clickthai-online.de/wbtde/woerterbuch.php

Turkish

https://tureng.com/en/turkish-english/

Vietnamese

https://glosbe.com/vi/en

Zulu

https://isizulu.net/

nomadicvegan wrote:

Could you please add the following dictionaries for Amharic? There are currently no Amharic dictionaries in Language Crush as far as I can see, so this would be a big help!
https://dictionary.abyssinica.com/
https://glosbe.com/am/en

Added

It should be accurate. What do you mean by "only 1/12th of the total actually shows up on the "known word" list"? Are all filters removed from the vocabulary list?

DG.Gardner wrote:

an extra filter to only display those options.

Hi DG - this has been added.

You can wait until you are finished with the passage and click "I know all remaining peach words" or put in a bookmark and click "I know all peach words before the bookmark".

Absolutely! You have a good start.

DG.Gardner wrote:

Im not sure about that, but I think you have the #1 spot secured with number of languages under your belt for sure!

There are actually a few here with more languages, but they are less active. I just realized we have 6 languages in common! Other than English, which is your best?

Wow - that's impressive! You're actually #1 on the weekly. I have been here the longest, but I've never been #1 on any of the boards.

Note: here are all the languages we have in work. These can all be found in the Reading Tool. 

Swahili – 135 conversation (complete)

Tagalog – 110 conversations (complete)

Cantonese – 100 conversations (complete)

French - 101 conversations (complete)

Russian - 100 conversations (complete)

Spanish - 100 conversations (complete)

Mandarin - 100 conversations (complete)

Thai - 100 (complete)

Italian - 100 (complete)

Brazilian Portuguese - 100 (complete)

English - 50 (stopped work)

German - 50 (stopped work)

Quechua (Chanka) - 44 (in work)

Quechua (Collao) - 7 (stopped work)

Cebuano - 28 (stopped work)

South African English - 10 conversations (complete)

Japanese - 1 (stopped work)

You may have heard me say from time to time that if your highest priority is conversing in your L2, then conversation should be your most valued source for learning. I’m not saying it should be the only source, but pound per pound I believe it’s the best source.

To be fair, I think it does depend on what stage you’re in. Beginners may not have the skills required to do what I’m suggesting. Also, this stage goes by quickly and seems to be handled nicely by the wealth of beginner learning material out there. Advanced learners may already be very good communicators and everyday conversation might not tax them enough. In addition, they are much more likely to use native material to improve. The remainder is the period I’m talking about – the long intermediate slog. That’s when I suggest learners should really focus on conversation.

Here’s an example of what I’m recommending: taking notes during a conversation, writing down items your partner says that you don’t understand, writing down things you didn’t know how to say, and memorizing/reviewing these items before your next conversation. I’ve found this to be my single most effective exercise to improve my vocabulary and grammar in actual conversations. 

But what about reading and listening? It probably doesn’t surprise you that I recommend reading transcripts of and listening to actual conversations. I think it’s more effective for improving your conversation than reading and listening to non-conversation items (news, books, TV scripts, text messages, etc). Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and place for reading and listening to those things and they are very helpful. I’m not going to get into the other items here; read and listen to everything but let the core of your method be conversations if your main goal is to improve your conversation. 

The problem is – where do you get these conversations? You could have your personal conversations transcribed and recorded so that you could read and listen to them. That’s a good start, but it’s a pretty time-consuming task. Also, vocab/grammar would be limited compared to a conversation between two native speakers, so it may be better suited to the beginner period. And as I said above, the beginner period is handled pretty well with existing beginner materials.

That’s why we’ve created LT Conversations. These are conversations between two native speakers. We use a mixture of female-male, female-female and male-male for variety, but each conversation is between two native speakers and about six minutes long. We make 100 of these for each language selected, which gives you about 10 hours of reading and listening to actual conversations. I hope this will be enough to prepare the learner for real native material. To be clear, I’m not saying I expect the learner to understand native material completely after finishing LT conversations; my goal is that they will have the base needed to start to dig into native material designed by natives for natives. In theory, “learning” material should no longer be required.  

While creating these, I had a hard time trying to figure out whether they were intermediate or advanced. I settled on intermediate mainly because it’s pretty much impossible to get people to talk to each other normally while covering the things I want them to cover, not talk on top of each other, not use loanwords and speak clearly without some reduction in difficulty. The voice actors tend to create some sort of script to satisfy all of my requirements, even though I’ve asked them not to. I could probably work with teams more closely and intensively to get a more advance product, but that would be more expensive and time consuming, so they are what they are. Good intermediate conversations.

Now I should mention that one of the sweetest things about these conversations is that they’re located in our reading tool already to go. Put your cursor over a word and a definition will pop up; click it and it will change state and color and you can add new definitions. This makes reading much more accessible. As I hinted above, this reading/listening is meant to be just a component of your learning method. I recommend that if you’re going to be memorizing and reviewing vocabulary and grammar you should get them from your personal conversations. But that’s not to say you can’t do it with these conversations - you can go into your own vocabulary database in the reading tool, manicure it, export it to anki etc, if that’s what you want to do. But I personally prefer to let the mouseover definitions and shading do the work for me, read as seamlessly as possible without too many interruptions, and put my memorizing and reviewing efforts into my personal conversations. 

Thanks - this is a known issue, and the ticket is currently in work.

Today I reached two important milestones. First, I finished passage 100 of Mandarin Conversations, officially ending this spurt. Some quick stats – 100 passages in 137 (active) days; 4017 vocabulary items; about 500 hours (including Anki reviews) total study time. My goal was to drop my Mandarin unknowns from 35% down to below 10%. I did not reach that goal. If I look at my stats, they average out in the high teens, but that’s because I haven’t gone back to change all the words I didn’t know at the beginning to “known” now. I’m guessing my true unknown level is about 15%. I’m really happy with this, and it means that I read Mandarin about as well as I read Swahili/Russian/Thai/Korean. I have mixed feelings about stopping the spurt. I figure I could reach my goal and really hit it out of the ball park in another 200 to 300 hours. And there is the fear of losing my level too. I think I’m going to take a few days off, then keep reading new passages twice a week for a while to see how that goes. I’ll keep doing all the anki reviews for the time being, but will eventually delete all cards over one month old at some point. The ultimate goal is to be able to read, consistently and comfortable, only as often as I maintain the language, meaning once every 10 or so days. But the interim plan above should safeguard my level, and give me the time I need to do the stuff required for the milestone below.

The second milestone I reached is even bigger, since it marks the beginning of the end of a 3 year project. As of today, we have finally finished going back and forth, checking and perfecting Tagalog Lite. The ball is now back in my court, and I can work on it full time. I need to update all the tables, rewrite the intro, hire a voice actress, and post the book online. I also plan on creating downloadable anki decks, so I have a busy month or so ahead of me!

DG.Gardner wrote:

i meant, like if there was an extra filter to only display those options.

Ok, we will consider doing this.

Hi Jori, sorry about that. I have written a ticket to investigate.

That's a good question. The definitions you have are correct. But you will often hear them used interchangeably in native speech. It can vary by region and by speaker. And there are lots of other verbs that this happens to in Swahili. For example, kufika = to arrive, but can be used in place of kwenda = to go. Have you ever been to Tanzania = Umeshafika/kwenda Tanzania?

I would advise just using the verbs the way you think they should be used, and adjusting if the natives around you consistently use them differently. Even if you don't make adjustments, you will be understood, and you will be able to understand them, so hamna shida bwana.

Here's an update, because my italki Korean teacher decided to record our lesson. It was kind of a nice surprise – I don’t know why she did it, but I saw she was recording it and asked if I could have a copy. It turns out that videos are downloadable by all on Skype, so I downloaded it, cut out a 5 min chunk that wasn’t 100% about languages, and posted it for fun. I’m speaking quite slowly these days it seems. To summarize, I studied Korean really hard for 1 year, spent 1 month in Seoul, the following year spent 1 month in Pusan, and the third year spent one month in Seoul again. Then came the pandemic, so I missed 3 years of travel, and I only maintained it sporadically. I review it about twice per month now, and it’s my worst language. Even after all that though, I speak it at a slow intermediate level, so I won’t complain. I hope to do a spurt in it next year, and hopefully never fall down to this level again.

In other news, today was day 121 (active days), and I finished passage 85 of Mandarin reading. I have made huge improvements since the beginning, but I don’t think I’m going to hit the 10% unknown mark by passage 100, because I'm probably at around 20% now. I will probably ease off after passage 100 though, because it's been a long hard pull.

I just wanted to point out that 小红 makes a false statement. He appears to say the steering wheel is on the right in the US, but it is on the left (just like the China). I am guessing he just remembered incorrectly his time in the US.

小红：对，而且美国好像也是右侧的驾驶，但是驾驶室跟我们不太一样。(Yes, and the United States also seems to drive on the right side, but the cab is not the same as ours.)

小明：嗯… 好像你要左侧驾驶室的话，你驾驶的方向盘就有可能在右边。(Hmm... It seems that if you want a left-hand cab, your steering wheel may be on the right.)

小红：好像美国是靠右侧驾驶，然后右舵，就是方向盘在右侧。咱们国家是在左侧方向盘。(It seems that the United States drives on the right side, with a right rudder, that is, the steering wheel, is on the right side. Our country has the steering wheel on the left.)

DG.Gardner wrote:

I’m not sure if it’s possible , but it would be cool if there was a way to have a filter to find the readings in the library that have video/audio connected with the reading instead of searching through them all .

There are icons that show this already. Or do you mean have a "more filters" button that allows you to only display passages with video/audio?

deleted.99687 wrote:

A little bug for Yiddish I've found: The punctuation mark maqef (U+05be) is good (doesn't split words) but the geresh/gershayim (U+05f3/U+05f4) split words and shouldn't. They're used to create abbreviations basically. Example word 'Tanakh = תּנ״ך'.

Fixed.

Javohn wrote:

It is now working on Microsoft edge!

Glad to hear that! Regarding Somali, we already support it; we don't have the budget to add any more conversations for the time being, if that's what you are referring to.

Sorry about that, but it's not actually one of ours. I can tell that it came from here, but their audio is also wrong. You might try to alert them to the issue, and see if they will update it. If I get a new audio file, I can update the passage for you.

wrote:

1 - The edit box for Yiddish (no doubt also other RTL) is still LTR. The reading page is ok but the edit box is not. RTL + right-justified is needed for passage name/passage text/course name from what I can figure out.
...
3 - On the 'create a passage' /edit page: remove the space above 'Create a Passage' and increase the size of the 'Passage Text' box by a few lines
...
5 - On the 'course details' page: align the word stats better so they don't jump around from line to line (perhaps make it 2 lines by default:
Unknown Words (###%) Learning (###%)
Known Words (###%) Total Words (###%)
alternatively, shorten it:
Words: Unknown (###%) : Learning (###%) : Known (###%) : Total (###%)

1, 3 and 5 are done

almuvo wrote:

I feel very motivated when I see my known words grow but to see that I need to do a bunch of steps in the stats panel. Having them up there all the time would be great.
Attached a simple mockup.

We weren't able to do this, but we added it on the dashboard below goals.

Congrats on your progress. 加油!

you may be right...this is over my head

Jori wrote:

Yes, from a computer perspective, I think it's only a matter of font. Some fonts sticks to one subset of characters, some fonts sticks to other. It would be nice to be able to switch that.

I've messaged the tech team to see if they have a solution. But I also did some digging - it seems this is a very common issue. I opened that same passage on my desktop and I see the "wrong" font. I think it is a browser or system font change, not something to change in our software, but I could be wrong. The problem is that if you change that font to Japanese, it will probably display "incorrectly" for Chinese.

Ah, ok. This is not a Japanese vs Chinese, or traditional vs simplified, issue. As you stated, it's a font issue. These are alternate ways to write the characters, regardless of the language. I will ask the tech team to investigate, but I don't know if they will be able to fix it. For example, when I type the word しょうらい (future) on my phone, it displays as 将来 regardless of what app I'm in. I guess I've, unknowingly, memorized all the alternate forms. I wonder if it's a matter of changing a font on the phone.

Jori wrote:

japanese characters (kanji) are treated as chinese (hanzi)

Hi Jori, in what way? Definitions come from the Japanese dictionary, transliteration is romaji or you can show kana (hiragana/katakana). Are you perhaps talking about the parser or font?

Javohn wrote:

maybe it is because I am on Microsoft edge?

I tried it on edge and chrome. What device? (As a work-around, you can download the audio, but it would be good to find out what is going on.)

Javohn wrote:

The audio for this is not available on microsoft edge.

Hi Javohn. Sorry about that. I'm able to access it though. I'm using windows 11 on my laptop. And you?

Jori wrote:

if I create a French passage with the text "Brandon avait péri à l’âge de vingt ans", it switches péri (to die) to prié (to pray)

Thanks - ticket written.

We are sorry that we cannot implement all of your changes immediately, but we are doing the best with the resources we have. 

Jacob.M wrote:

I had initially suggested

ok, I updated your note

DG.Gardner wrote:

Could you add this to the translations for russian (or other languages as well)? ttps://cooljugator.com/ru

This isn't a dictionary - it's a verb conjugator. A useful tool, but not compatible with our reading tool.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

A little bug for Yiddish I've found: The punctuation mark maqef (U+05be) is good (doesn't split words) but the geresh/gershayim (U+05f3/U+05f4) split words and shouldn't.

I'll ask about this.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

Any news on this?

No. They couldn't find any records at all of you trying to subscribe, so it's got them puzzled because others have been able to subscribe. They are going to try to take another look at it, but they are pretty busy right now.

Hi Jori, I will ask the tech team how difficult this would be to implement and get back to you.

Osdz.Voh wrote:

In the reading tool on Android, characters are sometimes invisible, usually after ไ and ใ vowels.

We are working this issue (originally reported here).

Jacob.M wrote:

On the website when I try to switch from single page to multi-page view. I have to open and close the menu twice for the change to take effect.

Fixed.

GermanPolyglot wrote:

Now waiting for the results...

Good Luck!

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

So, I've less than a day left in this free trial... still can't subscribe. So, is my current progress going to be lost?

No. We'll keep you on premium until the issue is resolved.

I wrote a ticket for 1, and we will discuss the others in our next meeting.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

Tried paying by CC from several browsers. The green thing just keeps spinning around. Is this a known bug?

We can't find anything in the logs on this. Can you tell us which browser(s)/OS/device?

Thanks! forwarded to the tech team

Oh, we're sorry about that - ticket written.

Here is a list of videos that show you how to use Language Crush:

Basic Navigation

Booking a Lesson

Chat

Community Forum

Reading Tool Tour

Reading Tool Passages

Reading Tool Passage Youtube

Reading Tool Courses

Reading Tool Phrases, Join, Split

Reading Tool Playlists

Reading Tool Vocab

Teacher Wizard Step 1, Basic Information

Teacher Wizard Step 2, Classes

Teacher Wizard Step 3, Schedule

Teacher Wizard Step 4, Submit Application

Write and Correct

App Quick Tour

App Cantonese

Statistics

Gamification

Time for an update. I have been in Thailand now for two weeks. I had a terrible case of amoebas (something I ate probably) the last couple weeks in the Philippines, and the swimming pool pump broke, which closed it down. After being sick and without exercise for two weeks, I was quite happy to leave Manila.

Although my goal was to finish it in Manila, the editor of Tagalog Lite was so busy that he couldn’t check it consistently during that time. But he has scheduled some time for it each week, and we are about halfway through the final check. It’s really looking good. He has now figured out a lot of complicated grammar issues that neither of us could explain very well before. When I say complicated, I mean it’s hard to explain, but still very high frequency.

I reached a bit of a milestone in my Mandarin reading spurt. I’m spending 2-3 hours a day on it, including reviews. Up until a week ago I was adding exactly 40 words per day, and only reading up to that point (plus re-reading the previous day’s segment). I would start in one passage, and finish in another. But a week ago I noticed the unknown words had dropped, and I made the decision to read a complete new passage every day, regardless of the unknown words. The first day was under 40, then I had 3 days over 40 (one was a whopping 54), so I wondered if I’d made the right decision. However, the last 4 passages were under 40, so I’m now sure things have settled down. My routine has simplified. Every day I do my anki reviews, read the previous day’s passage, read the new passage, memorize the new words and export them to anki.

Today was day 75 (not counting skipped days), and I finished passage 40. There are 100 passages total, so I will finish in 60 days at this pace. My reading has improved dramatically. My goal is to get the unknown words below 10%. I started in the mid 30’s, now I’m in the low 20’s.

I’ve also become interested in reading speed. In a Chinese Forums post, I saw people comparing reading speeds. Natives speak about 250 cpm (characters per minute), and this matches our Chinese Conversations. So in addition the 10% unknown words, I’m setting a goal of half native speed. Passages are 6 minutes long, so my goal is 12 min, first read. I tested it a while back, and I did 18 min, but that was my third read. I will do more testing as I go along.

wrote:

TTS is missing for the vocabulary review section on the website, but is present in the Android app.

Added.

That's strange. Can you post a screenshot of the issue?

I see two above the a. What is your browser/os/device?

thanks - ticket written

bbyj wrote:

Hello can you please add Glosbe for Dutch? Thank you!!

Added.

Jacob.M wrote:

On the website when I try to switch from single page to multi-page view. I have to open and close the menu twice for the change to take effect.On the mobile website it shows the "Login" button at the top of the page when I first open it, which is a bit confusing because I am already logged in when I click on the reading tool.
Also, TTS is missing for the vocabulary review section on the website, but is present in the Android app.

Thanks! I wrote a ticket to address these.

HolaIsabel wrote:

When I click the dictionary symbol it opens a pop up with Priberam and it doesn't show any other dictionary options

For Spanish translations, there should be 2 dictionaries, priberam and dicio. What is your OS/browser?

I have a confession to make – I was wrong about something that I’ve believed for a long time. I believed that if you are going to systematically memorize and review vocabulary and grammar from content that you consume, it is always better to do L1 to L2 reviews. Actually, I have always done both L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 reviews just to be safe, but I believed that L2 to L1 were not very important, and the ability to understand the L2 items would happen naturally, provided I did L1 to L2. In my defense, if you are only interested in conversation and writing, I still believe this is correct.

But I consider myself to be a well-rounded language learner, and it turns out that L2 to L1 reviews are very important for reading. You might be thinking “so what – you are doing both anyway, so you are covered”. Reviewing both ways isn’t necessarily a bad idea, unless you are trying to learn to read as quickly as possible. L1 to L2 reviews require much greater recall effort than L2 to L1, imo at least twice as much, so doing reviews both ways takes at least 3 times as much time as just L2 to L1. And this hardcore recall work is something that you should limit when you study – doing too much makes people want to quit.

I may have never figured this out, since most languages have not required me to do intensive reading. With most languages, I was able to just read extensively in the reading tool, noting pop-up definitions of unknown words, and became comfortable reading in a few dozen hours. But recently I decided to fix the biggest hole in my proficiency of all 10 foreign languages. I decided to keep reading Mandarin intensively until I know more than 90% of new texts at first glance. When I started, I was at an appalling 65%, so extensive reading by itself was not cutting it.

When I started this exercise, I decided to try to memorize/review every new word that I came across, since I was using a very trustworthy source. Mandarin Conversations are 100% natural conversations, with very little if any strange vocabulary/grammar, so I am not concerned about usefulness. I tried to do 20 new words per day, both L1 to L2 and L2 to L1, and it very quickly became hard to stay on top of.

I have read many posts of learners disregarding L1 to L2 reviews when learning to read, but never believed it would work for me. Seeing over a month of my precious time slip away with very slow progress, I decided to make the leap and give it a try. I ditched the L1 to L2 reviews, and increased the load to 40 words per day. Surprisingly, even after doubling the word count, after a couple weeks of this, review time is significantly less than the previous method, and it feels less intense.

Bottom line, if you are just trying to improve you reading in a language that uses Chinese characters, doing L2 to L1 reviews only is an efficient way to maximize the number of new words you can assimilate per day.  

So why does this make me feel so good? Shouldn’t I be embarrassed about telling people to never skip L1 to L2 reviews? Sure, but it’s not worth dwelling on such things, and the big picture reveals something much more important. My poor reading skills in Mandarin and Japanese were the main reasons why I thought I’d never be able to reach advanced levels in all my languages simultaneously. I thought it would take thousands of hours, and wasn’t willing to sacrifice that time. Now I’m looking at a few hundred hours, so the dream of C1+ in all my languages is alive again!  

almuvo wrote:

Displaying the current/last language being read at the moment perhaps?

Oh - you are talking about the app, right? I'll bring this up at our next meeting.

Thanks for your kind comments!

HolaIsabel wrote:

the front page isn't very apealing

Any ideas for a more appealing front page? 

HolaIsabel wrote:

when i click that book symbol it opens a pop up, that's why I wasn't finding the setting to change it...

I didn't understand your comment, because the settings gear is in a different location. Are you saying that the site is behaving different from the video?

HolaIsabel wrote:

How can I choose the default dictionary among the options? and to make it open by default?

Please see this video.

Jacob.M wrote:

Yes, it would be nice for whole pages. Right now, I just go back and listen to the whole article in Edge.

Hi Jacob, just a quick update/some questions on your items in work.

1) Remembering page number across devices is tricky because the number of words per page changes. We can make the bookmarked word always be in the current page - would that help?

2) Regarding TTS for a whole page - is this for passages that have no audio? Or is it just because it's easier than trying to play the recording for a specific page using the playback bar? We're just trying to see the value of adding this feature.

3) We are still working on the Thai rendering issue in the native app. We would like to delay fixing the mobile browser definition issue, so that we can concentrate our resources on the app. Is that a game-changer for you?

bbyj wrote:

Hello
The linking issue with Vietnamese was totally fixed in the last thread and it's awesome now. Though, I noticed this functionality is not present in the app on Android. Can this be added?
Thanks!

Hi b - just to clarify, join/split are not available on the app, so we are looking into adding them. That's what you are requesting here, right? 

Thanks - I've written a ticket.

ok, we'll consider this

Jacob.M wrote:

It would be nice if it would remember my page number when reading across multiple devices.Text-to-Speech would be nice for the reading tool. I'd like to markup the current page and then listen to the whole page.

I'll bring up remembering page number across devices, but I think we discussed this previously and found it to be too difficult to implement. Regarding text to speech - you are aware that we have it for individual words/phrases, and are just requesting something like a TTS button for whole pages, right?

Jacob.M wrote:

Thai script isn't rendered correctly.

Thanks - I wrote a ticket for this one.

Thanks Jinx! I copied one of you passages to test this out, so that may be the overwriting issue; not sure about that though. If the original issue happens in any new texts, please let us know.

This is the the "head and shoulders knees and toes" song that we hear in so many languages. Cool.

Joseph.Adams wrote:

Also I know the mobile app is essentially the website but if there was a way to have Audio/Playlist control from my notifications (play, pause, next, time position) that would be amazing too

Hi Joseph, we think we fixed this - can you please confirm?

Jinx wrote:

No problem, I've been on the other side of the tech support "table" before, so I like to try to supply y'all with as much helpful data as possible :)

Hi Jinx,

I think it's fixed now - can you please verify?

bbyj wrote:

Thank you so much I look forward to seeing the result.

I think we fixed this - can you please confirm?

GermanPolyglot wrote:

This is the secret to overcoming the plateau: pick one topic, become fluent in it, pick another topic, become fluent in it, pick a third topic, become fluent in it... until there are no more topics that are useful/interesting to you at this time.

This is called "Building up your Islands" by Boris Shekhtman in his excellent How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately.

bbyj wrote:

Is it possible to "link" words without removing the space between them?

I didn't realize this was an issue for Vietnamese. I will write a ticket to see if it can be fixed.

Vitor. wrote:

What do you mean when you say "watch videos/tv series at least 30 minutes a day ? Is this to get used to the sounds of the language? Because as a beginner you don't have enough vocabulary to do it, right?

Yes, to get used to the the sounds of the language. And you need to start doing it eventually, so you you may as well jump in. Who knows - you may understand more than you thought you would. Only native material is going to get you used to native speed and vocabulary.

Oh wow, thanks for checking so thoroughly! Sorry that it still isn't fixed. I forwarded your post to the technical team. 

Jinx wrote:

I've noticed that sometimes one word in a text I'm reading will appear as a completely different random word

Hi Jinx, we think we've fixed this. Our technical team says "she'll need to edit slightly/save again to see the update". Can you please verify that it's working now?

That's possible, but this site has many functions, not just the reading tool. I don't think that stat belongs in that location.

It might be harder to implement for people learning multiple languages.

almuvo wrote:

Hello I'm trying the app on android and the audio stops when turning off the screen or switching apps. I saw the issue in the second post, was it fixed? Do I have to do something else? Thanks a lot, otherwise the app is great.
edit: I tried to read or listen offline with the app and it said that it was offline. Is this a premium feature? Thanks

We created a ticket to address the first issue - it was fixed previously; sorry about that.

The second issue, to read/listen offline is not supported, downloading audio is free, and downloading transcripts is premium.

I’m about to start my travels again. To make a long story short, there was extensive water damage to my condo and it will take weeks to properly repair, so I decided to avoid the demolition/construction. I will go the Philippines first because I’m finishing up the book (still in editing) and I want a nice, low-pressure place to stay for a couple months to continue with this Chinese reading exercise in the afternoons. China and Taiwan are still closed due to the pandemic. I would have liked to have gone to Brazil for a month to practice my Portuguese, but that would mean I’d be doing spurts in two languages at once, which can be stressful.

I leave in a three days, I just finished the last day (day 20) of this exercise before travelling, and wanted to report on it. It may take longer that I thought. I’m on the fifth conversation, and it will probably wind up being a 5 day passage. I thought I’d be down to 3 or even 2 days per passage by now. I was hoping that by the end of the first month I’d be doing 1 passage per day.

conversation 1: 5 days   

conversation 2: 4 days   

conversation 3: 4 days   

conversation 4: 4 days 

 

There is some good news though. First, unknown (unique) words is in the mid 20’s for these passages. It was in the mid 30’s when I started doing this, which may have been because I was looking at harder materials. But regardless, it’s nice to know that it’s in the same difficulty range as Japanese.

The other good news is that my Anki reps aren’t spinning out of control. I’ve done 20 days in a row, except for one day off, and my reps are taking about 40 min/day. I wanted it be below 1 hr/day by the time I finished 1 month, and it looks like that would have happened even without this forced break coming up due to travel. I’ll be working on this for 2 months in the Philippines, then 2.5 months in Thailand, so hopefully that will be enough to finish it.  

We are very similar - your whole post resonated with me, which is pretty rare. I think we are doing the right thing by creating that list of words/expressions ourselves because learning resources are always off for some reason (not colloquial, not up to date, etc). Getting vocab/phrases from actual conversations rocks.

GermanPolyglot wrote:

On average I spend about a week using self-study materials before I'm ready to start practicing conversations with a tutor, sometimes two weeks if I'm slow.

I commend you for that! I consider myself pretty aggressive when it come to starting conversation, but you start even faster than me. Historically, I've put in 2-3 months of study before starting with a tutor. After that, I meet with tutors for 1 hour per day, every day. The conversations are 100% L2, and I ask them only to correct big/obvious mistakes. I want to focus on conversation at that time, and because I'm studying so much on my own, I can normally catch my own mistakes. When I learned Brazilian Portuguese, I started conversing after only 3 weeks. Thank you Spanish!

Thanks! The ticket is in work, but this additional passage may help them.

Thanks very much for providing that - strange indeed! I was able to reproduce it, and have written a ticket. We'll keep you posted.

GermanPolyglot wrote:

To pass level 1 or even 2, you only have to recognize a word, not actively know it.

This is the type of thing that makes Duo a poor choice for most learners imo, so it's good to hear they are addressing it. 

Jinx wrote:

Any ideas what could be going on?

Hi Jinx - we're really sorry about that. I've never seen this before - can you give me a link to this passage, or any passage where it seems to happen repeatedly? Also, can you remind me of your browser/version/platform?

SRS (Spaced Repetition software) has become very popular in language learning circles these days. Discussions about SRS, and more specifically, Anki (a certain brand of SRS) are seen everywhere language learning is discussed; in fact it’s pretty much impossible to avoid seeing them. In this post I’m going to give a simple explanation of SRS and why it has become so popular. I will warn against overusing it, and finally, suggest ways to safely incorporate it into your language learning plan.

Simple explanation of SRS, and why it’s so popular

SRS is flashcard software that is designed to have you review your vocabulary just when you need to. 

With paper flashcards and word lists, you decide when to review your vocabulary. But some words you know really well, so you don’t need to review them as often. Other words you’ve already forgotten, so it would be better to review them more often. SRS remembers whether you passed or failed a card (you select “pass” or “fail” when you finish a card), and uses an algorithm to predict when you need to review it again. So in theory SRS will save you time, and use your time more effectively.

Now some people don’t like to do this type of additional vocabulary study; they prefer to learn vocabulary through context. For example, they might prefer to read for 1 hour, rather than read 45 min and do flash cards for 15 min. But for everyone else, you can probably see how attractive SRS is. It’s convenient; you can do it on your phone in your free time anywhere. And it’s efficient because of its intelligently spaced reviews. 

And to be fair, SRS is more complicated than I mentioned, and can do much more that users find attractive. For example, you are not just limited to vocabulary. You can create your own cards with whole sentences if you want. You can use it to learn grammar, add audio, add video, automatically create “fill in the blanks” type cards, create cards that have multiple sides, etc. These features make SRS even more attractive to enthusiasts.  

Overusing SRS

So with all the advantages and features mentioned above, how is it possible to overuse SRS? Here are some pitfalls of overuse. 

It can work against our goals in learning a language.

Most people want to be able converse well, and to be able to read at a reasonable speed. Many would like to understand movies and TV, and write well. Goals vary from person to person, but most people agree that at some point they’d like to be able to do these things without needing props like SRS anymore. Yes, there are some who say they plan on using it for the rest of their lives, but those people are rare. So the goal is not SRS; SRS is merely a tool to help you achieve your goal. 

Now let’s imagine a time in the future when you have reached your goal and are using the language well, as intended, without SRS, and work backwards. It should come as no surprise that it takes a lot of practice using the language without props like SRS before you become good at it. So you want to stop using SRS long before you reach your goal, or at least have weaned yourself off it to the point where you have the time you need to practice the real language. 

Conclusion - if your goal is to use the language without SRS, it doesn’t make sense to use it all the time and drop it at the last minute, expecting to miraculously not need it anymore. Using it too much and too long works against our goals.

It can cause dissociation, decrease motivation, make you want to quit and instill depression.

It’s clear to me that spending so much time away from what you really want out of a language leads to dissociation, makes you lose motivation and want to quit. I’ve read dozens of posts from people who have complained about this, met some of these students in person, and have suffered from it myself. Seeing a dream crushed after hundreds of hours of study can cause depression, believe it or not.

There are very few individuals that have what it takes to learn a language while using a method that is chiefly SRS usage. Case in point – the 10,000 sentence method, that is the method formerly pushed heavily by AJATT and thousands of Japanese learners. If I believe what I read on the internet from these learners, it was a massive failure for most people. It killed motivation, made people quit, and caused depression, on a large scale.

Conclusion – don’t use SRS so much that you lose contact with the thing you love and want most; the real language. You need time to converse, read, watch movies, etc. Otherwise you run the real risk of quitting and/or being depressed.

How to use SRS safely

According to what I stated above, we want limit the use of SRS enough to allow us sufficient time to practice and stay in touch with the pure language. There are many ways to do this, and I couldn’t possibly write about all methods here, so I’ll just share some of the principals that I follow.

• Limit your review sessions to 1 hour. This is a max, and it’s perfectly acceptable to do less.

• Limit your total SRS time, including reviews, card creation, etc, to less than 50% of your total study time in the beginning

• Limit your total SRS time, including reviews, card creation, etc, to less than 25% of your total study time after 2 months  

• Do all your repetitions, but delete cards older than one month. This is how you keep your sessions from exceeding 1 hour. 

• Don’t spend too much time making and manicuring your cards. You’ll only use them for a month, after all. 

• Delete problem cards mercilessly

The point about deleting cards older than 1 month is what scares most over-users. Remember this – you don’t want SRS to take over your studies, so you are trying to get as much benefit as possible out of a 1 hr review. You will get more bang for your buck by sacrificing the old cards rather than the new. New cards are fresh and more fun. Wordbrain also recommends reviewing vocabulary for only 1 month. For cards that have been in the SRS for 1 month, if you know them well, they don’t need to be in there; better to replace them with new cards which do need to be there. For cards that have been in the SRS for 1 month, if you don’t know them well, leaving them in there longer won’t help; better to replace them with new cards. It’s very normal and acceptable to put cards in that you’ve already deleted from your SRS previously.

If you follow these principals, your SRS should be of great benefit to you. Limiting it’s usage will leave you time to work with the real language and help you avoid depression.

One final warning.

Even with the massive failure of the 10,000 sentence method mentioned above, SRS has become much more wide spread in the past few years. Although most use it in a reasonable way, there are many quite vocal fans who are what I’d call over-users. Unfortunately I fear we can expect to see another surge and large-scale fallout over the next few years, due to the release of Gabriel Wyner's book Fluent Forever in 2014. This book describes how to learn a language using (over-using by my way of thinking) SRS. The method is very similar to the original 10,000 sentence method in many respects, but has much more detail regarding creation of material for and usage of Anki, the SRS of choice for most language users.

Most readers are probably unaware of the fate of the 10,000 sentence method. The book is well organized, professional, cites several studies in support of SRS, and uses a lot of friendly colloquial language that younger learners can relate to. Basically, the book is very attractive for many reasons, which makes it hard to warn people about. I can only hope that this post will persuade people not to follow his method.

This is some good information. I started using SRSs in 2005, with Supermemo. Back then, people didn't really understand what it was, and they thought I was insane for using it. It had a really steep learning curve, I mean, learning how to use it. But it was so much better than what I used to do - review words in a notebook full of vocabulary lists. Anki was a big improvement over Supermemo, with a lot more features, cross platform and shared decks. In the early years of Anki, there was this big surge of popularity amongst Japanese learners. To make a long story short, they overestimated and overused it, resulting in a temporary crash in popularity in that group. There are still many over-users of Anki these days, and I warned about it in this blog post.

It took me 5 days to get through the first 6-minute conversation. Number of new words were as follows:

day 1 = 26

day 2 = 20

day 3 = 20

day 4 = 17

day 5 = 12

I started the second conversation today, and added 21 new words. I wanted to get past 1/4th of the way through the passage, and I did. I expect this passage will take no more than 4 days, the next one 3 days, and the next one 2 days. I also expect to be reading whole passages before I finish 10 total, and I plan to only read one a day from then until I finish them. Anki reviews are building up, but not bad so far; maybe 10 minutes. I’m going to document my procedure here, for possible future use:

1)  do Anki reviews

2)  listen to audio for yesterday and today’s reading, reading along casually

3)  read yesterday and today’s reading

4)  memorize the unknown vocabulary, whether it is truly unknown or I merely couldn’t read it, and put in Anki

5)  listen to today’s reading, reading along casually

6)  read today’s reading

7)  listen to today’s reading without looking at text, trying hard to pick up everything

I’m not saying this is the right way to do it, but it seems to be working quite well so far, so I’ll stick with it.

I decided to go with 2) b above. According to the stats in the reading tool, here are my approximate average percentages of unknown unique words after I finish reading a passage:

Spanish 5%

French 5%

Portuguese 7%

Tagalog 10%

Swahili 15%

Russian 15%

Thai 15%

Korean 15%

Japanese 25%

Mandarin 35%

Keep in mind that these stats would look much better if they were for non-unique words. That is because a few hundred very common words, which I already know, make up a majority of the words in a passage, and are repeated many times. But the numbers above clearly show the problem I have with Japanese and Mandarin reading. To make it worse, without tools, it is often impossible to even pronounce an unknown word in those languages, since Chinese characters may give no clues.

So I am working on my greatest weakness – reading Mandarin. I’ve decided to focus on simplified characters, since that is the most common. I will need to do traditional later. I will also need to do Japanese eventually. My goal is to get the unknown words under 10%. I don’t know how long this will take, but I will dedicate at least an hour a day to this until it gets resolved.

My first day at it was yesterday. I read some of passage 1 in Mandarin Conversations. I read until I saw that I had accumulated too many unknown words, and stopped. Then I put the words into a word list and memorized them. L2 to L1, then L1 to L2. Finally, I put them in Anki. Today I did the Anki reviews, then I reread yesterday’s reading. It was much easier. Next, I continued reading until I had about 20 unknown words, and repeated yesterday’s exercise. I think I’ll limit it to about 20 words per day. I hope that after a few weeks I’ll be able to read a whole passage before I hit 20 unknown words. (I am listening to the passages too – I didn’t add that here to avoid cluttering up the reading exercise)