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Readlang, my language reading site | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4288 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 131 08 March 2013 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I'm working on this website for reading and building vocabulary.
http://readlang.com It tries to provide a nice reading environment with translation and couple it with an SRS flashcard system for retaining words. I suppose it's a much less flexible alternative to using LWT (Learning With Texts, which I only discovered last week and seems pretty cool) and Anki. I'm hoping that it's simplicity will make it easy to use. I've been using it for over 2 months now and for me it's working well, I regularly encounter words in 'the real world' that I've learned via the site. But there's a *lot* of room for improvement, and I'd love to get some constructive feedback and ideas. 21 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 131 08 March 2013 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Wow, that's really nice:) Reminds me on the add-on that I just can't get to work. I might start using it when reading stuff in English online and then picking up the words that I don't know in other languages. I LOVE the easy flashcard creation especially. Most of my cards are like that anyway. and it's awesome that Danish is supported :)
Some questions: -what if I'm learning several languages? will the cards be saved as they are if I switch the language? will i be able to see them without changing the language back? -is there a maximum interval for the cards? like, is it a true SRS or is it like memrise where you need to review everything within three months? -if I don't use the system for some time, which words will appear first - the new ones or the ones that are long due? -is the context basically a sentence? -it would be nice to have a reading only mode when words are not stored. i just love the look of the inserted words in a different language:) for now I should log out if I want to just read, right? a minor complaint: i don't want to have to use the bookmark bar for one single site. i bookmarked the page for now but a proper firefox add-on would be nice for sure. and/or a line for pasting the link. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| fleurdeneige Diglot Pro Member France Joined 5046 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 131 09 March 2013 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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hi, I couldn't resist and so I just went and registered and then grabbed a random article
from Corriere della Sera, and now I am not sure what I should do next - it does seem to work as the article was recognized but when I click on the words it translates them into English and highlights them in yellow, and that is all. So, what do I do next? This is just a preliminary comment but in my opinion maybe it needs to be more intuitive. Also, there seems to be some content already there - could you tell us more about this? What is this "First Italian Reader" already on the site? thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4288 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 4 of 131 09 March 2013 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Thanks, glad you like it!
You can switch languages at any time with the dropdown at the top of the page, and your set of words and books/articles will switch, but nothing is deleted. It's very possible to switch back and fore to learn multiple languages at once.
Nope, no maximum interval. It uses the supermemo 2 algorithm and keeps multiplying by the easiness factor. The only thing to be aware of is that if you use it without signing in, all your cards are stored in your browser only (using localStorage). It is possible that your browser could clear this for some reason, so if you intend to continue using the system I highly recommend signing up so it will be stored on the server.
At the moment, it will get all the cards that are scheduled for that day and shuffle them at random. I've been using it daily so haven't run into this kind of problem, but I do worry about what the best solution is for people who use it more sporadically. Not sure if anyone has any suggestions about the best approach here?
Yeah, it's a sentence, which may get cut short if it's really long.
Hmmm, but if you translated a word it means you didn't know it right? So why wouldn't you want it in the system to learn? I suppose if you're reading something embarrassing maybe ;-) It's pretty easy to delete cards later, in the "Learn" or "Words" tabs, do you think this isn't good enough?
Yeah, a chrome plugin would be nice too, one day... :) You don't have to show the bookmarks bar actually. In firefox you can right click the "Readlang Importer" button, select "Bookmark This Link". Then to use it: browse to the page you want and select your bookmark from the main menu under Firefox->Bookmarks->Readlang Importer 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4288 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 5 of 131 09 March 2013 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I made a video which might help you figure out what to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qabaf3QumB8 Hope it helps. The public content already there (visible only to signed in users) is very sparse at the moment. I just put a couple of books I found on project gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ Actually these probably aren't the best material to learn for most people since they are quite dated. If you import things you can opt to share them by clicking on the item in your bookshelf and then on "Share", this will make them public and visible to other people. Thanks very much for the feedback! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 131 09 March 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Yes, that's how I use it. But it would be nice to have a simple button.
If this wasn't clear enough, I read a lot in English online and I want to make this more productive by learning the words in other languages. For this I would have to list English as the language I'm learning and for example Italian or Polish as my native language. Which means the flashcards would be pretty much useless. I've already signed up. I experimented a bit before that and the browser asked whether to save the words to my new account. So I can just log out and say no to this question, I hope?
-be able to choose whether you want the old or new words -be able to filter the cards by language -have an opportunity to actually view the list and choose which cards to review. Edited by Serpent on 09 March 2013 at 12:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5424 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 131 09 March 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
If you need more content, a decent source would be LingQ: LingQ Just sign up for a free account, find a text that you want to download and hit the print button to get the pure text in a new window that doesn't have all that formatting, then import. I've done that in the past with Learning With Texts. :) Edit: Ah, I did not notice that importing content makes it visible to other users. If anyone is going to use LingQ content then there will have to be a way to have the imported content be visible and available solely to the uploader. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 09 March 2013 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4288 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 8 of 131 09 March 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Yeah, interesting idea, but I'm not sure how common this use case is, and the problem is that the context would be in English where you'd really rather the context be in the language you want to learn.
Yes when you log in, and it asks you that, if you press "Cancel" it will log you in without importing the words and articles you had while in logged out / trial mode and they will be removed. (I really should clarify the wording on that dialog - "Cancel" doesn't actually cancel the login, rather prevents the import)
Currently the system will by default only add new cards to top up your schedule to an average of 25 cards per day, and then after a learning session if you have more cards waiting you can opt to add more new cards, temporarily increasing your daily schedule. 25 is very much on the low side and I plan to add the ability for each user to alter this, so they don't have to continually add more new cards at the end of their sessions. You also mentioned the case of someone who's left the system for a long time and comes back, what happens then if they have 200 *old* scheduled cards in their queue and don't want to go through them all? I'm not sure the best answer for this, but even if they just spend 10 mins and manage to cut the number down a third that's still an improvement, so maybe it's not a problem.
The 'I'm learning...' dropdown at the top will do this already.
I think it makes sense to allow the user to review and prioritise the queue of waiting words, but then once the words are in the Magic Word Machine (hmm, can't decide if that name is too silly :)) it's then out of the users hands. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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