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Hello everyone, nice to meet you all!
What are you working on these days?
I'm on a eternally uphill quest to help people learn languages in a more independent, meaningful, and effective way.
I wrote a book on the topic, and now I am working on an app that deviates a fair bit from the usual LLM stuff (I actually started it *before* the LLM craze... oh well)
What can the WIP community help you with right now?
Feedback and some company :)
What can you help others with?
Same as above + language learning advice, if you want it!
👋 Join WIP to participate
Sounds intriguing. Can you tell us more about the app?
It's a desktop note-taking and Spaced Repetition app where you can highlight some word or sentence, and auto-generate flashcards with audio, examples, translations, definitions, etc.; but almost exclusively with human content (AI only for translations)
The idea is to involve the learner into reading/writing/listening/pronunciation as much possible via language production, and creation+curation of own learning materials - so there are a bunch of features geared towards that.
Nice. Sounds more interactive than your typical flash card app
Why desktop and not a website?
Because I think that everything that can work offline should work offline, and I want users to own their content.
I also think your notes should be private.
Ah, makes sense.
Welcome! Thoughts on Anki?
Many! :)
Summarizing a lot, there is a massive different between a generic tool "for anything" and a custom one for a specific field – let that be languages, chess, music, or whatever.
F. ex. Anki is not suited for long-form content, dealing with audio is a pain, won't let you do shadowing exercises, doesn't know what a synonym is, doesn't know your vocabulary size – so it can't even try to help you in an interesting way, etc.
Then, community-maintained plugins make a very disjointed experience IMO. F. ex. a few years ago there was a good Forvo plugin, then one day stopped working, and that was it – no more plugin, end of the story.
What do you think about Anki? Are you a power user?
Thanks for the long reply - I'm a long term Anki user, more so out of having a process "that works", and that I'm used to, rather than it being some miracle tool.
What do you see as its strengths?
Exactly, I think many long terms users managed to create a setup and workflow that work for them, and they are just happy with that.
I'm sure there are many use cases that I am not aware of.
Anki pretty much popularized spaced repetition after all, much more than SuperMemo.
Sounds super interesting, I'm struggling with motivation and consistency, but really like the automatic language growth method for asian languages. Thouughts on ALG?
Different things work for different people, and at different stages too.
Many methods are small variations of roughly the same thing just with a different name, and many principles of ALG are valid. But:
I don't buy the core idea of natural learning only, and I say it by experience. We idealize massively how kids learn; just because they don't complain so loudly it doesn't mean that languages are not hard for them – some kids actually struggle a lot, and they progress really, really, really slowly.
Genuine directed study – specially below B2 – is pretty damn useful, and there is a ton of evidence of it.