YC-Funded Lingt Uses Games To Turn You Into A Language Learning Addict

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/lingt-learn-chinese/

by transburgh • 17 years ago

113 60 17 years ago

DaniFong• 17 years ago

Whoa, great idea guys! I've been looking for something like this! :-)

prawn2• 17 years ago

Signed up and gave it a crack. I learned basic Mandarin at high school and have been to China a few times. Found the site quick and easy to use (though I struggle with remembering the tones for the pinyin). Achievements provide a simple but effective incentive.

Would definitely use something like this were it available for Italian and Spanish as well.

alex_c3• 17 years ago

Argh. Show, don't tell. I'm not going to "Sign Up or login" just to see what the interface is like. There are tons of language resources out there, and tons of different ways to learn (currently hooked on language apps on my iPhone) - I have a rough idea of what works for me and what doesn't, I should be able to tell right away what methods the site uses and if it's for me or not.

weaksauce2• 17 years ago

It's beta. I would imagine that they will get the sales pitch down once they are finished with the product.

latortuga• 17 years ago

I think the gp's intent was to give constructive feedback, something to be encouraged for beta products in particular!

Fixnum• 17 years ago

Agree. Along the same lines, the items of the form

<span style="font-size:24px;" class="blue">Learning is a game.</span>

look like they ought to be links to describing the features (they're blue!) and so sent me needlessly changing NoScript settings, to no avail. If this is just unimplemented, then OK, but otherwise you should change the colour scheme before leaving beta, or your users will be wasting precious seconds on the front page. (Apologies if you already knew!)

cstejerean• 17 years ago

any recommendations for language apps on the iPhone?

alex_c3• 17 years ago

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this, but here's a quick list (I've finally started to learn Japanese):

Human Japanese - basically an interactive textbook, with audio clips and interactive quizzes. Probably the best of the bunch.

Pocket Japanese - based on several series of podcasts, for different skill levels. Each lesson has a ~10min podcast, sentence by sentence breakdown, ~1-4min review track, vocabulary flashcards, and written grammar lesson. Interface can be a bit annoying, but the content and features are good.

iKana - for learning Hiragana and Katakana

AccelaStudy Japanese - for pure vocabulary cramming, very polished.

To the Lingt team - if an iPhone app isn't already on your roadmap, it definitely should be. It's a ridiculously convenient way to learn a language.

felipe• 17 years ago

I found Lingt very similar (in concept) to Anki, which has an iPhone client. I do not have an iPhone, so I can't tell how good it is, but Anki (desktop) is fantastic. I am currently learning Mandarin, and Anki is my primary resource for vocabulary memorization.

varenc4• 17 years ago

Thanks for this point! We'll definitely work on getting a more enlightening front page in the future.

spydertennis• 17 years ago

I was lucky enough to be one of the first beta users. Their cognitive model of predicting exactly when I need to take another look at words so I don't forget them works really well.

ccarpenterg• 17 years ago

I just signed up and it took me more than 60 seconds to figure out how to begin.

It reminds me of Rosetta Stone but without the pictures. I'd pay for this service.

cvg2• 17 years ago

I like it, though I can't figure out to type the pinyin vowels.

tel3• 17 years ago

Just type the tone number at the end of each word

ni3hao3 for instance.

prawn2• 17 years ago

To "apply" a tone to a syllable, follow it with the corresponding tone number. e.g., wo3

There's a link down the bottom of the page during those sequences that explains how it works and how to practice.

cvg2• 17 years ago

cool, thanks!

algorias• 17 years ago

I wonder if they plan to offer english as well (i.e. x to english instead of english to x), considering the importance of english in the online world.

banjiewen• 17 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me, as that's probably a more lucrative market (teaching English to those in China or India); but when you're building and testing a product, it's probably better to be able to speak to your testers in your/their native language ;)

tel3• 17 years ago

Desperately need a way to test into higher levels more quickly than just running the vocabulary. Also, it'd be wonderful to have a keyboard-based way to run the tests.

That being said, I'm almost still tempted to run through the intro vocabulary due to the achievement system.

tel3• 17 years ago

Ah, just found the textbook section, though it's still not easy to understand how to find vocabulary at the appropriate level.

chokma• 17 years ago

It's not working. (Ubuntu 9.10 64 Bit / Firefox 3.5.6) - the learning screen does not show any words.

zach• 17 years ago

As a game guy, I think it would be better to call them "user engagement techniques" or something instead of "gameplay elements" when gameplay is not at the core of the experience. To be fair, I guess it's like how game designers talk about "toy factor" when something is fun to play with pointlessly.

That said, I love the trend, from Yelp to all these YC companies, of deliberately planning the user experience to include these systems.

I don't thing games deserve as much credit as they sometimes get, either. I went to a Cub Scout troop where we had the same kind of points, rank and achievements that are typically denoted as "gameplay elements" today.

icefox• 17 years ago

Just shows a big white screen when flash doesn't work or you have flashblock installed.... It should have some text box that is normally hidden saying "Please install flash"

varenc4• 17 years ago

Should be fixed soon!

netcan2• 17 years ago

It would be interesting if you could get one of those language evangelist countries to financially incentivize people to learn the language.

_cbsz• 17 years ago

You mean "financially incentivize people to cheat", right?

netcan2• 17 years ago

maybe.

araneae• 17 years ago

One criticism of the levels; there should be automatic browser resizing. I have a small screen, so I had to scroll down to see all the possible answers, and then I couldn't look at the word and what the character looked like at the same time I was searching for the definition.

Also, for the part of the learning where you type in the pingin, it doesn't read English language characters as correct unless they have the little symbols on top of them. I can't find those characters fast enough to type them in!

varenc4• 17 years ago

Sorry for the sizing trouble, we'll definitely have to get better with it.

For pinyin input, there's a page that explains the input system linked to at the bottom, though we need to make it a bit more prominent. Basically you type a number 1-5 after each syllable to apply an accent to it.

coffeemug• 17 years ago

Congrats, guys! About time someone gave Rosetta Stone a run for their money.

markerdmann• 17 years ago

Everyone who is interested in this may also be interested in skritter.com, which features a very similar interface. Skritter's focus is on reading and writing Chinese characters.

burke• 17 years ago

Very, very cool. I'd pay for this.

Why is the image for "eight, 8" a glass of... very translucent-ish milk?

johnwatson11218• 17 years ago

I wonder if they used techniques from http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia... I am interested in using ideas from that article and incorporating them into a blackjack site I'm building. I'm very interested in this idea of taking things that you messed up on before and presenting it back to the end user at a lower frequency.

varenc4• 17 years ago

Wozniak and similar programs have definitely been a big inspiration. One of the important things we wanted to do was bring these into a relatively easy web interface that abstracts away some of the stuff that's going on underneath.

bokonist• 17 years ago

This is really cool. About time that someone made something like this for the web. Wish I had this when I studied Chinese in college.

toisanji• 17 years ago

a did a somewhat similar site a while ago: http://sanbit.com At the time, I couldn't find a suitable partner to work on it with me. I would like to continue working on it though. I had also applied to yc with this idea a year ago.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

spanish! im going to mexico in < two weeks, hook me up!

mdemare2• 17 years ago

I have a similar site for European languages: http://inglua.com/en

cmelbye• 17 years ago

Wow! Really nice job on that! I'm doing the English -> Spanish lessons, and it's really thoroughly made (it can tell me why something was wrong, if I was close, etc.) I really like the registration process. Play with the site for a bit, and then fill in a few fields to save your progress.

vii• 17 years ago

This site is actually really easy to get started with and willing to let you study without bothering you.

Regarding the approach (type in a translation for the requested term), I am a bit sceptical. It seems to require that there is one unique translation for each term. Maybe multiple choice would be better? This would also solve the irritating keymap for foreign language problem (http://smart.fm solves this nicely with a custom input mechanism in flash).

mclin2• 17 years ago

I've tried Rosetta, smart.fm, others that score you based on your input, but by far the simplest and best method I've found is using Anki, which just asks you 'did you remember it?' and it's up to you to answer truthfully.

http://ichi2.net/anki/

mdemare2• 17 years ago

There's more than one translation for words with synonyms (although people keep coming up with more synonyms).

And I use a custom js-based keymap that works on all os'es, and teach students how to enter accents.

durin42• 17 years ago

After having played with this a little, a couple of nits:

I sometimes know the mistake I made, it's minor, and I want to move on, so click the "Don't know" button in frustration. This then registers for the next question, rather than the one I was on.

I wish there was a non-click-through-a-list way to get the vocab. I'd like to be able to look at the words a little more systematically before even trying the interactive bits.

The pinyin below the symbols isn't big enough - I find myself frequently getting a word right, except I have no clue what the inflections are because they were too small to notice.

Also, maybe make it a little more clear up front about inflections - I knew Chinese was inflected going in, but some may not.

reedlaw• 17 years ago

It would be useful to include a list of HSK words (the Chinese TOEFL equivalent).

sebastianavina• 17 years ago

it just looks like a web-version of the rosetta stone

nex3• 17 years ago

When I'm signing up and I have focus on the last form element, I expect the tab key to go to the "Go" button, not to some "About" link that'll clear my form and make me start all over again.

simplify• 17 years ago

Add difficulty levels. Only 50% to get to the next level? Too easy! Being able to raise that percent will make it feel more like a difficult yet fun game. [Some] users will want to keep trying over and over until they reach that goal, and really feel accomplished when they do.

rfreytag• 17 years ago

Excellent first choice language of Mandarin. The competition is either not good or very expensive.

This is going to do very well. I'll go through the entire course.

mclin2• 17 years ago

1) this is very similar to smart.fm, which has been around for a year or so now. 2) I just did the first level. It'd be pretty difficult for someone who didn't know anything about mandarin to get anything out of that. If you really want to learn mandarin take a course to learn correct pronunciation. Your first attempt at a tonal language can be brutal.

jaytee_clone• 17 years ago

As someone who's bilingual (English, Chinese) and have taught both languages before, my suggestion is:

You are focusing on the easier part of learning a language - listening and reading. All of my past students struggled far more with pronouncing and writing.

Of course recording the users' pronunciations and handwritings, and then verifying them is a lot more technically challenging, but still doable. It will surely impress a lot of people. (Maybe that's in your long term plan?)

Not saying what you made is not useful, it certainly is. But it's not where the pain is in learning a language. Depending on the curriculum, it may not make that much of a difference on each student's language ability. But then again, our current education system is not making that much of a difference either.

Estragon2• 17 years ago

I did a few hundred rounds with lingt. It's fantastic. Here's a couple of comments:

1) Perhaps there are theoretical reasons for this, but it surprised me that the characters are always presented in conjunction with their pinyin. I would have thought it would be better to train for recognition of the characters unaided by the pinyin, some of the time.

2) It was taking a long time to respond to my input, at times, and this was resulting in input I didn't intend. E.g., I would go to click "I don't know" right near the end of the allotted time, and this would get translated into a click on the subsequent round. Usually, that click would be in the wrong area for that round. There were also a couple of times where the answer it offered was clearly wrong, based on what was presented on the screen. If you want to find these cases, you may be able to get it from your analytics. My username is throwaway, and this happened between 8pm and 10:30pm EST last night.

3) You need a better way to highlight availability of the vocab lists, and more information about what each list contains.

Estragon2• 17 years ago

Some further comments after playing with this a bit more:

4) The entry mechanism is going to be confusing for many people. Most people don't know how to enter a "ü" for instance. The fact that it is case sensitive is also going to be a problem. Also, the focus shifts are confusing. If you click on "I don't know," the focus is still on that button when you go to the next round, not the input field. Similarly if you click on "pause."

5) You need some way do disambiguate when there are synonyms in the vocab list.

LargeWu• 17 years ago

I would largely agree with the parent's suggestions. Having an option for just the character would be especially huge, because as a native English speaker it's easy to think of the character as just a visual aid, and as such it's easily ignored.

Since you are in beta, I would find it helpful if there was a "report bugs" feature. For example, sometimes I noticed I would have something typed in correctly, but the application didn't recognize the tone marks I had (correctly) entered, which causes me to second guess myself. Or the voice recognition having trouble with certain words. I probably tried to pronounce the word for ten at least a hundred times unsuccessfully. I would expect to work at least once by accident. It would be great if I could just report this from within the app.

Other than that, I think the interface is great, and it's really FUN to use. Great job so far.

learnalist• 17 years ago

Your name is incredibly close to a user here in HN who has the website http://www.lingq.com/. Is he working with you on this, or is this just poor creativity on your behalf for a name?

Not coming across in a negative way, at first I thought his site had a revamp. Now im just confused.

stcredzero• 17 years ago

Nintendo DS already has games like this. They already use the same principles for motivation.

http://amzn.com/B001BZ691C http://amzn.com/B000SQ5LOG

pvandehaar• 17 years ago

freerice.com for other languages, basically.

YC-Funded Lingt Uses Games To Turn You Into A Language Learning Addict

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