I'm Desgining a New iPhone app for grad students learning languages

[lifetimestudent]

As my summer project/hobby before starting a phd in History, I am teaching myself how to make iPhone/iPad applications. Maybe it will supplement my stipend - maybe it won't - but it will be fun. I am currently designing an iPhone app specifically with grad students in mind - a flash card app to help learn languages. What would you like to see in an app like this, which is designed specifically for languages? How would it differ from a "regular" flash card app? I am open to all suggestions!

[bluellie]

I've been using a flashcard program, Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/), for the past couple years. The creator has just submitted an app to the Apple Store last week, so I'm not sure what features the iPhone app has. I've been using the desktop application and the online version (it syncs) for almost two years now to study Japanese. I'm really happy with Anki, but if you can implement a better program/interface/what have you--more power to you!

When designing your flashcard algorithm, I would look into the research/literature regarding spaced repetition. I'd like to see, however, a learning mode and a reviewing mode. When you're learning, you only look at new cards and you see them fairly frequently (imagine having a deck of card that you're just shuffling through). When you go into review mode, those cards get added to the review deck and then the SRS algorithm kicks in.

Customizable flashcard formats with multiple fields are also pretty important (one of the reasons why Mnemosyne didn't work for me). Media support (audio, pictures, possibly video) is a huge plus. Being able to sort, filter, search and tag cards is also pretty handy. Charts and graphs of progress and of potential cards due at a future date are also helpful.

I think one thing I'd like to see would be to be able to isolate easily a set of cards to drill repeatedly (i.e. cram) and then re-merge it into the larger deck of material without altering their stats. Perhaps this could be done by putting them back into learning mode for the time you're cramming for your test.

I haven't found a good way to study grammar in a flash-card program. If your program, which is aimed at language learners, had a way of addressing the study of grammar, your application would definitely stand out.

Another thing you might want to consider is including a couple pre-made decks (most of my decks were made by other users) or a way for users to share their decks. A couple of different card templates might also be useful.

I hope this makes sense and was helpful. I would definitely check out other flashcard programs and see what they address well and what can be improved of tweaked. Some desktop programs I've used are Anki, Ebbinghaus, and Mnemosyne. You should be able to download them for free and then play around with them.

Good luck!

Edited May 27, 2010 by bluellie

[Postbib Yeshuist]

By way of a "basic" flashcard app, what I'd like to see are the following:

-Ability to enter my own flashcards either through a synced database (perhaps e-mailed) or manually typing them in (I am a strong believer in the process of writing words down as a way to learn them).

-Ability to "rate" my familiarity with a word as I progress and then review only flashcards that meet a certain rating criteria (e.g.. "review only ratings 1-3" since 4 & 5 might be, say, "familiar" and "highly familiar.")

-Ability to categorize vocab words (i.e. "food," "transportation," etc) using either pre-defined or my own keywords.

Provided the app then supported non-arabic character sets, I'd be more than happy to drop a buck or two your way (maybe even 3 ).

[Infinite Monkeys]

I'd really like to see the grammatical elements, actually. Verbs = pain. Also, something that allows the user to cultivate some sense of the standard word order in a language (is it SVO, SOV, VSO, etc?) would be a great element.

Is it possible to have something interactive (either with the program or with other users)? Maybe it's just me, but I find learning languages in a vacuum to be incredibly mindnumbing and exceedingly slow. Postbib Yeshuist's comment about writing flashcards makes an excellent point about learning; the more inputs you have, the more likely you are to learn the material. Writing, reading, hearing, speaking--it's all valuable. I don't know how much is really possible with the technology (my programming days and skills are far, FAR behind me), so some of that might not be do-able. But the more avenues of learning that you can give the user, the more successful they're likely to be.

I think it's a fantastic idea, and if you broaden it past iApps, I'd be buying in a heartbeat.

[lifetimestudent]

Thanks for all your comments. Here's my current thinking, I'd like to know what you think:

• 
  
  
• The focus will be on passive vocabulary acquisition (i.e., learning words so you can read the language). One could also use the flash card app to learn grammar, just not taking advantage of the vocabulary-specific elements.
  
• It will implement a "spaced repetition" algorithm, like SuperMemo. The idea is to space out word studying so that you study "difficult" words more often, and easy ones less often. It'll calculate whether words are "difficult" or "easy" based on whether you answer them correctly or not. So if you get an answer right, the "interval" between now and when you see the word again will be longer, and if you get it wrong, the "interval" will be shorter.
  
• To better calculate whether words are "difficult" or "easy," one could organize words based on whether they are cognates of your native language (theoretically easier than non-cognates) or false cognates (theoretically more difficult). Similarly, one could argue that longer words are more difficult to remember.
  
• You could also enter for each word which part of speech it was, e.g. verb, substantive/noun, modifier/adjective/adverb, preposition, etc. That way you could focus on specific parts of speech that you want to learn.
  
• Additionally, you could put words in "groups" - e.g. words that have related roots so they help reinforce your memory of the word, or words that are very similar but have different meanings and so you need to differentiate them. So in German, for example, you could say that Kugelschreiber (pen) and schreiben (to write) are related. I am not sure how exactly that data could be best put to use, but I am open to suggestions. Two ideas I have are:
  • The program could calculate aggregated "difficulty" data for word groups - i.e. if you get schreiben wrong, then the whole group of "schreiben" words will be marked as more difficult. Then the interval for all the schreiben words will be shorter.
    
  • Also, it could somehow show you word groups in a coordinated way. So, if you see schreiben, you'd see Kugelschreiber sometime soon (though not right away) so that the memory of one can reinforce the other as you study.
    

What do you think?

[CaballeroAndante]

Thanks for all your comments. Here's my current thinking, I'd like to know what you think:

• 
  
  
• The focus will be on passive vocabulary acquisition (i.e., learning words so you can read the language). One could also use the flash card app to learn grammar, just not taking advantage of the vocabulary-specific elements.
  
• It will implement a "spaced repetition" algorithm, like SuperMemo. The idea is to space out word studying so that you study "difficult" words more often, and easy ones less often. It'll calculate whether words are "difficult" or "easy" based on whether you answer them correctly or not. So if you get an answer right, the "interval" between now and when you see the word again will be longer, and if you get it wrong, the "interval" will be shorter.
  
• To better calculate whether words are "difficult" or "easy," one could organize words based on whether they are cognates of your native language (theoretically easier than non-cognates) or false cognates (theoretically more difficult). Similarly, one could argue that longer words are more difficult to remember.
  
• You could also enter for each word which part of speech it was, e.g. verb, substantive/noun, modifier/adjective/adverb, preposition, etc. That way you could focus on specific parts of speech that you want to learn.
  
• Additionally, you could put words in "groups" - e.g. words that have related roots so they help reinforce your memory of the word, or words that are very similar but have different meanings and so you need to differentiate them. So in German, for example, you could say that Kugelschreiber (pen) and schreiben (to write) are related. I am not sure how exactly that data could be best put to use, but I am open to suggestions. Two ideas I have are:
  • The program could calculate aggregated "difficulty" data for word groups - i.e. if you get schreiben wrong, then the whole group of "schreiben" words will be marked as more difficult. Then the interval for all the schreiben words will be shorter.
    
  • Also, it could somehow show you word groups in a coordinated way. So, if you see schreiben, you'd see Kugelschreiber sometime soon (though not right away) so that the memory of one can reinforce the other as you study.
    

What do you think?

Sounds like you are on the right track and I am interested in seeing how this turns out for you (us). I suggest you take a look at Mental Case. It's the best app of this genre that I have seen and they did a wonderful job of integrating the database at flashcardexchange.com. Best of luck to you and keep us updated.

[lifetimestudent]

So how does this app target grad students, as opposed to the general public or other types of students?

The main way, I think, is simply that grad students (at least those in the humanities) have to learn a lot of languages, and hopefully a flashcard app specifically designed at language acquisition will be helpful to grad students and others who want to learn languages.

[lifetimestudent]

For anyone who is interested, I am getting (somewhat) close to having something ready for beta testing - if you are interested in beta testing on your iPhone or iPod, just send me a PM and we can figure out the details.

[lifetimestudent]

For anyone who is interested--my flash cards app was just posted to the App Store! You can check out a video & screenshots at www.iphoneflashcards.com, and purchase it at http://bit.ly/iphoneflashcards. It costs $2.99. I'd be very interested to hear what people here think about it and how it could be improved to facilitate language acquisition. It is, after all, made for grad students!