3 ms·

Two unrelated items: I had very good results many years ago polishing the last steps of my French while in France. My tutor used very novel and interesting sho

by sgc 3y ago

Two unrelated items: I had very good results many years ago polishing the last steps of my French while in France. My tutor used very novel and interesting short articles, one example was a short article about shrimp found in a cave with no light. At the time this was a novel bit of information and quite interesting on its own. I think an effort to find novel and educational information to learn from is an effort well worth the time. Please add Albanian. I should learn this language but I am not motivated enough. I would definitely give your tool a proper test run.

barrell 3y ago
We will look into Albanian! We have some ideas on how to remove the language restrictions sometime this year. When it comes to educational content, one of the things I'm most excited for is to have the stuff I'm learning hooked up into an SRS _and_ in another language. Not only will I remember things better because I'm learning it in another language, but I'll learn the other language better because I'm interested in the content. Although I'm most interested in turning stories into language learning content. Instead of 'Jack was in the park in summer'', something like "John Snow stood on the wall in winter" I would expect to elad to much stronger memories.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  > turning stories into language learning content Great idea. It could be simple cloze deletion from the content pasted in, or are you thinking to use AI to create simplified expressions with similar semantics?
- sgc 3y ago
  There will be two broad types of people: those with interest in fiction, and those who prefer non-fiction. The more you can offer something from each group, and from a few different genres / areas in those subgroups, the more people will be able to find their sweet spot. For extra credit, analyze which subjects each person is learning the best from, and give them more of that. Eventually you should be able to find patterns and know when to switch things up by finding each person's learning cadences... romance, romance, chemistry, nature, romance, etc. Out of curiosity I tried chatGPT with a simple: "please give me a list of ten interesting facts about the life of polar bears". It was ok. I got better results with: "can you rewrite that list, providing more unique, novel facts about polar bears? Things most people would not know?"
  - barrell 3y ago
    For what it's worth, we're cooking up a lot of fun stuff with vector embeddings along these lines. For now we've decided on getting the product stable and launched, although everything is set up to go in this direction.
oh_sigh 3y ago
Do you have a personal connection with Albania that would lead you to learn it? I traveled through Albania for 2 months and literally never met a person who didn't speak English or Italian...but maybe I just didn't go to the areas where people only speak Albanian.
- sgc 3y ago
  Not all Albanians speak another language, especially among the older generations who have a lot of wisdom to impart. And yes, of course I have reasons to learn it.

by sgc 3y ago

barrell 3y ago

We will look into Albanian! We have some ideas on how to remove the language restrictions sometime this year. When it comes to educational content, one of the things I'm most excited for is to have the stuff I'm learning hooked up into an SRS _and_ in another language. Not only will I remember things better because I'm learning it in another language, but I'll learn the other language better because I'm interested in the content. Although I'm most interested in turning stories into language learning content. Instead of 'Jack was in the park in summer'', something like "John Snow stood on the wall in winter" I would expect to elad to much stronger memories.

clbrmbr 3y ago
> turning stories into language learning content Great idea. It could be simple cloze deletion from the content pasted in, or are you thinking to use AI to create simplified expressions with similar semantics?
sgc 3y ago
There will be two broad types of people: those with interest in fiction, and those who prefer non-fiction. The more you can offer something from each group, and from a few different genres / areas in those subgroups, the more people will be able to find their sweet spot. For extra credit, analyze which subjects each person is learning the best from, and give them more of that. Eventually you should be able to find patterns and know when to switch things up by finding each person's learning cadences... romance, romance, chemistry, nature, romance, etc. Out of curiosity I tried chatGPT with a simple: "please give me a list of ten interesting facts about the life of polar bears". It was ok. I got better results with: "can you rewrite that list, providing more unique, novel facts about polar bears? Things most people would not know?"
- barrell 3y ago
  For what it's worth, we're cooking up a lot of fun stuff with vector embeddings along these lines. For now we've decided on getting the product stable and launched, although everything is set up to go in this direction.

oh_sigh 3y ago

Do you have a personal connection with Albania that would lead you to learn it? I traveled through Albania for 2 months and literally never met a person who didn't speak English or Italian...but maybe I just didn't go to the areas where people only speak Albanian.

sgc 3y ago
Not all Albanians speak another language, especially among the older generations who have a lot of wisdom to impart. And yes, of course I have reasons to learn it.