Easy export to Quizlet via csv file
While Anki is, to my knowledge, good for spaced repetiiton learning, Quizlet has many other useful functions such as writing, sharing, etc. Importing into Quizlet requires a Comma Separated Values text document. Would be best if just got that as a pop up than saving onto desktop.
I’ve added flexible output options now.
You will find them on the Words page: http://readlang.com/words
Please let me know if you have any problems.
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
Wow, thanks, that looks really cool! I wish I could create apps.
Anyway, I'm working on the videos exploring ideas on how to implement Paul Nation's approach electronically. I'm currently testing it out on my Portuguese. I think it might depend on access to relatively simple content for beginners and intermediate level learners, eg., blogs talking about everyday life.
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
If Quizlet were to add your inline text translator function to their system, I would say that that has the potential to support multiple approaches, but I would not say that of your app. But I think that it's too difficult for me to explain to you why I think that.
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I think that subtitles provide a fine corpus for normal everyday language, and are probably better than more 'official' corpses which may include more formal or academic language.
And sure, creating good frequency lists *can* be complicated if you want to group all the word families, e.g. count "run, runs, running" all as form of "to run". But being pragmatic here, I'm creating this all on my own for now so this would be too complicated, and the prioritization I have is surely better than having none at all.
As to your comment that high frequency words shouldn't be learned with spaced repetition. I don't see why not. I agree that extensive reading is probably better, but there's no harm in using multiple approaches :-)
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
Re export options: thanks!
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
Interesting. I have only a very superficial knowledge of corpus linguistics, but my impression is that it is a fairly complicated science. These frequencies that this guy got from ... subtitles? Frankly I don't understand any of it.
Paul Nation compiled the British National Corpus for British English, and he is a linguist so I trust him.
The way he looks at it is this:
- There are different types of vocabulary and you learn them differently
- Learners need a vocabulary size of 8-9k word families to read novels and newspapers.
- Vocabulary can be divided into four levels:
-High Frequency: 2k; 70% coverage of any text; foundation of language use for beginning and intermediate learners
-Academic - for high school and university sts
-Technical - for study and business specialisations
-Low Frequency: ~120k in English; 5% coverageImplications:
- Beginners to intermediate should focus on learning 2000 High Frequency words
- Students should also focus on academic and technical words
- Need a test of vocabulary size
- You learn High Frequency and Low Frequency words differentlyHigh Frequency:
- Extensive reading program that relies on graded readers
- Intensive reading for parts of words, spelling, pronunciation, word meanings, collocations
- Fluency: speed reading, repeated reading, extensive reading, recordingLow frequency: use strategies for coping with and remembering low-frequency words
- Guessing from context
- Use flashcards
- Analyse parts of words
- Use a dictionaryConclusion:
- High frequency vocabulary is the first and most important
- There are different ways of dealing with high and low frequency vocabularySome recommendations for an inline text translation app:
(1) Use for extensive reading of easy or graded texts with only occasional translation for comprehensibility (input, fluency)
(2) Use as a reading aid for repeated reading (distraction free readability, storage of read texts)
(3) Flashcard system: selectively save key vocabulary
(4) Dictionary and audio: intensive reading for analysis of parts of words, spelling, pronunciation, word meanings, collocations, synonyms, antonyms, etc.
(5) Writing: production using target vocabulary.Question: which functions is it feasible to automate using an app (eg., dictionary, audio, cards), and which depend on management function of a teacher (eg., vocab level testing, production)?
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I got the word frequency lists from here: http://invokeit.wordpress.com/frequency-word-lists/
I'm going to work on better export options soon.
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
I don't really understand this, but as I pointed out in my reply on YT, while this might be a useful function, I would want to leave pedagogical decisions up to a teacher rather than building them in.
I don't know how you got the most frequent words in these languages, and why spaced repetition, or whatever functions you build in, should be the way to learn these words.
Eg., the learning of the high frequency vocab is one sort of task, and the extensive reading in which it is practiced using a graded text, is a different and separate task. How am I to seprate the tasks of learning the vocab and practicing it in extensive reading?
Pedagogically speaking, I can't be doing both.
If you place your app ecologically, so that teachers and peers can create and share content, to use a wider variety of learning strategies, that would make more sense.
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I completely agree that you should learn the high frequency words first.
I probably wasn't clear, but this is exactly what Readlang does. From all the words you've translated it will always pick the highest frequency ones to put into the flashcard system.
e.g. I have close to two thousand words but most of them won't end up in my flashcards because the rate at which I'm reading and translating is greater than the rate at which I'm consolidating the frequent words via the flashcard system.
I'm a bit worried that as soon as you export all your words out of Readlang you will lose this prioritization, and potentially end up learning words which aren't so useful, which is what happened to me when I tried importing to Quizlet.
I agree that greater control would be useful, but I don't want to give the user more distractions than necessary while reading. Currently you can delete words you don't want to learn, in future I may add a feature where you can 'star' words you want to learn quickly to bump their priority to the top.
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
As for Quizlet, as I explain in a forthcoming video, it's very teacher-friendly in a number of ways. If you add the writing function, that would be good, but I might still prefer to use Quizlet if the environment suits me better: better audio, possibility to embed, share, additional consolidation activities. If I'm using it to teach, that means that I can quickly take vocabulary from a text in your site, push vocabulary into Quizlet, create flashcards, embed them in my site, and print out a worksheet.
I guess my point is that Anki is one sort of a pedagogy (out of date IMO) and Quizlet allows for more up to date pedagogies: social constructivist, multimodal, etc.
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Tom Tabaczynski commented
I'm currently thinking about this issue. Because like LingQ, this seems to assume that you read and translate and push volume of words into the flashcard system. But this is just one possible pedagogy. A different pedagogy would be to either read low grade text with minimal translation, and/or to save into the system only select words that are at the right level, eg., subjectively I 'feel' that I'm ready to learn them and want to consolidate by using flashcards and then other Quizlet functionality. Whereas you system, like LingQ seems to assume mass memorisation. I'm currently researching vocabulary learning so my ideas will become clearer. But it does seem that you want (a) reading fluency, and (b) only high frequency vocab first, not everything that you need to translate for comprehensibility. So in addition to grading, saving should allow for greater control of what is saved and then doing other things with that. This is a different scheme from Anki style spaced repetition.