Hi everyone,
I have a few suggestions for the app, but first, a summary.
TLDR: A vocabulary section specifically focused on the most-common words in a language
ย
When it comes to language learning, a popular bit of advice is to learn the most common words in that language as a shortcut to understanding a greater portion of everyday conversation. The reasoning goes that most conversations are constructed from a collection of frequently-used words.
Learning the most frequent words is highly-efficient. Research shows that learning the top 100 words in English enables you to understand about 50% of everyday conversation. That’s a lot of comprehension for relatively little effort! Learning the top 400 words gets you to 75% comprehension and top 1000 words leads to around 80% comprehension. This principle holds true for other languages too, although the specific words and rankings will vary (for example, languages without articles won’t include them).
Mastering just a few hundred words rapidly boosts comprehension of everyday language. In the early stages, basic comprehension, both spoken and written, is more important than complex grammar. After all, we understand passively before we actively speak. A focus on high-frequency words should form a part of any well-rounded language program.
This specific type of vocabulary-building exercise is sorely-neglected in apps like Duolingo and is a feature I often wish it had. Gamifying the process into some sort of flashcard activity or word-matching activity could be fun and broken down into different levels (a bit like Duolingo’s match madness challenge, but focused on the high-frequency words).
For example, starting at the easiest level to more difficult:
ย
- matching individual English words to the equivalent word in the target language
- manually typing the English word to match the word in the target language – this is a more involved activity than simple matching
- manually typing the word in the target language from the English word – users need practice translating in both directions
ย
Vocabulary should be introduced incrementally. Start with the top 10 words, then add the next 10 words to make the top 20 words (therefore revising the first 10), then top 50, 100, 200 and so on. Each expansion would build upon the previous list. We could aim for a ceiling of 500 or 1000 words although the exact number is a bit arbitrary. However, a minimum of about 500 seems reasonable to be most effective (around 75% comprehension).
One thing to consider is the source of these lists. It’s important to get those from reputable sources, but I don’t think any list will differ too much in content and ranking. For example, a word that is ranked at 21, is unlikely to be ranked at 257 on another list.
Incorporating spaced repetition would optimize retention. Words that are consistently answered correctly could be temporarily removed from review. Instead of tracking consecutive correct answers (typos happen!) it might be better to record the percentage of correct answers. A word answered correctly say 95% of the time, could be removed from the vocabulary pool for a set period of time, before reintroduction.
As the app grows, you could even add a related feature where users curate their own lists of words to practice, allowing them to personalize their learning experience and letting them focus on vocabulary most relevant to their own interests. Another feature could be to have a separate place to go back over old vocabulary, so it doesn’t interfere with learning the newer vocabulary.
What are your thoughts?