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I am about to launch Gensen, a new app using the Tatoeba corpus. Before the actual release, I would very much like to hear your opinion on the beta version. Everything is at https://gensen.xyz . Thank you in advance for your comments!
I don't really need this app (it doesn't have the languages I'm learning now), but I've done a quick check.
All-in-all, it seems nice. I like the general idea. The GUI looks sleek. I really like that you;ve
Some things that could be improved:
1. No keyboard shortcuts. I can't quickly press Enter or Space to move to the next question, but no, I can't do this.
2. The pop-up hints are sometimes misleading.
I've selected English-through-Ukrainian. E.g. 'I [have] been to Rome' shows the following pop-up hints for 'have':
— мають 'they have/possess',
— мати 'to have/possess',
— є 'there is/[he/she/is] is'.
None is applicable to 'I have been to Rome', it should show something like «допомічне дієслово» 'auxillary verb', or something along these lines.
3. The '+' button is not really intuitive for 'hint'.
4. At first, I've thought I had to type words, and I couldn't understand why I can't.
In general it's very nice!
Thank you for your feedback.
As word translations are generated automatically, it is true that hints are not always adapted to the context of the sentence. This is why it is possible to report errors so that they can be removed from the corpus.
As the app is mainly designed for phones, I didn't create any keyboard shortcuts. It's a good improvement idea for a future version though.
> This is why it is possible to report errors so that they can
> be removed from the corpus.
I don't think removing all sentences where 'have' is an auxillary verb is a viable strategy... I mean, it's a large chunk of the English grammar :D
Hopefully, each word/lemma is used as a sentence blank only once.
I didn't test it because that would require me to sign up, but the illustration suggests that the app looks a lot like Clozemaster (http://clozemaster.com). How does it differ?
At clozemaster.com I read:
Where are the sentences from?
All sentences and translations are from Tatoeba's massive and awesome dataset, released under a CC-BY License.
Here are som extracts from user reviews on the Android app store:
I was very excited at first about this app, until several native french speakers told me that phrases I'd learned on Clozemaster aren't correct French. Discovering this after having paid for the premium version was extremely disappointing (20181228)
The idea of the app is nice, but as I was testing it in Italian i realised there are a lot of mistakes in the translations, at least from Spanish, and that would be only confusing for my students. That's why I'm giving the app just 2 stars (20171102)
Does the above comments mean that the French sentences on Tatoeba aren't correct French and that there are a lot mistakes in the translations from Spanish into Italian?
This might be more visible as a separate discussion.
They are effectively quite similar, but Gensen disassociates itself in several ways:
- the redundancy is reduced by selecting only one sentence per lemma (e.g. dog(s) is used a single time as a blank instead of two).
- the "guessability" is improved by favoring sentences that contain words that are frequently associated with the blank word.
- the hints displayed are word translations or icons instead of randomly generated lists of words
- no typing is required. This enables a smoother user experience.
- the user interface is significantly less cluttered
None of these would get me to switch from Clozemaster.
- I don't want higher "guessability" than Clozemaster has.
- I want to be able to practice both singular and plural forms of words (especially given that these are so different in Russian).
- Clozemaster has the option to display word translations, too.
- Clozemaster has the option to run in multiple-choice mode, but I exclusively use text input because it helps me learn better.
- I don't find the user interface cluttered (though the fact that the main font size is so large and the font size for the "hints" is so small is a pain). Even on my phone, I don't need to scroll to see what I need to see.
I've just been trying out Klozemaster and less clutter certainly seems like it'd be a big improvement on it.
At the same time, your app (Gensen) is a bit confusing to me; there are buttons like + and an eye where I don't really understand what either is supposed to do. There's definitely much more effort put into making the site visually appealing, but it's not intuitive as to how to "play" it.
Thanks for your comment. It reminds me that I should add a quick help intro for the new comers.
- click on the + to get an "additional" hint (maybe a ? would be more appropriate)
- click on the eye to "see" the answer
> None of these would get me to switch from Clozemaster.
I'm glad you found an application that suits you. I'm not giving up on changing your mind one day. :)
Sorry. I didn't check it because you have to sign up.