Lingvoji - A Windows 10 app with inking, speaking, and listening exercises

Hey everyone, just wanted to show an app I am working on called Lingvoji. It is an early work, but I think it is at a point where I can start getting some user load. I originally designed it for myself as a way to teach learn Chinese from scratch, and think it will be fantastic tool to others (eventually). A year ago I had tried using Duolingo but found it mostly useless since I cannot memorize the characters without writing them. The target user is someone like this: "I want to start learning Chinese, but I don't want to pay any money. I can do it whenever I want, for a minute or an hour. It has a beautiful user interface with exercises that are a joy to use, and leaves me fulfilled when I'm learning and not discouraged when I'm wrong." The goal of the app is to have a heavy focus on inking, listening, and speaking. It is designed especially for tablet - having touch support, and best when used with pen. For everyone else, there is mouse support for writing. As an owner of Microsoft Surface devices and Surface Pen, I find the experience great. The format looks like this: Short, informational lessons (the pink-accented cards) interspersed with exercises (teal cards). Dashboard ​ Info ​ Written exercise Exercise types: See and write - given example text in English, translate and write it in Chinese. See and speak - given example text in English, translate and say it in Chinese. Listen and write - listen to spoken Chinese and write what you hear (without seeing the written form) It is admittedly light on content at the moment, as it is only me entering into my database by hand, in an order that helps me learn the language. In fact, there are some informational lessons that abruptly end without closure (because I didn't finish) or there may even be an incorrect translation (a typo). I focused on getting the architecture and design solid. After all, content is easy to fix and insert. If you have a suggestion or a bug to report, I made a reddit community for the app; feel free to post anything! Some things to mention you may have questions to before or during use of the app: Requires latest version of Windows 10. If the Microsoft Store says you cannot download it because of hardware limitations, that is why. (The Store is very bad at letting you know this.) I have a post here for ensuring you get the latest Windows 10 release. Requires creating an email/password credential. This enables device-agnostic access to your data and a password-reset feature. It's stored securely and my privacy policy basically says it's private to the app and not sold or used for any other purpose. It will prompt you to install Microsoft's Chinese handwriting and speech recognition engines if you don't have it already installed. This allows for local recognition (no sending voice or ink over internet). In order to advance your percentage meter, you must get an exercise correct on the first try when it is presented to you. Otherwise it will return again until you get it right first try. You can always have the answer given to you or press the "Skip" button, but it'll come back until your brain knows it! It sounds tedious at first, but I think it makes sense once your try it. There exists a "Premium" feature I already coded. Basically for any language, all the exercises and content are visible, but the last 25% will have a lock icon on it. The idea is, for $1/month you get access to the last 25% of content for every language that the app supports. I think it will be a great value in the future when there is a) more content, b) more languages, and c) more updates after user feedback. Or if you want to show friendly support, you can subscribe as is! This is all hours of work in my spare time, one developer. It is all handled through the Microsoft Store, my app doesn't store payment info. ​ I've delayed announcing this app in a public forum for a long time because I'm picky with my own work, and this is me deciding better now than never to show it. Thanks for your time. Download Lingvoji for Windows 10 submitted by /u/pepperoni2 [link] [comments]

from r/ChineseLanguage: a community for people who are studying, teaching, or interested in Chinese! https://ift.tt/2C7Jx6Z

--------
More tips about learning Chinese
http://hellolearnchinese.com