Hi everyone!
My brother really wants to learn English. I introduced him to Anki, and he´s really motivated right now. His problem is that he doesn´t know where to start. He can´t understand basic dialogue, but does have a very, very basic vocabulary. Since KO2001 helped me immensely in Japanese, I was wondering if there was something similar for English students? I mean, 3000 give or take sentences with full audio? That can be imported into Anki?

Thank you guys!
Z...

The smart.fm guys should have lots of English sentences intended for Japanese learners.

Codexus Wrote:The smart.fm guys should have lots of English sentences intended for Japanese learners.

that's right but is the brother Japanese?

Look for one or two good bilingual English dictionaries and a couple of simple English podcasts with full transcripts and use them to feed your Anki decks.

Hashiriya Wrote:that's right but is the brother Japanese?

That doesn't matter, it's still a source of easy sentences to learn from.

English sentences? That's what Cerego/Smart.fm started out doing.

Smart.fm Core 2000: 基礎英語

The biggest downside is the translations will be into Japanese, so unless your brother knows Japanese, it's only useful as a monolingual resource.

I started learning Esperanto with a few thousand Esperanto/English word pairs. I don't think that approach works very well for languages in different families, but for two in the same family (such as English and Norwegian) it's the fastest way to be able to use a monolingual dictionary. I'd recommend picking a monolingual learners' dictionary and learning the "defining vocabulary:" the words used to write the definitions in that dictionary.

For easy reading, I've heard good things about the Tar-Heel Reader. It seems to be pretty basic, but that's okay to start.

A difference I've noticed between English and Japanese media is nearly all English-language movies and TV shows (except news programs) have accurate subtitles for hard-of-hearing. Also, audiobooks are very popular in English-speaking countries.

There is a book called "ASSIMIL", the lessons are made of english sentences.... and that's it.

The sentences go from easy to more complicated, each time new structures and words are integrated. I think working with this method using ANKI could do wonders.

I didn't try this one, but I tried to learn spanish with ASSIMIL, and it was good even though I stopped because I found out that learning two languages at the same time could be quite troublesome.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Assimil/...410&sr=8-1

(the book is for french people, but it's not a problem actually, because lessons are only made of english sentences (there are a few explanatory notes about grammar in french, but I think one can do without it).

IceCream Wrote:hmmm. looks like a great concept, if only english speakers had written them...

Tar Heel? No, the biggest problem is that a lot of them are written by middle-school students. They may suck at English (more likely: they're just "being tools." That's what middle-school students do when teachers force them to "write something and put it online."), but they are native speakers.

Oh, boy. That makes me feel so sorry for my country.

That said, the "reviewed" ones actually have to pass some editorial review and don't suck. They are very easy.

I found and recomended a good book to one of my japanese students. Its called WORD UP! Advanced Learner's Wordbook. It's just like KO for the most part.

I think you can use the example sentences in advanced learner's dictionaries such as Cobuild Collins Advanced Learner's Dictionary or the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. The latter comes with a CD that has audio for all the example sentences. If you search the net, you will find a version in StarDict and Babylon formats. You can easily extract all the example sentences from a StarDict format (or Babylon) and then produce a nice Anki deck.

ahibba Wrote:I think you can use the example sentences in advanced learner's dictionaries such as Cobuild Collins Advanced Learner's Dictionary or the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. The latter comes with a CD that has audio for all the example sentences. If you search the net, you will find a version in StarDict and Babylon formats. You can easily extract all the example sentences from a StarDict format (or Babylon) and then produce a nice Anki deck.

If someone does that, please upload it to shared anki decks, so it can be recomended to japanese english learners.

zazen666 Wrote:If someone does that, please upload it to shared anki decks, so it can be recomended to japanese english learners.

In shared plugins, there is a useful plugin called "English Helper for Chinese". This plugin comes with two StarDict dictionaries (a Chinese one, and Merriam Webster) and auto-generates the defintions and the pronunciations from these dictionaries.

For example, when you add a new word, it will extract the Chinese defintion from the Chinese dictionary, the English definition from Merriam Webster, and also the English pronunciation (text not audio.)

If you have a good programming skill, you can manipulate this plugin as you want. For example, you can make it extract:

1. The definition from English-English dictionaries like Collins Advanced Learner's dictionary or Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

2. The example sentences.

3. The pronunciation.


Then you can add the Oxford 3000 and it will generate the defintions and the example sentences for all the 3000 words, and you will have a nice KO2001 -ish deck for English language learners.


You need to know:

1. Python.
2. Regular Expressions.

The library you will need to import for interfacing with this type of dictionary (StarDict format) is called pyDict - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pydict/

Few months ago, there was bug in this plug-in (English Helper for Chinese). But the author of the plug-in sent a message telling me that he had fixed that bug.

To change the dictionaries, you would need to know how to write regular expressions. The dictionaries in stardict don't output nicely formatted definitions and they all output definitions differently. In order to get the definitions in a nice numbered list you have to process them first and this depends on which dictionary you want to use.

You can find the code for processing the Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions in "English Helper for Chinese.py" lines 95-113. He had commented that section more clearly.

He also created a definition tester to help people creating good regular expressions to process the dictionary definitions. To use it with your dictionary, just change the settings in defintionTest.py, and place your idx, dz and ifo files into the same directory.

The definition tester:

http://www.fileflyer.com/view/VnxqwAp

http://dsa7.fileflyer.com/d/0bd47cbe-aa5...onTest.zip

IceCream Wrote:sentences like:
Oh yes!And I’m an obsessive too!Oh!Look at their monkey!Come on and destroyed!
what happen to you

L....M....A....O....