Hello everyone,

I am posting with permission from ファブリス to invite members of this site to participate in a private beta testing phase of an application I have been developing for learning vocabulary.

The app rethinks the way we learn and discover vocabulary, providing a new interface and technique for learning words, a social collaborative interface for sharing mnemonic tricks, and a smart suggestion algorithm. It has many other features that I will not discuss here but I can assure you that this app will change the way you think about vocabulary forever.

Requirements for participation:
- Any level of Japanese (beginners as well as advanced users are welcomed)
- iPhone or iPod touch
- Willingness to use application on a daily basis give constructive feedback whenever possible
- Willingness to not divulge the workings of Goi (there will be plenty of time to hype it up after the beta testing phase)

If you would like to sign up to beta test Goi, please visit the following link:
http://groups.google.com/group/goi-beta

If you would like to know more, please email:
beta@hachidoriapps.com

Thank you,
Michael

snozle Wrote:Willingness to not divulge the workings of Goi (there will be plenty of time to hype it up after the beta testing phase)

"an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is"...

You lost me at iPhone.

Good luck.

I don't think you should care about users spreading information.
There is no cut-throat competition for quality study apps.
The majority of the stuff on the appstore is just EDICT wrapping shovelwave.

Sounds interesting. Can you please post an update if you port it to Android?

True, but I thought it would be best to err on the side of caution. This is not an edict wrapper and has some very unique concepts built in, concepts that we have been tweaking for months. The entire app was designed from the ground up to provide a unique and effective method for learning vocabulary. At it's most basic it is built upon the foundations of a method I have been using for quite some time on paper. However, there is a lot more that has been added. There is simply so much that iPhones can do that paper never could.

Sorry, but there are no plans to port it to android at the moment. I wouldn't completely rule it out, but I will say that it is highly unlikely.

With Android owning a larger market share than iOS now, I'm have a hard time understanding why people still only make exclusive Iphone/Itouch apps.

Same here, can't care since I only use android.

maybe because no one's making any money on android apps...Android users don't buy apps with anywhere near the frequency that iphone users do. I don't know if the cause is android users' けちness or anti-capitalist tendencies or what not but it does seem to be the case.

Is this optimized for the iPad?

I'm not sure what 'techniques' this program uses, but if they're mnenomics then it's useless. Using mnemonics to recall words is a terrible idea because it adds extra steps in recalling the memory which slows you down incredibly and will never allow you to just fluently use the words. Rote memorization is the only way to go for vocab.

Mnemonics for vocab are pretty unnecessary imo, but I wouldn't consider them harmful, because your brain eventually just skips past that extra step as it becomes unnecessary. The better argument against them is that language learning is an exercise in getting things into the longterm memory and attempting to hold onto vocab items in the short term via mnemonics and then trying to space them into the longterm memory is just misspent time and energy. The brain is constantly sampling vast amounts of information into the longterm memory without any necessary effort to remember. I have a theory that the brain doesn't immediately forget anything (as erasing the memory would require unnecessary bodily effort), but rather caches everything, eventually overwriting it when capacity is truly stretched . This is why you immediately know when you reencounter a word for which you once knew the meaning. This reencounter tags the word as having higher relevance making it easier to recall later. The implication of this for language learning, would be that you should spend less time on the memorisation of individual units, and more time on exposing yourself to a sufficient quantity of data, i.e try to cover more ground in less time.

Kuma01 Wrote:Rote memorization is the only way to go for vocab.

It is? And if it is, why so? There are so many ways to learn vocabulary, you pick words up by reading, listening, watching a movie, or working through a book etc. You can than create a word list, you can SRS it, you can draw mind-maps, you can play word games, and other things to commit them to long term memory.

I, for one, can't see the benefit of rote-memorizing vocabulary, just for the sake of knowing thousands of words even though there are ways to do this too. Well, to each his own. But I hope you refrain from saying that rote memorization is the only way to go.

I imagine this is related to that Iversen method, in some form? If so, I'm sure vosmiura would enjoy looking at it. ;p But enough talk of secret ingredients...

Oh, and especially after RTK, mnemonics for vocabulary's great. Playing with sound associations, keywords, stories, semantic relations, contextual associations in sentences. There's no danger they'll get stuck in your head when they're not the target of reviews. I used them a lot for initial vocabulary, then eventually I stopped because my base knowledge made it unnecessary. But establishing that base was so much quicker and easier by using my adult brain + metacognition at the onset. (Edit: Another thing I relied on was doing such mental tricks quickly and ad hoc, what I called spontaneous momentum, paired with what Supermemo termed planned redundancy.)

My only problem is with excessive repetition of those first encounters. But as long as they don't get in the way of spaced retrieval, elaborate encoding, multimodal learning, etc., then I don't think it hurts, I just think it's a waste of time, places too much emphasis on fast-mapping through quantity rather than quality fast-slow mapping as a process.

Another thing to keep in mind, something I've been reading about lately in papers on acquisition, is semantically related (but distinct) groups of words (hence my interest in Japanese WordNet).

Nagareboshi Wrote:

Kuma01 Wrote:Rote memorization is the only way to go for vocab.

It is? And if it is, why so? There are so many ways to learn vocabulary, you pick words up by reading, listening, watching a movie, or working through a book etc. You can than create a word list, you can SRS it, you can draw mind-maps, you can play word games, and other things to commit them to long term memory.

I, for one, can't see the benefit of rote-memorizing vocabulary, just for the sake of knowing thousands of words even though there are ways to do this too. Well, to each his own. But I hope you refrain from saying that rote memorization is the only way to go.

I'll rephrase, it isn't the only way, but the most efficient way when you're at a beginner or intermediate level, especially for a language like Japanese that nobody has a real natural affinity for. You only start picking up words via osmosis when you already understand a fair amount of the target language. But if you want to build vocab fast when you start out then rote memorization is the best way to accomplish that. Mnemonics etc. only complicate the acquisition and increase the lag when recalling the word.

Rote learning is shallow and inferior to other forms, especially used exclusively. There's a wide variety of mnemonic techniques one should use strategically to learn new vocabulary. There's no need to limit yourself with unscientific assumptions that are refuted in the literature. Deep, elaborate processing combined with spaced retrieval is the key, particularly for long-term learning. Rote learning is fine once you've internalized so much of the language that you have many built-in hooks, assuming you've developed and refined your lexical acquisition process through experience.

Edit: Oops, sending the thread on a tangent.

Edit 2: Also, “especially for a language like Japanese that nobody has a real natural affinity for” — This makes no sense.

nest0r Wrote:I imagine this is related to that Iversen method, in some form? If so, I'm sure vosmiura would enjoy looking at it. ;p But enough talk of secret ingredients...

Yep, I'm sure I would if that was the case. I keep wanting to make an app for that since a long time.

vix86 Wrote:With Android owning a larger market share than iOS now, I'm have a hard time understanding why people still only make exclusive Iphone/Itouch apps.

Same here, can't care since I only use android.

Do you like using it?

The total market share numbers are misleading because there's so much variation between Android based devices.

I've done games development on Android, and there is so much I dislike as a developer, and as a user I don't enjoy using my Android devices as much as iOS ones. Don't get me wrong, I hope Android will be fantastic, but I don't yet like it.

http://www.maciverse.com/6-things-i-hate...droid.html

I think the fact that so many Android devices were free or near-free (subsidizations or buy one get one free campaigns) has something to do with it.
Thus many users may have Android devices but they aren't "smartphone users".

Also, afaik Android share does not exceed iOS (iPhone+iPod touch+iPad) share. Android phone share exceeds iPhone share. That's an important distinction.

I had stumbled onto this brief article today ... maybe it's of interest to you guys?

"Entitled Developer Economics 2011, the study shows that 67 per cent of developers code for Android, up from 59 per cent in 2010. IOS lags behind at 59 per cent, but that's also up from 50 per cent last year, most likely due to Apple's introduction of the Ipad."

But getting back to Snozle - good luck with your new project! I'm curious to learn the secret ingredient when the time comes.

I found this blog entry on why developers own a Android, but develop for iOS. That description is a miss-representation of the post, (it is actually from a personal point of view) - but I think it is a good representation of a certain type of developer. Speaking to such a friend, I get the impression that he is fundamentally offended by the whole Apple model. "I have my code, and I have my iOS device, but I can't put my code on the device unless I go through the Apple machine." When you compare this to the Open Source Android it is very frustrating.

tokyostyle Wrote:I wish Apple had chosen better partners so that they wouldn't have let this stupid Java based, crappy toolset, shitty debugger, no GUI layout having platform get so much market share.

Did you mean Google?

Boy.pocket's friend Wrote:I have my code, and I have my iOS device, but I can't put my code on the device unless I go through the Apple machine.

That's Apple's way of ensuring quality. You're can just use the iOS simulator for testing though...

nadiatims Wrote:

Boy.pocket's friend Wrote:I have my code, and I have my iOS device, but I can't put my code on the device unless I go through the Apple machine.

That's Apple's way of ensuring quality. You're can just use the iOS simulator for testing though...

Yes I agree. It is a good thing for quality and I can test using the iOS simulator and test it well. But I want to put my app on my iPod Touch... and I can't. :'(

nest0r Wrote:Rote learning is shallow and inferior to other forms, especially used exclusively. There's a wide variety of mnemonic techniques one should use strategically to learn new vocabulary. There's no need to limit yourself with unscientific assumptions that are refuted in the literature. Deep, elaborate processing combined with spaced retrieval is the key, particularly for long-term learning. Rote learning is fine once you've internalized so much of the language that you have many built-in hooks, assuming you've developed and refined your lexical acquisition process through experience.

Edit: Oops, sending the thread on a tangent.

Edit 2: Also, “especially for a language like Japanese that nobody has a real natural affinity for” — This makes no sense.

The Japanese language is an isolate language that has no real counterpart. I know you're probably going to say Korean is similar, but it's not as similar as European languages for example, and won't give you that much of an edge. I'll give you an example, as a Dutch person German is incredibly easy to learn for me because of a shared history. Similarly, I've studied Latin in high school so vulgar latin languages like French and Spanish are also rather easy for me to learn because they share an evolutionary history if you will. Also mnemonics will always slow down retrieval and thus fluency, because you're accessing one memory to retrieve an associated one which is always slower than something memorized by repetition. I haven't been using any mnemonics since Heisiger, but I've been brute forcing to the point where I can easily predict the reading of unknown words, instaneously, which means I only have to remember the meaning of the word as one would do for alphabet based languages. Mnenomics are only useful if used for information that doesn't require instaneous retrieval. I know you're going to say mnemonics increase the initial retention rate, I'm sure they do, but they slow down retrieval and the extra time spent on coming up with the mnemonic could just as easily be used to repeat the information you want to retain.

I also think mnemonics are a bad idea for learning individual words. It slows down retrieval, and prevents you from thinking exclusively in the target language (assuming the mnemonics are not in the target language).