Decode Chinese: We are building the future of language education (Kickstarter coming soon)

I’m very impressed with the level of ambition.

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Something that looked very interesting to me was breaking characters down into their radicals (along with definitions of the radicals), and then also showing me what recent characters I’ve seen with those radicals.

I haven’t found the time/motivation to start another serious bought of character learning, but starting from the radicals has been on my mind for a place to start. I can recognize maybe ~300 characters and ~1000 words from rote memorization, but even English spelling has never been my strong suite so tryign to come up with some system to the madness seems like it would map well to how my brain works

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:rofl:

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Well, it’s a nice learning app. Probably very helpful after you acquire a certain amount of language. It will be interesting to see where it goes, but I have to say, I hope apps, even cool data-driven ones, aren’t really the “future of language education”.

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The problem is that traditional learning methods don’t work. So many of us get frustrated and quit after using textbook/traditional classroom methods. There is often a big gap between what we learn in class and what we actually hear in TV shows, music, and actual dialogue in Taiwan/China. Current digital tools are also very insufficient but we accept them because they’re the best we have.

What percent of foreign learners actually reach fluency or something close to it? Clearly something has to change in Chinese language education. We are trying to bring a big efficiency boost and greater engagement to the learning process.

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We are a remote team currently based in Taiwan and the US

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Pleco was a total breakthrough for Chinese learning. I had one of the first versions on a PDA , before even having smartphone. It got me through my HSK in 2009.

I still don’t quite get the competitive advantages of this app but wish you the best with it.

I still am dubious of a lot of Chinese tools as just feel at some point you need to put in the blood sweat and tears of repeatedly writing characters and doing flash cards. Most foreigners are just not interested in putting in the graft

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I feel the lack of interesting content is the reason one even has to put in blood sweat and tears. After learning 3000 or so words, there’s no good engaging resources that make learning feel less of a chore. Poscasts geared towards learners are pretty bland as they avoid opinionated topics to avoid upsetting the government. Kids shows are just boring. Kids stories you find online are just boring unless you’re reading one that’s translated.

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I 100% agree. My go-to was always 康熙來了,just because it was the only somewhat watchable and amusing show. I wasn’t prejudiced, was happy to watch mainland or wherever content, but most of it was fucking shit.

I think has changed a bit now. There are some really good dramas coming from China and Netflix and HBO have some good Taiwanese shows. Taiwan podcast scene is booming and there are a few I really enjoy, as is the YouTube industry

Examples? I think they all kinda suck.

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Twisted Strings on HBO was good

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Really? Absolutely hated that show. 小S is such a braindead narcissist.

A lot of Taiwanese drama is beyond sentimental. If someone can recommend something on Netflix which isn’t a boy meets girl, or family drama with lots of shouting and crying, I’ll be happy to hear it. One of the toughest aspects for me, trying to find something to connect with. I guess if you’re a big Taiwan fanboy it is easier. I am done with tailored learner content. Once you’ve gotten over being stoked to understand some basic spoken language, the tailored content gets boring very quickly.

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I don’t see that as being a real departure from traditional methods. Whether it’s a textbook or something else, you’re still talking about memorization. You’re still offering flashcards, spaced repetition and a database full of sentences, yeah? Better than individual words but still (to be brutally honest) seems like pretty much the same thing. In my view, you’d be better off marketing this as a reference tool, not something to use when someone quits after using traditional classroom methods. The content might be different but the mechanism seems the same.

Moderator here. This is LEARNING CHINESE, not TAIWAN POLITICS. The posts regarding how and why things should be called “mainland”, or whatever, can be. found over there. I appreciate the lively debate but it doesn’t belong in this thread or this forum. Thanks for not continuing it here.

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Not sure if you have explored our website but there is more to our project than we have explicitly stated. However since you seem to be eager to understand I will quickly mention some things we have not announced yet in detail because we are still working on the infographic materials.

  • Our university research project started as a personalized AI-powered teacher within Chinese language and culture. The goal: completely remove the traditional role of a language teacher and all offline learning materials.
  • However, due to the lack of structured data (the fuel required for data driven models), we needed first to establish a new system that could enable us to collect and label linguistic data on a unprecedented scale.
  • The solution: a decentralized language education platform that allows users to collaboratively build language resources on the world first multi-lingual knowledge graph (simply known as “the framework” in our materials)
  • Our framework allows users to rapidly build localized and labeled learning resources on the smallest level possible (next generation fuel for AI-models).
  • We have designed a contribution system that rewards quality content and give ownership to the authors (the users own their data).
  • We will enable users to build learning services (as in code new computer apps) on our platform by using our decentralized platform
  • Since all services uses the same framework, we can enable super detailed progression profile to update our belief regarding the students knowledge gaps and weaknesses through the whole learning journey (including different languages).
  • We have already started to experiment with two services which is Decode Atlas (lookup tool / contribution system) and Decode Study (A personalized learning tool and not only a flash card system)

Hope this helped to clarify a little bit and if not then please wait until we will get closer to launch our official Kickstarter campaign when we have a our new materials and video ready. In summary, we have just built a completely new data driven linguistic framework that will enable us to build supercharged learning services with unprecedented detail and efficiency. That is what makes Decode unique and also how Decode will disrupt language education.ct

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This is the crux of the problem. The pain point of learning language is not lack of resources or using more data or more complex tools. It’s how to maintain motivation in face of the unavoidable repetitive years-long process required to memorize vocabulary and grammar.

Also, honestly the webpage is a turn-off. Many buzzwords, bits of content are thrown at your face with little structure, the whole content looks more like a heavy reference textbook than an actual tool to learn a language. Wishing OP well but I’m not convinced.

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I believe we need to remove the erroneous notion that languages require several years to master. Digital language education is currently in its infancy (only like 15 years ago we started) and there is much room for improvements which we are currently resolving.

Our current website is formatted according to a Kickstarter campaign website page layout (limited page width and sections) and is only a placeholder for now to be able to get our message out there. Please read the post above if you want to learn more about what makes Decode unique. Soon we will update with more information and better graphics which you can be updated with through our newsletter on our website.

Surely it will be AI. No teacher can specifically cater to a single child’s ability and ideal learning style and pace. Once these AI systems are perfected, everyone will have their own dedicated teacher devoted exclusively to them to maximize their results. Then with brain/AI interfaces added to that, our capabilities as a species will expand exponentially. I wish I could live to see it, but I know that’s very unlikely.

Aha, so my response to IL is in close alignment with your end goals. Everyone thinks I’m a freak when I mention it, but I’m sure it’s the future of all learning, think Montessori powered by AI and direct brain interfaces.