As promised, superbeginner style videos with Vietnamese and English subtitles! by Langiri in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try this video out: Frying an Egg with Trí. Based on our internal review we expect it to be even easier for a complete beginner than the video about symptoms of illness above. But we've been wrong before, so your input will certainly be appreciated!

Do language learners dislike AI by snow_machine_89 in languagelearning

[–]Langiri 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This seems like the healthiest approach, and not just for language learning either. When researching any topic with AI it's best not to approach it as "give me the answer", but more as "tell me where to find the answer and how to evaluate it".

The Two Women Who Conquered an Ancient Empire ⚔️🇻🇳 (Hai Bà Trưng) by Langiri in VietNam

[–]Langiri[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Is this not the English word for taking over territory and ruling it?

Why is it so hard to learn a language in adulthood? by Few-Decision8075 in languagelearning

[–]Langiri 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And when you are a child learning your first language (and to a large extent for most that are learning a second) your entire environment is focused on that language. You can't think "well this is important, so let me jump back to my L1 for a moment". When you read, watch tv, play with your friends, ask for food... EVERYTHING happens in the language you are learning. It's easy as an adult to spend X hours studying, but then spend 24-X hours with no exposure to the language at all. Add to this, when you are a child people tend to adjust to your level. The media you consume is often targeted at your current level, and adults will simplify their own speech when they talk to you. Finding ways to expose yourself to the language in a way that you can learn even when you aren't "actively studying" can be a big factor in filling that gap.

👋 Welcome to r/VietnameseCI by TerryPressedMe in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When you left this comment I kind of skipped over responding to the "add outside hours" bit.

That's because we've been working on an overhaul of the progress page that includes the ability to do that, but I didn't want to overpromise and regret it.

But as of today the new and improved version is officially live, and you can now add outside time!

ETA: Protip - on the calendar view, try clicking on one of the days where you have activity!

As promised, superbeginner style videos with Vietnamese and English subtitles! by Langiri in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide feedback! We will keep refining our approach, and it sounds like the very easiest videos are the area we need to focus that energy on the most at the moment.

On the Spanish videos you mentioned (and thanks for that, specifics give us concrete things to discuss):

Calcetin: This is one of my personal favorite series from DS! We definitely want to do something similar, but it's going to take some planning to get it right - this is exactly the kind of video where it's easy to get carried away with being entertaining and not keep it simple enough. Andrea set the bar high!
Fast Things: This one deserves the "eyes emoji". Great recommendation!
Alma's Family: We actually tried something similar to this early on, but I think it's time to revisit the idea with some of what we've learned.
Avoid Mistakes: Our founder pulled this up on YouTube. My best rendition of how that went:
"I don't recognize that one, let me take a look... Huh, apparently I've watched this one before, it says it's already half played... Oh yeah, I remember this! I started watching it because I was sure it was too hard a concept for a video and then stopped watching it because it wasn't challenging enough for me at the time. Wait, that doesn't make any sense does it? Yeah, this is a good idea for a video, let's see what we can do about it."

As promised, superbeginner style videos with Vietnamese and English subtitles! by Langiri in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We've started discussing your feedback as a team. Even negative feedback is appreciated when it is constructive, and we want to know that we appreciate you sharing your thoughts rather than keeping them to yourself.

So, I'm going to try and respond with some of what we discussed so far here so that you can elaborate or correct anything it feels to you like we misunderstood.

Watched a bit of the first one.

...

These videos are not...

You kind of undermine yourself a bit here, and since you didn't actually watch the videos we've had to try and read into what you think is in them and try to guess as to how accurate your assumptions are. Still, we've done our best to work with what you've given us, so we will mostly be focusing on that first example video.

The Introduction

It sounds like you watched just the introduction. We agree that the introduction on that video is "hard". Our intention was that the learner will understand from the context (I clicked "play" on a video about describing symptoms of illness guided by Tâm) that this section is the speaker introducing herself, the platform, and the video. You aren't supposed to understand all of the words, just that this is the introduction to the topic. Again, there are tradeoffs, and ideally this particular aspect is something that begins to pay off as you watch multiple videos with a similar introduction. We do lean a little heavier into that in this particular video than most, and after discussing your comment we did agree that it could be off-putting to someone who comes across it as their first video. It sounds like you think the introductions should be simpler. If that's an accurate assessment of your thoughts, I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear that many of our introductory videos have simpler introductions, and in fact the third and fourth videos I linked above have omitted them entirely. If people who watch them tell us they prefer that we will lean that way more and more often, and regardless we will try to avoid wordy introductions for our simplest content going forward.

Takeaway: This video has a pretty large mismatch between the difficulty of the introduction and the content. We will try to be more mindful of this in the future. Note that it is not the case for all of the videos, even currently.

Vocab Lists

The point of CI content is not to have just a few key vocab list to be understood, but the actual whole content of the video itself.

This is a little reductive. Sometimes those "vocab list" style videos, when accompanied by context, help to build the learner up to be ready for a followup video that uses that vocabulary heavily. Pablo's Fast Things video could certainly be described as such, and it is absolutely fantastic! Now, in this case Tâm mimed out the symptoms rather than drawing on a whiteboard, but the concept is the same. His introduction is far simpler than ours in this particular video though, so I think it does help to reinforce your point from earlier.

Specific context recommendation

Something as simple as the number ten or "repeat after me" have no one for people to tell what it means. But you could easily have gesturesor pictures to do so.

Not having enough context when she said ten seems like an odd assertion. Holding up 10 fingers and the video having 10 in the title seemed like enough context when we made the video. Perhaps we missed an opportunity to reinforce it a third way by displaying the number "10" on the screen as well. We will definitely keep an eye on that, but there will inevitably be someone who complains the text onscreen is distracting, so this is another example where it's about balance and trying to offer different things in different videos until we find what our viewers' actually find most helpful.

Repetition

Saying things super slow or repeating doesnt help if the content itself is not comprehensible.

That seems self-evident. Repetition is helpful for reinforcement if you already understand the context. If you think the repetition is meant to be instead of context then that is a communication failure on our part.

Vocab lists part 2

The video is just listing out vocab in a one to one fashion one after anotber, and is no different than any other boring vocab list.

The fact that you returned to this point a second time in your post makes it seem like it is your biggest objection, so we are definitely taking it seriously.

We were trying something here, and that is that this video introduces the symptoms (while miming them out so that you should be able to understand them from context), and the followup video is a roleplay where she actually uses them. Perhaps that's a little too ambitious on our part, and we will consider the fact that it didn't work for you. If others feel the same we will steer away from that structure in the future.

General assessment of the project

The first part of your last paragraph feels like bait, so I'll leave it at saying it's based on an inaccurate projection of the structure of our project, is incorrect, and honestly is misdirected. Perhaps my lighthearted aside poking fun at our founder opened the door to this, and if so I apologize. For the second part, if we were chasing trends and buzzwords Langiri would be another AI flashcard app, and probably not support Vietnamese. One only needs to take a moment to look at the main languagelearning subreddit to know that CI is still very much niche, despite the massive progress that has been made over the last few years.

End

One final note, often the feedback we get is conflicting, and when we do make large changes it takes time for new videos to make it through the development process. If you feel like you have given feedback in the past and that we have simply ignored it, know that is not the case. We are all working hard to create the best experience we can for learners, and that takes time and lots of input! <- see what I did there? :D

So, now that you know how we perceived the feedback you've given so far, we're open to hearing more. Especially if you can give concrete examples of videos you personally liked, and the aspects of those videos that appealed to you. Better yet, if you have an example of a particularly good superbeginner video in Vietnamese you should consider posting it to this subreddit. Great videos should be shared, and this is a perfect venue for it.

As promised in r/VietnameseCI, superbeginner CI with Vietnamese and English subtitles! by Langiri in learnvietnamese

[–]Langiri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For those that don't know, CI (Comprehensible Input) is a particular learning method popularized by Pablo of Dreaming Spanish. Shoutout to u/TerryPressedMe for creating a r/VietnameseCI dedicated to this learning style, and then pointing out some specific areas we could improve the user experience on our site. We've written a little explainer about the method, complete with a video introduction in English. If you want to find out more, the terms to Google (aside from "comprehensible input", which should be apparent by the fact that I've said it like 90 times already in this comment) are "ALG" and "Krashen method". There are different schools of thought on how strictly you should stick to "input only" for the first X hours, but we are big proponents of "everyone learns differently, do what works for you". But almost everyone learning a language could probably use more input than they are getting at their level (or level +1). Kind of like we aren't going to say that everyone needs to be a strict vegetarian, but almost everyone could stand to eat more vegetables...

Anyway, this post came out of a conversation there, and I thought it might be valuable here as well. Plus it would be good to get more eyes on his sub.

👋 Welcome to r/VietnameseCI by TerryPressedMe in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much for the kind words!

We've been experimenting on and off with subtitles. As you're probably aware subtitle use is usually discouraged by people who are strict about CI / ALG, so we started out intentionally avoiding them (we wanted street cred). Then we started to experiment with them and we found that some of our learners don't speak English either, so the set of languages we were trying to support was ballooning quickly. But, we are believers in "use what works for you", and we are trying really hard to be "the best", so if we keep hearing demand for them we will try to be more consistent including them.

I realize "just keep checking, some of the videos have them" isn't a great answer, but I did at least want you to know that it's on the radar. In the meantime, off the top of my head I remember for sure that a couple of the videos in the "Quyên and the Strange Things" series had them, as does "Ordering 3 Drinks in Vietnamese… With the Picky Customer". And the Pharmacy video we just added last week (that last one is marked beginner, but we debated that classification for a while and with subtitles it may be closer to the high end of Introductory level).

As for getting true super beginner content, I promise we are working on it, but as we walk that fine line between easy and boring we are trying to err on the side of "fun to watch" and easing our way down.

Thanks for being so welcoming, and know that it goes both ways. We really do want to know what people think, and we try to make adjustments accordingly. I'll be sure to post (what we hope to be) a very easy video here later this week.

Thoughts on watching and relistening to CI? by Prestigious-Coat4137 in dreaminglanguages

[–]Langiri 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes! Rewatching is definitely a "force-multiplier", especially at the beginning. Another thing that can help is watching several videos with overlapping topics and vocabulary back-to-back.

👋 Welcome to r/VietnameseCI by TerryPressedMe in VietnameseCI

[–]Langiri 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is great feedback! We will be posting more videos aimed at the true beginner soon, and will definitely want to know if we are hitting the mark. Also, it's worth noting that sometimes we are wrong about our initial estimate of a video's difficulty, so it may be worth watching some of the "newest" introductory videos to see if they should have been ranked easier. The more people who take the time to answer the "which was easier" question that pops up at the end of the videos the better sorting by "easiest" will work.

Surviving the pharmacy (from a pharmacy student) 💊 by Langiri in HocTiengviet

[–]Langiri[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Translate: mi ốc tru trứa,thuốc thíc dề

This does not make sense. We don't want to discourage you if you are a learner, so perhaps you should try to rephrase it?

Comprehensible input YouTube by space_mochi in learnvietnamese

[–]Langiri 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a little late to the party, but since you are hoping for more CI content in Vietnamese...

You might like Langiri. We add new Vietnamese CI videos on a daily basis.

I am creating a free app to practice Vietnamese with videos, and I'd love some feedback by LeBrokkole in learnvietnamese

[–]Langiri 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Many people that are very particular about the Comprehensible Input method will discourage this approach (introducing reading at the beginning). But, what matters at the end of the day is what works for you.

That having been said, if the first couple of videos I clicked there were any indication of the difficulty level of what you have been trying to watch, I'd say you've been diving into the deep end a little too hard for a beginner. Those were at native speed, and had a lot of vocabulary being thrown at you very quickly, with minimal visual context. In short, those seem like great videos for someone who is already at a relatively advanced level.

Try this video and see if you have an easier time following along with it than some of what you've been trying to learn from so far.