Building a Video-Based Language-Learning App

Problem

Consuming videos in a language you want to speak is an excellent learning strategy, because it solves a host of problems: It ensures that the language you are exposed to is authentic and up-to-date. You automatically learn topics that are interesting and relevant to you, boosting motivation and speeding up the process. It's simply fun. You practice listening to natives in natural context, an important and seldomly taught skill.

Yet, in practice, it is not easy to employ this language learning strategy.

User Stories

As a learner, I want to listen to interesting content in my target language from day one.

Development

I made several versions of the software and in fact rebuilt the tool several times upon hitting various walls.

The Product

As of now, the project is available as an Open Source project on GitHub, and online on two websites:

Evaluation

The biggest challenge as of now is tedium. Grinding one's way through videos can feel boring.

Next Steps

The obvious goal now is to make the software entertaining enough that it's a joy to use.

Closing Words

One of the biggest lessons of this project was the need of authoring tools when making any kind of non-trivial learning app.