Language Buddy

Language Buddy is a self-study tool for learning words and phrases in a foreign language.

Languages

Language Buddy stores test items according to language and script. As a minimum you need to define:

  1. your own language (or a language that you already know, that you will use to learn the new language)
  2. the language that you want to learn

The software asks you which script is used because some Asian languages are written in more than one script. e.g. an Asian script and a Romanized Latin script.

You can store more than one script for the same test item, so you can choose to have both an Asian script and a Romanisation. Test items can only have one foreign language. However, you may specify more than one language that you already know. Only One pair of native language/script, foreign language/script is used in a test. This may seem complicated, but it allows the same language modules to be used by learners whose mother tongue is different.

Testing

3 types of testing are possible:

It is up to you to mark yourself right or wrong. You are responsible for deciding whether you are right or wrong once the full test item entry is displayed. There is little point in cheating, since it will hinder your ability to learn the vocab effectively. It is up to you whether a spelling error for example is significant or not.

Test Results

Language Buddy stores your test results so that you can then take optimised revision tests. Items that you get right several times in a row, will then not be asked for awhile. If you get them right again when they are reasked, then the time before the next check will be further increased. As soon as you get an item wrong it will start to be asked at high frequency until you start getting it right again. This way Language Buddy helps optimise your revision in a far more powerful way than is possible with old fashioned manual revision.

You can also graph your test results over time once you have been running the program for a few days.

Searching

There is a search utility to help you find which module a word is in. You can search in any language that you have used in Language Buddy.

Tagging

Language Buddy allows you to store items in Language Modules within a directory structure. However, sometimes it is useful to be able to tag items in different modules or directories which are related in someway. This is possible using tags. You can define your own hierarchies of tags to meet your needs. More than one tag can be attached to an individual language item. These can then be used for searching or to customize a test.

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