ReadPlusOne – Spanish stories built around the words you're learning
Hey HN, Over the past 6 months, I've been working on a Spanish language learning app that generates stories for you with your target words. For the last 2, I've been reading with it most mornings and it's really helped me grow my vocab. It generates short stories built around your target words you are learning, and uses vocabulary you already know for the majority of the story (around 95%). As you read along you click any word you don't know and it puts them into a spaced repetition system (SRS) to appear in future generated stories. It does need an account to work. I have a short…
What it does
Practice Spanish with short stories matched to the vocabulary you know. Mark unfamiliar words and meet them again when they are due for review.
For learners with at least an advanced-beginner (A2) level of Spanish. Sofía llega al mercado cuando el sol todavía brilla. Quiere comprar frutas para hacer una ensalada fresca. Saluda al vendedor, Don Pedro, que siempre tiene una sonrisa. Él le recomienda mangos dulces y jugosos. Sofía mira los colores brillantes de las frutas. Nota un pequeño detalle : el aroma de las fresas frescas que llena la cesta junto a la entrada. These fixed A2 and B1 samples include vocabulary notes and comprehension questions. Stories inside the app go further by adapting to you. Stories use the words you already know, so reading feels easy and enjoyable. A few new words appear naturally, with helpful clues…from readplusone.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, Over the past 6 months, I've been working on a Spanish language learning app that generates stories for you with your target words. For the last 2, I've been reading with it most mornings and it's really helped me grow my vocab. It generates short stories built around your target words you are learning, and uses vocabulary you already know for the majority of the story (around 95%). As you read along you click any word you don't know and it puts them into a spaced repetition system (SRS) to appear in future generated stories. It does need an account to work. I have a short on-boarding quiz to estimate your level, after that you are able to generate and read stories. I built it because I was having issues finding graded readers that were at my exact level, a B1 graded book can vary greatly on vocabulary used. I also wanted a system to help me learn words that I kept forgetting. I tried Anki for that, but the flashcard system just wasn't for me, but this system has been working much better. For this project I used natural language processing to handle all the recorded words of the user. Nouns and adjectives collapse to their lemma (root of the word), so libro and libros are one record. But with verbs we don't, so each tense and mood is tracked on its own. The SRS picks whichever of these are due, and to simplify it, they are passed into the prompt. Then a separate validator measures the draft's vocabulary against your recorded vocabulary of the user, and if too much falls outside it, the draft is rejected and it tries again. It's Spanish only right now, and it works best from around A2 up, once you get below that level it becomes hard to generate interesting stories to engage the reader. I plan to add other languages in the future, once I feel that the Spanish system feels fully complete. Happy to answer any questions about the project!
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