What is Language Pump?
Language Pump is a tool for efficiently learning languages.
How does Language Pump work?
Language Pump is based on the Space Repetition System (SRS) of learning.
Basically, it is about remembering things for a short amount of time and then
being asked to remember them again in a slightly longer amount of time. This
moves things first into short term memory, then into medium term memory and finally
into long term memory. Read more about SRS here
What's so good about Language Pump?
Language Pump is good because it is an evolution on current SRS software. Language Pump has not being built with
commercial success as a focus, but instead has been built to solve the problems (as we see it as real language learners) with current systems. One of the main
considerations when building language pump was to remove any aspects that would discourage a user due to a user's lack of dicipline.
Other systems can basically bury a user with catch-up if they are not diciplined enough to use the system everyday.
Language Pump's designers have identified themselves not to be consistantly diciplined enough to use other systems and so have
built Language Pump with the aim of removing or restricting anything that might cause a user to feel discouraged. It is better to do something
rather than nothing.
Does Language Pump have a super advanced algorithm?
Err... Not really. Basically, for all the talk by other SRS software providers of the greatness of their algorithms, we are yet
to be convinced that they are really achieving anything significant. In fact, our experience of these algorithms as language learners
has been that we get annoyed by things we already know continuing to come back day after day wasting our time. Our algorithm
is pretty simple. If you get something right, it goes away for longer. If you don't get it quite right or wrong then you will
see it again sooner.
This is a pretty basic looking website. That can only mean this program is a toy.
If you are sold on pretty looking front-page websites then we are not for you. We put all our work into
achieving quality learning efficiencies and functional outcome. The simplistic nature of this site was for four main reasons.
Simplicity (derrr...), speed, compatibility and reduction of server resources. We want this puppy to work on your mobile phones
if possible - that ain't gonna happen if it is blinged.
Mobile phones you say?
Yep. We made the interface simple so that it works over slow internet on crappy phone interfaces. Cash in those times you normally stand around feeling uncomfortable. Instead of taking out a smoke and lighting up
so that you don't look like you have no friends or taking out your phone and needlessly texting people, just log into Language
Pump and do 5 minutes or so of language learning. If you do this everyday this realistically amounts to thousands of things that
can be learnt each year.
What about the content?
Generally we have been borrowing it from text books with expired or free licensing. All of the vocab, grammar and sentense examples
from each chapter has been modified by us into a suitable question and answer format. This means if you learn all of the QA's
then you have effectively memorised an entire language text book. Not only is that impressive, but it is a long way towards mastering a language.
Why is this webbased?
Because we like it that way. It centralises all of our content for sharing instantly with more than one user and it
allows our learning experience to be available from virtually anywhere without installation or backup/restore of progress files.
By anywhere this means any internet connected webbrowser (computer, phone, pda, fridge...) that can half render a page. The only
slightly limiting technical requirement is that the webbrowser must support basic JavaScript (the program was a bit too slow without it).
It also means that any improvement to a question or clarification sought by any user it immediately available to everyone.
How about sound? I can't figure out how to pronounce anything correctly. This is discouraging...
Yep, we have it. It requires Adobe Flash to be installed in the webbrowser. Virtually all desktop web browsers have this.
Phones, PDA's, iPods etc don't seem to have reasonable flash plugins at the moment so it doesn't work there. Don't be
disheartened though. We understand that sound is necessary for most natural language learning. At this point because we
are not commercial we don't quite have the resources to have sound on everything. We have it on a bit of stuff though
and have earmarked this requirement for a greater push - we will be trying to get more and more sound up soon.
But I need it! Sound is the major requirement!
No. Not the major requirement, but it helps a lot. Our assessment is that sound slows the learning pace down. Really sound
should only be considered a secondary learning aide. I.e. The first time you see new content you listen to it as a checksum to
ensure you can deliver and are familiar with correct pronounciation. After that it really becomes less relevent and slows down
learning, so we only recommend you listen to the sound if you are not confident of the pronounciation. At this point, for
Language Sets that don't have sound, we would ask that you first read some basic literature from another resource to assist
with pronounciation from written form. Nevertheless we have obviously attempted to provide as much text indication (phonic text systems etc) whereever possible. If you get stuck then a request for a special file to teach the sound system of any specific language will probably get a sympathetic response.
I already know some of the language. It is too basic. I really need a way to skip it
We have an extra option that we can enable for users called "I know this!". It is on the adding page. It populates the element
into the language set as though you had already got it right over and over. Just send us an email and we can give it to you.
Normally though we don't enable it because some users start clicking it without thought and then bury themselves in content
that they don't really know.
Do you have an option for typing in the answer just so I am sure I know it?
Language Pump is an honesty based system. Having to prove to the program that you truely got it correct (i.e. by typing it in
perfectly character for character) is a waste of good learning time. Anyone who is not honest obviously doesn't want to really
learn anything anyway. If you want the facility of typing it in, we would recommend that you take the time to write it on paper.
This achieves two purposes. It will get you used to writing a different language (one of the four skills that must be practiced - reading, writing, listening, speaking)
and it won't waste our time putting a feature into the program that is less than ideal for this method of learning and will
only serve to bloat the program.
When was Language Pump first released?
9th of May, 2007. As of that date it was considered functional and stable for users to commence learning (having being developed during
the previous 4 months). We were obviously the
first users and were more than excited to move over to our own platform. All of our language learning is now done solely on Language Pump.
As a point of interest, the main user learning engine has existed with virtually no bugs or changes since we launched. Most of our
work has been put into admin features and features to assist us adding new content. Sound has been the major change to the user
learning engine.
Seriously now... What really makes Language Pump different / better from other similar systems on the net?
We are avid language learners just as we hope our users are. We built this thing for us and as such we actually use Language Pump ourselves. If something is annoying we fix it.
How much of a language can you really learn using Language Pump?
Our philosophy is that if we want to learn a language we want to use a method / course that will not just teach a few isolated bits of vocab or rudimentary grammar. Many people hit the wall once they finish a course, finding they just don't have enough vocabulary to be able to express themselves or to be able to read a book. We aim to solve this problem by supplying advanced vocabulary in context. So our aim is not only to have a methodology which is the best of its kind but to also have the sort of content that will make it possible to move past that stage during which one is supposed to read books in the target language and look up words in the dictionary and use a notebook (pen and paper) to keep a list of words to be memorised. That sort of learning was necessary before everyone had the internet. Most people that reached that stage would get discouraged or end up with a few lists of words that they never got around to learning. Now anyone can go beyond this stage because Language Pump will eliminate the need to spend wasted hours looking up words, keeping track of them and trying to work out which ones need to be learned.
Can I upload my own content?
It's not out of the question. Contact us if you're really keen.
Why is everything geared towards English speakers?
We do understand that even for those that speak English reasonally well, it can be annoying to have to learn a foreign language through the medium of yet another foreign language.
We would actually like to be able to offer our content through the medium of other languages. Anyone that is a native speaker of a langauge that he or she would like to see as the master language of a language set is welcome to do some translation and have the new set available for use. Anyone that did this would of course be guaranteed special status in the Language Pump community.
X Language just shows up as empty squares instead of the expected characters/script... Why?
This is a web based system. Different languages require support of that particular language. We recommend you install support
for that Language into your operating system as a good place to start. We specifically call up "Arial Unicode MS" to cover
nearly all langauges. This is a licensed font that you have to buy but is worth installing if you can get it. Microsoft Mobile
operating system (smart phones, PDA's etc) will require you install a unicode font. You will probably also have to investigate a
program called "Font on Storage" to get this working as unicode fonts are large (e.g. 20MB). iPhone and iPod Touch seem to have
good unicode support built in.
My iPhone interface is really annoying!!! I have to keep resizing it for every question... grrrrr
Yep. It annoyed us too, so we have a slightly modified iPhone/iPod Touch interface. Email us so that we can
enable that interface for you
The Language Pump Team - 11/May/2008