Improvements to the reading interface

This is a small update, but it addresses a couple of things which have bugged me about Readlang’s reading interface for a while.

Page navigation

Before, the page navigation UI felt clunky to me:

Now, it looks like this:

The difference may seem subtle, but it changes these three things:

1. The “jump to furthest read” button used to be right next to the “next page” button. You had to be careful to make sure you were tapping the right one, particularly on mobile. In the new version, the next page button has a larger hit area and is easy to tap without fear of accidentally hitting the “jump to furthest read” button, which is now accessible by tapping on the progress percentage.
2. The arrows in the margins were there to indicate that you can tap the side of the page to navigate. Although informative, having so many arrows on the page made it feel cluttered. In the new version you can still tap on the margins to change page but the extra arrows are no longer shown.
3. For shorter texts, the percentage is now just a single number instead of a range, which I think looks cleaner. One of the goals of this reading interface is to be distraction free.

The “go to start” and “go to furthest read” options now accessible by clicking on the percentage at the bottom, which will show the following popup:

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Context-Aware Explanations (Smart Definitions V2)

It’s been 3 months since I added Context-Aware Explanations (previously known as Smart Definitions) to Readlang. I’ve had great feedback about this feature so far! Here’s a small sample:

• “I’m really loving the new feature Smart definitions! It does a much better job than dictionaries because there’s a lot of things dictionaries can’t translate well, and Smart definitions uses context and explains it in a comprehensible way.”
• “I just wanted to say that I’ve really come to love the AI “define” feature you’ve added! Especially since it defines the word in the language one is learning. I honestly didn’t think I’d use it much at first, but I’ve found it very useful especially for when a word’s meaning in context isn’t obvious from the translation alone.”
• “I was pleasantly astonished one day, while reading a book in German, to see an AI-definition pop up. I particularly appreciate the quality of the AI-generated definitions/translations. Of course, it’s not at all infallible, but it still feels, at times, like you’re in a conversation with a native speaker about a given word or phrase.”
• “I have been using the AI and love it. I really like the way it delves further into the meaning of sentences. Wow! mind blown! I feel it’s like having a tutor by your side.”

You can access it from the reader page by opening the sidebar in a supported language. Here’s how it looks:

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The Key To Learning Anything

If you want to learn or make progress on something, then turning it into a daily habit is about the most powerful way to do that. Much has been written on this topic, but the one that stuck for me is The Seinfeld Strategy: “Your only job is to not break the chain”.

Readlang has had a streak feature for the past few years, but two things bugged me about it:

1. It wasn’t very visible, so it wasn’t obvious when I’d achieved your goal, and because it wasn’t that prominently displayed, it wasn’t something I cared about that much.
2. The reading component of the old daily goal was based on the number of words you’d translated. I didn’t like that it was based on the number of words you translated rather than the number of words you actually read.

This changed a few weeks ago with the new streak feature which, if you’re a regular Readlang user, you’ll probably have noticed already! Here’s how it works:

At the top right of the page you’ll notice a flame icon with a number next to it:

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Delete Flashcards While Reading

For a long time, learners on Readlang have been asking for an easy way to control which words get converted into flashcards and now it finally exists!

You can now enable “delete on deselect” in which words and phrases will be deleted from your account simply by clicking an extra time to hide them.

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Smart Definitions

Using an external dictionary in the Readlang sidebar is very useful for those times when the simple translation doesn’t quite cut it. But the quality of the different external dictionaries varies a lot, some of them have stopped working within Readlang, and the problem with all of them is that they aren’t aware of the context around the word or phrase you’re translating.

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Readlang Is Back!

Wait? Readlang is back? Where did it go? Well, in one sense it never went anywhere, it’s been helping people learn languages by reading since 2013. But in 2016 I went to work at Duolingo (read more), and in 2017 I sold Readlang to them. I really enjoyed my time at Duolingo and worked on some cool stuff there including Duolingo Stories, but unfortunately Readlang stagnated. Luckily for you and I, the good people at Duolingo have sold Readlang back to me!

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The Readlang Method for Learning Vocab

I found vocabulary to be the most intimidating part of learning a foreign language. I’m an engineer at heart, more at home with math & physics, where you learn a small amount of things, from which everything else can be derived.

The other aspects of Spanish such as pronunciation and grammar seemed to offer a set of rules which could be learned, practiced and internalized given a reasonable amount of studying. (I particularly like Michel Thomas and Duolingo for this.) But I had no handle on how to learn vocabulary. I’ve never been a fan of rote learning, and hence never developed skills to learn vast quantities of unrelated things. It seems to take somewhere in the order of 10,000 words to read comfortably in a foreign language. It may as well have been infinite. How on earth do you approach learning 10,000 of anything?

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An Instapaper For Language Learners

Readlang was originally designed for reading novels, but it was clear early on that I needed a more accessible source of free content for people to read, and what better source than the internet! For this reason, Readlang has a web importer, allowing you to import a plain text version of a web-page, a la Instapaper*. The original importer was a hastily coded affair, which included far too much cruft from the source web page and has long been due for an overhaul, so here it is…

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Introducing Shelves

This one’s a biggie, and has taken a while to implement.

Earlier this year I added some improvements to My Texts. But after receiving feedback from some of the most prolific sharers of content on Readlang, it was clear that more organization was required.

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Spanish Immersion Homepage - Chrome Extension

Have you ever felt that Chrome’s new tab page is a massive productivity sink? It tempts you with your most visited pages. Facebook, Gmail, Reddit – procrastination central. It wastes your time with watching innane viral videos and derails your train of thought. This extension takes over the new tab page to encourage browsing the web in Spanish. If you’re going to be distracted, don’t fight it, use it to your advantage!

Get the Spanish Immersion Homepage extension on the Chrome Web Store

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Keep your books, articles and videos organized

If you read a lot, you’ll appreciate the need to keep your language learning library in order. Readlang helps you by organizing your texts and videos into the following categories:

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Speaking mode

Speaking and listening skills are an extremely important for learning a language. Readlang already has plenty of YouTube videos for you to practice listening. Songs have proved to be a favorite:

To complement this, you can now enable Speaking Mode. This provides automatic text-to-speech when you click a word or phrase in any text, and when reviewing your flashcards, Readlang will pronounce the word or phrase as it is revealed.

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To translate or not? Monolingual mode arrives

There are few topics more divisive among language learners than the question of translation. Is translating a bad habit? Should learners stop as soon as possible? Whatever your opinion, Readlang can now help.

From today, you can disable translations and access monolingual definitions.

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New Activity Monitor to encourage a daily language learning habit

The main reason people fail at learning a language is not showing up to practice every day. Effective language learners manage to incorporate the language into their lives on a regular basis, they form daily habits. Having a job where you must speak the language is ideal, but most of us need to find other ways to squeeze practice into our busy lives.

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Turn your favorite novel into a motivating and effective language learning tool

If you enjoy reading novels, and wish to learn a second language, then you’re in luck, since reading can form a highly motivating and effective way for you to absorb the grammar, vocabulary and culture of a language.

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