I love the fact that the explanations for flashcards, signified by the light bulb icon, are sometimes given both in the target and the native language.
It would be nice to have the option to keep this behavior.
I know this is a side effect of the language model generating a response, but I think it’s actually super helpful. Keep one explanation in the target language to stay immersed and help you “think” in it, exposing you to related words and concepts, and then one in the native language in case you get stuck.
What do you all think? Do you like the target language explanations? I do!
Hmmm, it sounds like for you the explanation is mixing languages. I haven’t noticed this happening for me. In my case they are shown in English (my first language) like this:
And if I click the “Switch explanations to Spanish” button (circled in the screenshot), it will switch to show the explanations in Spanish only, like this:
In your case, does it often mix languages within the same explanation? If so, please let me know which language you are learning and what the link at the bottom, the one starting with “Switch explanations to …”, says.
I personally prefer the English (first language) explanations. I thought the target language ones would be better, but in practice I like to reserve my mental effort for concentrating on the story I’m reading and the English explanations allow me to do that more effectively.
Here are a couple of screenshots of what I’m seeing. This is when I click on Start Practice in the practice tab, and it’s showing me the words and phrases for review.
Sometimes (but not always), it gives me two “tips”, one in the target language and one in my native language.
I actually really like it when it does that, because I find I’m able to read the description and learn all about the concept, and then I get the English one too in case I get stuck.
My target language is Italian. In the case of the word “intorno” (around), the response in this case was extremely helpful. Often the format that I find the most helpful is when it says, “La parola ‘intorno’ in italiano significa…”, which roughly translates to, “The word ‘around’ in Italian means…”. I find this is a common format of response from ChatGPT when I am speaking in another language and ask it what a word means.
A strange response was for the word “dipinti” (paintings). The response had one in the target language and one in my native language, but instead of telling me the definition of the word, it started to tell me the concept of the word, saying that paintings are creations of imagination on a surface like wood or paper using colors, etc.
I know this is all very loose and kind of conceptul, and it almost looks like the model is trying to explain the word from different angles, but I really do enjoy the way that it works sometimes when it gives me simple explanations of the word or phrase in the target language and my native language.
Also, just want to say how much I love this app and give you big praise for creating it. It’s exciting, and the language models although they produce side effects often I find they really, really help so much with learning. It’s like it is training me to think in the language I want to learn, and makes it super easy.
This happens when you have previously requested explanations in both target and first languages. In the reading UI there is a link to switch between these as I mentioned earlier, but in the practice and edit card interfaces I think it will only fetch the explanation in your first language and won’t give you the ability to switch. I’ll consider adding a way to switch there too (although I don’t want to clutter the UI too much).
