first I'd like to thank you for a great job - it is visible that you have a lot of experience from all the languages that you are providing. I like that a lot of possibilities are even for the free user, and the paid account is well balanced, so that the tools it provides make sence and I'm really considering it. And it's great that during the trial period you can really try out everything (and also get used to it a bit;). But now, as I sign of my gratitude, I thought I could share my suggestions from the use of your system.
I mostly like the flashcard system - I see that it really helps me to learn the vocabulary in a funny way.
First I share suggestions that could be good generally for all the languages, and then point out those important specifically for French and similar ones.
I like mostly the core 2000 flashcards, they are well prepared with example sentences. Example sentences are very important for me - because for example, on the card itself you don't see the gender of a noun (it is very important to remember too, and specifically in French), or the verb forms. At least, it would be great to see some examples that reveal those important aspects - not only verb in infinitive for example. It would be great for me to see the basic forms of the verb in the example, some typical uses of the word (with prepositional phrases for example or some different meanings), the use with some article to reveal the gender, and in case of adjectives to show whether they change according to gender or not.
What I miss is the possibility to sign some words as really known - it happens to me that I want to ensure that I know all the 2000 core words, and of course some of them (numbers, days of week, colors...) I know really well and really don't need to see them often. Though, just pressing "well" doesn't make them disappear. And maybe it wouldn't be clever - I sometimes use "well" just denoting that this time it was easy to remember the word. But now it happens that the systems is always showing me the words I know well repeatedly and I cannot solve it, only by going to the set and manually deleting those words (but sometimes it would be good to show these words - but maybe just really one or two times a month...)
When thinking about solution for this, you could eather by yourself denote some word as learnt, or you can use some gentler scaling - for example from 1 to 10, but in this case it would need to be really easy to comprehend and click - in order not to be inconvenient to use. So this possibility would be a bit tricky to implement. But basically it could be great, if you could somehow help people to focus on the words they really don't know and need to learn. Another idea - add the possibility to go through the whole deck once and denote how well I know the particular word. Now it is really exhausting to click through all the quite well known words to really come to those that I don't know.
Another suggestion for further development would be better integration of the words from different categories - I mean when you have some word in one set and also in another, that the system would notice it. And also it would be great if your system by itself knew that there are redundancies - and was able to somehow connect them - automatically - for example when you add some vocabulary to the lesson, and it is already in the core pack - it would be great, because the words from the lesson often miss the example sentences, pictures and sometimes even the sounds. For you, it would be advisable to solve this somewhere on the database level, automatically, not to need to go and do this manually in case of every word.
The result would be worthwhile, because it would be much more convenient to use the packs. I can imagine that you could for example set specific groups from the core pack - be it the vocabulary on some specific theme - nature or so, or for example decide to start learning just the core 300. Then if you then decided to try out core 500 for example, the system would focus more on the new words - because it would know how is it for all the words. Or, if you started with lesson vocabulary, the system wouldn't force you to learn again the words you know and wouldn't suppose that you don't know them. The user experience would be on a different level.
I know that it would need you to delve in the structure of the database, just trying to show that for future development of the system it would probably be worthwhile.
Another suggestion for further development - if you somehow deal with this interconnection of words - would be to integrate also different versions of the word and also possibility to include the words in some basic phrases (and add this to the knowledge of the word) - it could be as a possibility (you could choose, whether you want to learn the word also in its forms and whether you want to learn it in phrases).
This could be very useful specifically for French - because what I struggle with is that I sometimes cannot recognize the basic and often used forms of words (verbs for example), because many French words use a very simple and similar sounds, and I would need to train to recognize the basic forms, orthographically and phonetically (forms as tout, peux, veux, peut, pois, ai, aime and the units such as qu'il, c'est, que-c'est que, j'ai...). It's really something that I would need to train and this feature would be very helpful. In French specifically, the flashcards really help to connect the orthography with sound all the ways - so all the forms of the flashcard are important. I see it really helps me.
To finish the analysis of the flashcards, I would add that the statistics in the deck sometimes seem not to reflect the new progress and I have to restart, or at least it is not so comprehensible for me (I mean those "new", "started", "learned" etc.) - maybe it would be also good to have some intro and show how the system works and what those things mean - explain the spaced repetition and so - maybe it's somewhere, so sorry if I didn't see it, but take it as an info that it wasn't clear to find
And - this you probably know - the example sentences are not without mistakes - it happens that the system shows some sentence that doesn't include the word, or if you click on the microphone icon, a different sentence is read - sometimes it's just different version of the same sentence (with different word order or minor changes), or sometimes it is totally different sentence. Both are annoying, but I take it that the whole system is just in beta version and you are for sure working on this.
Next I would like to talk about courses. The podcast are quite nice, but what I miss is a way to progress really fast from my level on - comparing the other systems (duolingo, pimsleur), where I know I'm doing progress. What would help would be to have some entrance test that would really showed me which level is appropriate, and it would also really help if I could see a really specific and concrete overview of the syllabus (for example - this level is appropriate for you, if you know some basic phrases, if you know the basic versions of verbs, and need to help with using them more freely, to understand them better while listening... or: you learn * basic forms of verbs ...... in present tense, * form the questions, * use basic phrases in typical conversational situations... etc etc) - really to see a benefits of the level clearly. Now it happens to me that I'm going through the three levels at the same time, listening to basically the same things and not sure if something important won't escape me.
A great area for getting better is to improve the possibilities for testing out the content of the podcast lessons - the exercises are really pore comparing more sophisticated systems as for example duolingo, that is really fun to use (but also missing the depth and width of your courses). Your system yet doesn't help to train the all aspects from the lessons - use of phrases, vocabulary (the flashcards is a way to do this, but usually not all the important vocabulary is there, or you cannot choose the right one you want really to learn - so it gets overwhelming and is not effective for the lesson vocabulary), grammar and independent formation of the phrases, and their comprehension from written and spoken forms.
In your place, I would aim to create better system for exercising and testing the content of the lessons - and somehow automating this - have something similar as the flashcards, but more integrated - training also the grammar and usage of phrases (not just memorizing them, but understanding their use) - and really testing the abilities to form the phrases correctly, understand them, check if the person is able to comprehend spoken, written versions and create the specific orthography and so... If you need some inspiration, have a look on duolingo - it is really great for this and you really learn to use specific patterns independently - if you were able to create something similar for your lessons which would incorporate the tracking of progress and spaced repetition that you already have in flashcards, it would be great and you would really become the number one system for learning languages which would people gladly used as a premium members
But for sure you are on the right track - I just shared my ideas because I think that you are willing to grow and you could appreciate that. All the best - and don't hesitate to contact me if you have further questions (there's more, but I also wanted to keep it at least RELATIVELY short), I'm willing to support you.
