Courses and Paths

Courses and paths

Courses

A course teaches one language from a language you know. The Decks tab lists your courses. A course shows how many units you have done, and how many hours are left in the units written so far.

A course is tagged Alpha until its A1 units are written, and Beta until its B1 units are. Two courses teach a notation: the International Phonetic Alphabet (ADR-0041) and English Braille (ADR-0043). The Roadmap lists which are written.

Hindustani is one course in two scripts, Devanagari and Perso-Arabic. Chinese is one course in two, simplified and traditional. You choose which to learn.

Paths and units

A course has a path: its units in teaching order, from A1 to B1.

Level	What you can do
A1	Introduce yourself, ask about people and places
A2	Shop, ask the way, talk about your day
B1	Travel, describe plans, give reasons

Units not yet written show as "Coming". Each unit shows its words, rules and passages and how many you know. A script unit shows its letters.

Open a unit to see its phrasebook, words, rules and sentences in teaching order, and its decks. "Continue" reviews what is due in it, or teaches its next words. A phrasebook chunk is taught whole from the start. A sentence opens once every word and rule in it is known; until then it is greyed, with what it waits for, and a tap says why and offers to practise the rule. Reviews never wait: only new sentences do. A lesson takes the next items in the path's order, fewer while the words and rules you were taught are not yet known (ADR-0046).

A word counts as known once your last review in each skill was right and you were at least 85% likely to remember it then, as on Progress; a rule, over all the cells of its table. Known words are marked on their cards.

At the end of a path is a part for songs, films and books, picked by interest. It is shown as "Feature incoming" for now (#215).

Decks

A deck is a list of cards, such as "Family". Open a deck to see its cards, to review what is due, to learn new words, or to revise when you know every card. Revising does not change when cards are next due. A search box finds decks by name, language or theme.

A deck can say that no speaker of the language has checked it yet. If you speak the language, please report any mistake (Reporting a problem). Checked decks say how many speakers checked them.

Tap a word to open its card: the word and its reading, how it is said in the IPA if that is on, its meaning, notes, base words and a speaker button.

Downloading a language

The app comes with no decks. Choosing a language downloads its decks from GitHub. This tells GitHub your phone's IP address and which files it asked for, and nothing else. You can start once the first five decks are in.

Settings > Your languages > Languages I'm learning lists each language, with Update and Remove. Once a day at most, when the app opens, it asks GitHub whether decks have changed, and offers an update. Your progress is kept. You can turn that check off, and then update only when you tap Check for deck updates (ADR-0037).

Remove deletes a language's decks from the phone. Your progress is kept, and comes back if you download it again.

If the app says the decks need a newer version, update the app in Settings first.

Your own decks

Settings > "Your decks" lets you upload a deck file or a CSV. It is checked before it is added. You can get a template, and send a deck to the project. To write one, see the Deck building guide.

See also: Learner guide, Home.