Feature request (learning approach)

[demneptune]

Hi, I enjoy using your software, and the reader, but I have always learnt the most from combining reading and vocab. The way I do it is to get a short reading passage, and a list of vocab from the passage, but I separate the English and the Chinese. I then use the context of the passage to perform the matchup. For example, something like this:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
OTHER LANGUAGE
A. brillig
B. slithy
C. toves
etc.
ENGLISH:
1. animals
2. evening
3. slimy
etc.​

So now the lists of words are each in alphabetical order - they don't match. You have to use the context of the passage to perform the matchup (A-2 etc). But it is a nuisance constructing such lists oneself - it's much better done by an app. Your app would be perfect for this. The app itself could generate the matchup exercise from the reading text. The point is, the user can set the parameters, based on their own vocabulary (if I say ">500", only words outside of the 500 most common words in Chinese are included in the matchup; if I say "10 words", the app will go until it has found 10 words for me). In terms of screen space, I would prefer two screens: a reading screen (primary) and a matchup as a swipe-over. Alternatively, the screen could be split into two halves, for a small matchup. This could be done to match Chinese words to meaning (the most useful) or even to match characters to pinyin (good for variety).

 

[mikelove]

It wouldn't be too hard to use a section from a passage as an input to a multi-choice test in Pleco - you could actually even do that now; we don't support automatically generating flashcards from a passage (yet!), but if you added all of the words from that passage to a Pleco flashcard category and then did a multi-choice test on that category with the "choices from" option in Test Settings configured to only draw cards from that category, you'd basically get the test you're talking about.

Many-to-many matching I'm a little more wary of - I don't think it's a particularly good model for a mobile device, there's either too much scrolling or too few items to match (= matches are too easy/obvious).