As you may already know, eSpok uses the Leitner system for helping students to learn their vocabulary.
Espok Leitner Vocabulary System
In this system students review vocabulary words with an increase of allotted time in between each review upon successful demonstration of one’s ability to master a vocabulary word. Thus, if a student has demonstrated the word has been learned; review of this word will become less frequent. Until today, we proposed two modes of revision. In the first mode, the student is presented the original word in his language and he has to write down the word so that the computer can check if both words match. If the words match the word will automatically be moved to the next group to be reviewed later. The second mode leaves the student free to decide whether he knows or does not the word. Therefore, in the second mode the student is being asked to evaluate his or her knowledge.
The problem with the second mode is in actuality it doesn’t stimulate the written memory and furthermore the student can “cheat” rather it be intentionally or unintentionally. The reason why we introduced this mode was specifically for languages such as Chinese where the learners usually don’t know how to write the ideograms with their computer. Perhaps as well they may not be able yet to write in Pinyin (Chinese transcription into latin characters) as it uses special accents for the tones. Tones are extremely important in the Chinese language so it seemed to us very important that a student; when reviewing his or her vocabulary, should actually be able to check one’s knowledge of these tones.
It is our goal at eSpok of having a system which can be used to learn every language. We have therefore introduced a new reviewing mode for the flash card dedicated to Chinese language. In this mode, the student can write in many different ways the original word and the computer will recognize it. For example:
1. If the original word is written in ideogram like 你好 (Means “Hello” in Chinese)
The student can write all of the following combination:
- 你好 (the original word)
- nǐhǎo
- ni3 hao3 : the tones are represented by their numbers
- ni hao
2. If the original word is nǐhǎo, the possibilities are:
- nǐhǎo
- ni3 hao3
- ni hao
