Show HN: I built a small app for FSI German Course | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built a small app for FSI German Course

detawk.com

53 pointssyedmsawaid15 comments

Hi everyone. I am built a small application on top of FSI German basic course and I need some feedback regarding it.

It is a small web app. Currently only Unit 01 is available. I will feed in the rest of the units later down the road as I use it myself.

Some of the features includes

- Slow and fast audio with every single word and sentence in this app. You can play them with a click of a button. No need to rewind a tap back and forth. - Flashcards with keyboard control to quickly go through the material and drill them out.

You can access the website at https://detawk.com/ . There is a demo video on the landing page. Give it a look before signing up.

If you have any questions or feedback for me, let me know. I hope you like the app.

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The irony is that real FSI language courses generally produce graduates who can read the newspaper and deliver a press release but cannot order food in a restaurant or explain to the delivery driver how to reach their apartment.

I never met an FSI graduate who felt their language training was great. I met many who felt it wasn't, and many who had to effectively relearn the language when they arrived in country.

I simply don't believe that it generally produces graduates who 'cannot order food in a restaurant'. The phrases required for that are almost always simple. Perhaps you mean that the graduates do not necessarily know certain vocabulary (in the sense of not knowing how to precisely specify a 'rack of lamb' whatever) or the correct register/politeness level for every possibility?

I don’t know what exactly the op meant by delivering a press release, but at least I after a four year high school german course can read newspaper articles in german but would struggle quite a lot to order food (granted, I wasn’t very good at it). In a more grammar heavy language understanding is a lot easier than writing which is a lot easier than speaking.

Is it? I don't know of any person using Duolingo or any other app to perfect their language. Most of them either learn from a uni course or something similar.

Although online, it is praised quite a lot.

Congratulations on the launch. It looks quite useful and well made.

I urge you to rewrite the landing page copy. Right now it has very strong LLM generated smell which is off putting and detracts from the product.

It is indeed LLM generated. I am certainly trying to change the landing page and make it more human. Thank you for you input though.

Impressive! FSI courses are genuinely good but the raw format makes them harder to stick with than they should be.

Do spend some time or bucks on proofreading. Looks odd, when there is a major grammar mistake in your advertisement images.

> Beta DeTawk is in beta. Early access is open

...

> The only German course that actually produces speakers.

Hahaha, You better add a source to that. Without being am established household name like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, that sounds like a scam.

Duolingo doesn't produce speakers, it produces gamers.

Pimsleur, Assimil, LanguageTransfer, italki, perhaps

I vibed the landing page so there are problems with it. Since it is my first app, I don't know how to write a copy. I will change it though. Thank you for your input.

I know podcasts are terribly unfashionable now, because they're not AI-powered and MP3 encoders barely use enough power to warm a teaspoon of coffee never mind boil an ocean, but I feel like Coffee Break German would want to have a word with that claim too.

Auf Deutsch, natürlich.

Can we really say that no other German course has ever produced "speakers"?

Looks interesting and useful, thanks for not making it a mobile app!

I am aiming for a mobile app as well, but first I want to feed all the FSI course to the system before moving to a mobile app.

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