
Ask HN: Startups Working on Second Language Acquisition? - tikwidd
Just wondering if anyone out there is working on any novel approaches to SLA. I&#x27;m a linguist and software developer hoping to find something interesting to work on at the intersection of my two interests.
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ColinWright
I have no time to work on anything new, and I don't know of any startups
working in this area, but I would be happy to:

* tell you why I don't like Duo-thingy or Rosetta Stone or whatever;

* listen to your ideas about what might be done differently;

* throw random, unsupported ideas into the air;

* generally chat about the problem space.

If you put your contact details in your profile, people will be able to
contact you. If you want to email me you can check out my profile.

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tikwidd
That's a generous offer, thanks :)

What are your biggest gripes with Duolingo et al?

I guess there are two major aspects to these apps, one is teaching the
grammatical patterns and structures and other is memorising vocabulary (plus
characters in the writing system, if different from the learner's native
language).

The vocab side looks like a subset of a more general problem of apps that
train you to memorise stuff. Spaced repetition seems to be the gold standard
there. So teaching the structures and patterns (grammar) is an area where I
could possibly make a dent...

~~~
ColinWright
Sorry I didn't reply earlier ... life got in the way.

I find these apps twee, patronising, and they ignore the strengths that an
adult potentially has. Adults _don 't_ acquire languages like infants do,
adults already have language structures, conscious motivations, and an ability
to think and reason.

I agree that it's about (a) structure, and (b) vocabulary. Rapid acquisition
of relevant vocab in parallel with acquisition of simple and elementary
example sentence structures is something they don't really do.

Please, if you're interested, email me and I will happily tell you my ideas. I
can't contact you because you don't have your contact details in your profile.

