Lisan

Lisan is a story-based platform for language learning. In "Story" mode, the user initiates a story in a language of her choice (i.e. French) with a sentence in that language. In the feedback stage, Lisan analyzes the correctness of that sentence and provides a corrected version of that sentence. Lisan also vocalizes the sentence so that the user can check their pronunciation. In the response stage, Lisan writes her own sentence that continues the story in a coherent way, adjusted to the learning needs and current skill level of the learner. This sentence is presented in three levels of increasing granularity: (1) a vocalization of the sentence (2) a transcription of the sentence and (3) a word-by-word translation of the sentence. If the learner cannot understand the sentence when presented at an earlier stage of granularity, they are encouraged to reveal the next stage. Then, the user contributes another sentence and the pattern repeats. In "Flashcard" mode, the user can view the sentences and words used in their story by both the learner and by Lisan. They can be exported as a csv and uploaded to flashcard services like Anki or Quizlet for memorization exercises. In "Analytics" mode, the user can view (1) the full transcript of the story with all parts of speech tagged (2) a summary of the story and (3) an interactive graph visualization of a trie comprised of the words used in the story. The trie visualization is an effective way for visual learners to understand the relationships between words. For example, the words "reader", "reading", and "read" all share a common lexical prefix "read", which corresponds to a morphological root word in English.