Lingual

Inspiration

I have been attempting to learn French for a while now, and I found that tools like Babbel and Duolingo weren't benefitting my vocabulary much even after a long time of use and my proficiency in french was ever drifting away.

Thats when I had the idea to create an app that tests you on the most common words in a language to boost your vocabulary, and wow does it help! It takes such little time to get to grips with so many words using the method that Lingual provides.

What it does

Lingual prompts you on a common word in a language, and asks for you to enter the english (other languages are available too!) equivalent. This process is carried out through 3 different minigames - classic, timed, and endless

In classic, you are prompted on every single word in your difficulty level, which ranges from the first 100 most common words up to 1000, and keeps track of your correct words. When finished, you can see how well you did, making it very useful to visualise and see your progression in the language

Timed follows a similar concept, except you have to get as many words right as you can in the given time - 90 seconds!

Finally, in endless you are given an endless stream of words, keeping you learning until you think you're fluent, or just until you get bored. This minigame is perfect for use on the go, especially when you're the next stop on the train and are debating whether you have enough time to fit in a lesson on Duolingo. Probably not.

How we built it

Lingual is a responsive web app, meaning that you can use it on your computer, tablet or phone. We built it using Javascript, HTML, CSS and Bootstrap. It is fully client-side, since we had the intention (and conviction) of hosting it on Github Pages

Challenges we ran into

Our initial plan was to build the webpage using React Native, but we couldn't get a project set up in 4 hours which led us to scrap it and start again. This was especially damaging since it wasted our peak energy hours, and a long and tired night ensued after.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud of the UI and UX. It looks good, its simple, its functional and its effective; what more could you want?

What we learned

We learned that if we are going to base a project on a framework that we don't have experience in, we should take time to learn the fundamentals prior to the day of the hackathon.

What's next for Lingual

More languages, more minigames and more updates (custom wallpapers unlocked with achievements??). Also, hopefully a port to React Native so that we can launch it on app stores.