Chart My Vocabulary

Chart My Vocabulary is an app that enables a user to chart the level of sophistication of their vocabulary. It does this using a measure called Flesch-Kincaid. It is powered by Assembly-AI.

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Overview

"Gamification" is all the rage nowadays. Everyone from those in human resources (HR) through to those in the weight loss industry have sought and are seeking ways to "gamify" their sector. Gamification refers to the process of making seemingly mundane activities more exciting through making them exhibit similarities to the experiences gained when playing a game. In some respects, gamification is somewhat analogous with the concept of "serious games" which describes the use of games for primarily educational purposes, such as the use of flight simulators in pilot training.

Gamification is also seen in the linguistics sector. Duolingo is a popular example of a company that uses gamification to help users learn a foreign language. Chart My Vocabulary similarly aims to help non-English speakers seeking to learn English to improve their grasp of the language. Its approach is different from Duolingo, however. Users record themselves with a device of their choosing and at the end of each day upload the audio file to Chart My Vocabulary (it is recommended that users record themselves throughout the day for optimum performance). The audio file is then processed with the help of AssemblyAI, which transcribes the audio. Once transcribed, the output is saved on the user's device and also outputs what is known as the "Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level" score. This is a score that is used to gauge the readability of a particular text; in the context of Chart My Vocabulary it is used to determine the level of sophistication of one's vocabulary. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is given by the following formula:

(0.39) * (total words/total sentences) + 11.8(total syllables/total words) - 15.59

The lowest score a person can have is -3.40, but this is very rare in practice: an example of a book that approximates this is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, which has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score of around -1.3. For someone who is trying to learn English as a language, the higher the score, the more advanced grasp one has of the English language (although there are indeed situations where one would want to have a low score, as in the case of writing books for children, although that is not expected to be the audience for this project).

Requirements

In order to use this program, it is recommended that you have the following:

  • Internet access (although note that it is not necessary to have internet access to use this program, but it is necessary to have internet access to download it).

Windows

Mac

Instructions

Technical Architecture in Diagrammatic Form

What it does

How we built it

Chart My Vocabulary was built with node.js, MySQL, HTML and CSS. It uses the API provided by AssemblyAI and uses a library created by users called Dana Ross and that helps assist in measuring the Flesch-Kincaid readability score of a particular text.

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

I learned about AssemblyAI

What's next for Chart My Vocabulary

Disclaimer

Chart My Vocabulary only works on English audio. This is because the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Measure was constructed for English texts.

Legal Disclaimer

  • The font "Glowist", which can be seen here was used in this project and this project fully complies with the terms of the licence. For legal reasons, this font cannot be attached for distribution in the Github repository.

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