I've been in this market for a while. From running an English school in Taiwan to trying out products as an avid learner myself to chatting with friends who have basically been building the dominant platforms for teaching Chinese, I've seen a ton of apps like this.
And I have to say that yours is refreshing. Lots of new Chinese learning apps are coming out and 90% are just flashcards with an SRS. From a learning perspective, just memorizing words is a terrible way to go.
Don't get me wrong. I love SRSes and even contributed to Anki. But ultimately any language learning effort focused on single, decontextualized words is doomed. Learners need bigger chunks, like whole sentences or ideally extensive reading. That's why I see your app as a step in the right direction.
Are there any other apps / methods that you can recommend as good examples of how to learn a language? I'm trying to learn Lithuanian (GF), and there is very little material available, so I'm looking to build something myself.
Play narrative-heavy computer games that are translated into Lithuanian. I did this to supplement other methods I used while living in Poland. The Diablos were especially well-localized. Bonus is, it teaches you all kinds of obscure words and expressions that even native speakers sometimes aren't familiar with.
That said, if your goal is learning Lithuanian rather than product building, you don't need an app. You need books and audio. For an overview of how to use them, try reading Barry Farber's How to Learn Any Language. Here's my own summary and results using his strategies: http://toshuo.com/2007/learn-a-language-by-taking-advantage-...
Disclosure: I'm friends with John from ASL and Dave from Popup, but my recommendation is genuine. The reason we became friends was our mutual interest in Chinese and blogging about our language learning years ago, before there were many others doing so.
Thanks for the feedback, it should be able to support sentences up to about 7-8 characters in length. Device width is the constraint here. I'll bear this in mind for future lesson sets.
I spent last year studying in Beijing, and I reached a certain level of fluency, but now that I have come back, I have trouble maintaining it. I read books (许三观卖血记，活着, both by Yu Hua), and go through my Anki flashcards, and sometimes read through my textbooks.
My reading abilities haven't fallen much, but it's my ability to create sentences, i.e., talking, that's failing me. Mainly because I'm not talking with anybody, can't find anybody to talk with.
The nice thing about learning Chinese is that no matter where you are in the world, you can find Chinese language exchange partners. If you live near a university, post an advertisement in the engineering or sciences buildings (or wherever you expect to find Chinese students) or post an ad at a bus stop in the neighborhood where the Chinese students usually live (in my hometown, most Chinese students live in the same neighborhood). Another place is the best local Chinese restaurant. I have a couple language exchange partners I found by posting an ad at the bus stop. Each week, we spend 1 hour speaking Chinese and 1 hour working on reading/writing academic articles in English.
And I have to say that yours is refreshing. Lots of new Chinese learning apps are coming out and 90% are just flashcards with an SRS. From a learning perspective, just memorizing words is a terrible way to go.
(I explain why in the final minute of this video: http://youtu.be/3cjnP6mogEU)
Don't get me wrong. I love SRSes and even contributed to Anki. But ultimately any language learning effort focused on single, decontextualized words is doomed. Learners need bigger chunks, like whole sentences or ideally extensive reading. That's why I see your app as a step in the right direction.