Language Reactor is an amazing language learning tool with one caveat: there’s no good way to study vocabulary. Which is a big problem. Clearly Anki is the intended way but right now, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Exporting to Anki desperately needs more options. We need to be able to choose the number and exact contents of the fields of a card. To give an example: when creating my own flashcards I use the individual word (sometimes as a cloze sentence) on the front, the translation (or cloze sentence solution) on the back, and additional handpicked example sentences as an Extra field. But my setup is irrelevant: uvery user should be able to configure the exact layout of their own cards. Right now we’re limited to one preset which is impossible to actually use for studying, mainly for two reasons which have to do with how sentences are selected:
- If the word I saved was part of a spaghetti sentence, the flashcard is needlessly big.
- But if the word appears at the beginning or end of one subtitle segment that is itself part of a spaghetti sentence, the context can actually be insufficient, since only that one segment is preserved in the flashcards.
The solution?
- To solve the lack of context, LR needs to cut out not just one segment but the whole sentence, using the period as a separator.
- Now this only makes the first problem worse, but a quick fix could be emphasizing the important word both in the original and the translation.
- Given the recent advances in AI, I also think it might be possible for LR to smartly trim down sentences so that only the essential context remains.
All of these should be presented as options that the user can opt in or out of.
I love the LR experience so far but this is one area where I see a lot of room for improvement.