Smart FlashCards is a web application that lets you quickly create and practice virtual flashcards for language learning. It does so by automatically generating translations and pronunciation audio for the words/phrases the user wants to learn. Currently, Smart FlashCards supports over 10 languages (including Hindi, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and others).
In addition to bread-making, dalgona coffee-making and other quarantine activities, I added learn Korean to my list. To practice Korean vocab, I used regular flashcards. One thing that I wished I could do was also hear the correct pronunciation of the words when practicing, since Korean uses a different alphabet from English and has sounds that I wasn't yet used to. Cue Smart Flashcards!
Interested language learners who want to learn the basic vocabulary of a new language. This is especially targetted for learners who:
- Want to hear the words/phrases they are learning
- Want to get started quickly, without the added time cost of googling a translation/updating the language of their keyboard
Ex: Someone who is going on vacation to Germany and would like to learn some basic words/phrases. Smart FlashCards will help them create a deck with all those phrases/words quickly. When practicing their deck, the vacationer will start to familiarize themselves with both how the word is written and spoken, helping really solidify what they're learning.
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Anne visits the homepage and fills out some info to get her unique learning space link.
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After receiving an email with the link, Anne uses the link to get to Anne's learning space. There she gets started by creating a deck for some basic German words/phases.
Video with walkthrough for steps 3-7: https://youtu.be/W6AXKTgKVl8
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Clicking to view the cards in her new deck, Anne is redirected to the Deck page where she can add some German cards.
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Anne creates her first card for the phrase
Good Morning. All she needs to do is enter the phrase she wants to learn in English, clickAuto-TranslateandCreate Card. Now Anne has a card that shows her howGood Morninglooks and sounds in German. -
Anne enters a few more German words/phrases she wants to learn before her trip.
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Anne goes back to her deck page and clicks
Practice Deck. -
Now Anne can review her words/phrases.
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Anne flies to Germany and awes everyone with her knack for the German language!
Data Storage:
- Information about the user, the decks and the cards (including translations) are all stored on a local MySQL database.
- The audio files with pronunciations are stored in an Amazon S3 Bucket.
External APIs:
- Microsoft Azure's Translator API was used to automatically generate the translations: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/translator/
- Google's Text-To-Speech API was used to generate pronunciations of the translations: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech
- SendGrid's Email API was used to send the unique learning space link automatically to an onboarding user: https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/api-getting-started/
The backend logic was written in Java, using the Spring Framework. The front-end is written in React.
- Translations aren't always right.
- Have a way of marking which cards are learned.
- Have a way to practice pronunciation of the word with flash cards. Perhaps, highlight the phrase as it's being read by the audio.
- More aesthetic UI.
- Package and host the code on the cloud.