How Ingolingo works

Ingolingo uses a system we call the post-prediction method. It’s a bit like flashcards, but designed to make you remember the words as best as possible by creating connections between the text of the word and the item the word represents. We do that by making you guess what the word is before telling you what it is.

Let me give you an example: Say I tell you that “Flasche” means “Bottle” in German. Usually, you would forget this in a few minutes.

With Ingolingo however, what we do is ask you: What does “Flasche” mean in English?. You do not know, so you hit the button, “I do not know, show me pictures”. The first picture you see has a bottle in it, but it’s mixed in with a lot of other items. So you do not immediately know what the word means.

You hit the “Show me picture” button again, and another picture pops up. This time, the bottle is more prominent in the picture. You can continue to do this, till you reach the 4th or 5th button, by which time, the bottle is very clearly in the picture. You can then look at all the pictures and figure out what the word means.

As you go through this process, you are thinking hard with your brain. Your brain has switched to puzzle mode, and is actively trying to find out what this word means. When you finally discover it, your brain immediately stores the information, because it had to work to discover this piece of knowledge.

On a neural level, because of the mental effort you put into discovering the words, connections are built in your brain linking the word with the picture of the word. When you need to remember this word, it jumps to mind!

It’s a simple concept, but very effective. Try it out for yourself to see what we mean.

Other parts of Ingolingo we’d like to mention:

• Ingolingo profiles your training, and knows the words you are doing bad at. It repeats those words at greater frequency
• You can add your own words and create a custom course. For example, if you are studying a language in a physical school, after every lesson, come home and type in all the new words you learnt into Ingolingo. Train with them for 30 minutes, and you probably will not forget those words again
• Chat and discuss with other people learning your course

The advantages of the paid version

Well, some people are not convinced that that system is good enough to learn. Well, we offer more than that. First of all, we have two types of learning – free and paid. The free learning allows you to train using the system above. The paid version is different. Let me explain.

Ingolingo has a simple thought behind it – how do we make people rapidly increase their vocabulary in a foreign language? How can we make people learn more words with the minimum of effort? We use this software ourselves, so we are in the same boat – learning a new language is tough and it’s easy to give up.

We decided that there was something we could add to the pay version that would take our users a step forward towards learning the language – a personal motivator. What this is is simply a person who is sitting in our offices and looking at your progress. When you stop practicing and improving your language skills, this person will message you over Chat or call you (if you wish), and ask what the matter is. You can talk to the person, and the person will try to motivate you to go on.

You know what – just knowing that someone is monitoring your usage and will call you when you start losing interest is motivation enough – it will give you that extra push, as you’ll know you’re not alone. (Of course, you can switch off this option)

Of course, that’s not the only advantage of the paid version. You get:

• In the free version, you can only do about 50 words in each language from our well prepared courses. That’s 3 lessons. In the full version, you get access to all 3000 words. But of course, you can always add your own words in the free version, so the free version is still useful
• You can study multiple languages at the same time

Ingolingo is just starting out, and there are many things we still want to add and to improve. Do you have any ideas on extra things we can add?

That’s the key, that’s what makes this site special. I’m not working on it because of some big payout or because I want to get rich off it – I’m working on it because it lets me be free. I love traveling, I love meeting new people and visiting different countries. I love discovering languages and cultures. I love maps and reading about other countries.

So when I was given the opportunity to work on software that involves researching and finding the best way to learn languages, when I know that a big part of this job involves spending time in Asia and other parts of the globe – I was intrigued. This was what I wanted to do, it matched who I was.

That’s why I work here on Ingolingo, and I want people who use Ingolingo to find something in this piece of software that also creates some of that freedom in them. Ingolingo is to be about the freedom to talk, freedom to express yourself, and most of all, the freedom to discover

This is the semi-official Sunday launch of our language learning software – Ingolingo. Ingolingo is based on the idea that it’s easy to remember words if you have some context around which to associate the words. If I were to simply tell you that Flasche means Bottle in German, you would probably forget very quickly. However, if I asked you to guess what the German translation of “bottle” is, and gave you clues to help you, you are more likely to remember it. That’s the ingolingo concept – we ask you to guess a word, then give you pictures that hint towards what the word is, actually making you think about the word, and remember it better.

This is just a modest minimum feature launch. Ingolingo is incredibly useful now (my Chinese is improving fast), but we have big plans for this tool.

Ingolingo is a tool we created because we need it. It’s a business that provides a service we need, and I think this is the best sort of business. Try it out and send us an email with your comments on how we can make this tool the best and simplest language learning tool on the planet.

Thanks guys!