New Tool – Comprehension Practice (Reading and Listening)
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Hello everyone,
And welcome to a new episode of My New Tool™.
Hooray!
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced you to the upgraded version of the pronunciation trainer, and I have actually made more additions since then.
Specifically, I have added the sound-by-sound breakdown, including the percentages, so you can really see how you did.
But I’m not only upgrading older tools, I also have a few new ones coming and even though it might not yet be perfectly finished, today, I want to give you a first look at
My Text Comprehension Tool
Text comprehension is an important part of language exams. Basically, you get a short text and you have a certain time to read it and then, after that, you have to answer some questions about the text.
And I have made a tool that let’s you practice that exact thing, and you can use it for reading comprehension AND listening :)
Here’s how it works:
First, you get a little setup dialogue where you pick what level the text should be, if you want to include audio and if you want to have a timer. And then you can add a topic you want the text to be about. Like politics or panda bears or whatever.
And then, the AI will create a text for you and then quiz you about it.
Oh and during the dialogue, you can select whether you want the quiz to be multiple choice or free form questions where you actually have to type the answers.
Now, this is of course using AI under the hood so some of the questions feel a bit stupid or pointless. But that’s actually perfect because the REAL questions in the exams are like that too. Ai is perfect for this kind of exercise and purpose!
So yeah… without further ado, I’d say give it a try :)
My German Text Comprehension Trainer Tool
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What's your level?
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Now, like I said, this is a first draft only and I’ll definitely improve the tool over time.
What I already plan is:
- flexible timer option
- get translation for the text
- single word translation if needed (not sure about this one)
And I’m thinking about a dictation mode, though that might also be worth a separate tool. Oh, and maybe multi-language support? I mean, YourDailyGerman is about learning German of course, but I know quite a few of you are learning other languages as well, and adding multiple languages is really not that complicated.
But yeah, let me know what YOU think of the tool.
Do you like it? Is that helpful? Did it actually work all-right? And what would you like me to add or change?
Let me know all your thoughts and feedback in the comments, I’m really curious to read it.
I’ll put the tool up in the menu with the other tools soon, so you’ll be able to find it there, but for now, you can find it here.
Anyway, that’s it for today. Can’t wait to hear what you think, have a great week and I’ll see you in the next one soon :)
Hey Emmanuel, just a small suggestion. It would be nice if the questions were also generated in German with English as an option to switch to. I believe that would be helpful to further improve reading comprehension ability.
Regardless, the tool is totally amazing and helpful already.
Good point, I’ll add that to my todo list!
Thank you!!
Hey Emmanuel, the tool is amazing and it’s been helping me a lot. Thanks a lot.
But suddenly since the last two days, all of your practice tools stopped working for me. Whenever I try to generate an exercise it says “Sorry, no result could be generated.” Are the tools being updated or being worked on right now, hence the temporary pause?
I was just out of credits and had to recharge. Should be back up.
Right, understood. Now it’s back to normal. Thank you Emanuel!!
Having tried the freeform version of answers a few times, I find the AI’s questions and answers to be slightly frustrating. At times based on the phrasing of the question it seems to want you to reference a very particular passage, while at other times it wants you to broaden to larger portions of the text. If you take it very literally it wants something more general and if you interpret generally it wants specific. So I’m always wrong. That said, if one is willing to accept the “partially correct” grade it provides, there is learning to be had from this mode, if for nothing more than the grammar correction.
Interesting feedback!! If you can, could you share an example some time, if you stumble across one? Just the question and what you said and what it complained about, not the full reading text. I want to better understand the issue, maybe it’s fixable with different prompting.
I really like this. I started at A1 and worked my way up surprising myself that I understood B2. I looked at C1 but that was totally out of my league – in terms of the complexity of the vocabulary used but something to aim for.
I think hovering over a word which then generates a translation is a good idea. Whether you then remember it, I’m not sure.
What I do need to do is use the audio – I can read German but understand it when it is spoken is something I really need to practice and this seems to be the perfect way to improve.
Thanks
wow an application of AI I actually like!
Ha, hell yeah, that’s a really nice compliment, actually, thank you :)
This is very stimulating! I tried a text that is above my level and was able to make it out. It was a stretch but I need to be stretched in order to avoid boredom. Now it’s back to vocabulary building with Emanuel, a total delight!
Hi there, this is such a fantastic tool. Thanks! One thing I have noticed is that when you choose the multiple choice questions, all the correct answers are always answer A. Otherwise, this is so fantastic! Keep up the good work :)
So far so good. As for the enhancements you propose, I would find individual word lookup to be the most helpful.
Excellent, thank you. The texts are very good and seem consistently pitched at the levels. Having the audio is a real plus as can treat it as a reading exercise or a listening exercise. Having all the options presented so neatly on the page is also great.
Some of the questions are a bit dubious at times and at the moment seem a bit glitchy.
The font and the spacing for the questions could be made much clearer and it doesn’t seem to “remind” you of which answer you chose.
What do you mean “questions are glitchy”?
Are they legit having mistakes or are they just “stupid”. Because they sure are stupid.
I found that AI is really not that great at asking meaningful questions about a text. Some are good but others are just things a human would never ask about the same text.
Yes that sums up my feeling. I called it glitchy because I couldn’t at the time think of a better word while trying to be concise. The glitchiness was that out of the several I did only one set was awful. But the worst of it was that two of the questions offered two answers that were undoubtedly correct. That was when I tried A2.
Yeah, there’s no way to avoid that 100% unfortunately. That’s why I do “article quizzes” myself. The AI is just not capable to make it meaningful, but for stuff like this where you need “mass”, it’s a good enough tool, I think. Maybe I should add a “new questions” button?
Well, I am not that well versed in Ai and other technical things
But Claude generates a really human like Output.
I am preparing for my B1 exam
And I am having my grammar practice through a story where multiple scenes like crime comedy and other are involved.
And the Que asked by Claude seems more human too.
If there is any way like using Claudes API key or smth for your tool.
Well again I am not that well versed in technical things I do know that you have a dedicated team of expert for this.
Was just sharing my experience with Ai I use
And how do you make this tools ?
I’ll look into adding claude as an option. I need to check API pricing. I have no team actually, it’s just me.
I’ve learned coding back when I was at university, and the main bottleneck was always time, but now with AI I can realize a lot of the ideas I have without having to write all the boring detail code myself, which is great.
Are the texts you get from the tool as it is now just shit?
Well , i would say the text and comprehension i generate from Claude is way better and also realistic .
For instance as i am having a realistic story simulation for my exam prep and
the question asked in the story seem really good and human based with that slipping native idioms in comprehension is also a great thing that Claude does .
I am on free tier so it has its limits but with pro or max plan its more amazing as you get Claude to generate numerous skill for your work which Claude activate while giving the output [ skills – humanizing , specific instruction and so ] .
I will paste an example , this is without any skills or proper instructions .
“Jonas [21:51]
Haha was?! Dem alten Mann
gegenüber von mir ist das letzte
Woche auch passiert — mit einem
Hund. Berlin, weißt du?
Essen ist im Kühlschrank, du musst
nur aufwärmen. Ich bin bei Maria.”
if we compare it with other Ai , we need a to put a good amount of personalization , tone , and prompts . Whereas Claude generates it automatically .
If you just said, “Reply to this message as a friend”:
ChatGPT might say: “Wow, that sounds crazy! I can’t believe that happened in Berlin too. ” (A bit too perfect/grammatically complete).
Claude is more likely to say: “Haha, no way! Berlin is wild man. ” (Closer to how a person actually types).
i know that you have used claude as you have your background in that .
if you have any tips on using ai better way , it would be great>
Hi everyone!
I just wanted to drop a quick note here to say a massive thank you to this incredibly generous community.
A membership was unfortunately out of reach for me right now, but Emanuel let me know that thanks to the amazing members who paid a little extra to sponsor others, I’ve been gifted a full year of access!
I am so touched by this “team spirit” and deeply grateful to everyone who contributed. Your generosity has made a huge difference in my German learning journey, and I can’t wait to dive into all the content—especially this awesome new tool!
Vielen lieben Dank an euch alle!
– Hoss
Great! :)
Love this! I generated a story at each level on the same topic. At level B2 I was missing about 15% of the vocab and had to start looking up words in order to answer the test questions properly. So, great way to pick up new vocab. I could still do well on the C1 level multiple choice test even though the text seemed overly erudite and read like an academic textbook. I didn’t bother calculating how much vocab I was missing at the C1 level (it was a lot) but oddly the multiple choice questions were still doable because I could recognize patterns in the language even though I wasn’t 100% sure of the meaning. (Words as pure symbols). I’ll do this again later with a different topic but will test drive the free form test questions at each level instead of doing multiple choice.
I wanted to bookmark this page to find it more easily later but couldn’t find the usual heart symbol on the left sidebar.
Danke Emanuel!
I’ll add the tool to the AI tool section soon, so you’ll always be able to find it there :)
groovy
This is a great tool! Vielen Dank!
Glad you like it. More coming soon :)
I just repeated Japan using C1 medium multi. Wow! the vocab seems quite a stretch! Allerdings habe ich 80% erreicht, was mir dabei geholfen hat, dass die meisten B-Antworten richtig waren!! Lustig.
Argh, passiert das immer noch? Wie nervig :).
Ja, C1 Vokabular ist “schwer”, weil es so formal ist.
I chose B2 Japan medium multi choice, as it’s my next holiday. Es hat mich sehr gefreut, dass ich alles verstanden hat.Du hast ein tolles Tool erreichten.
“Tool geschaffen”.
“erreicht” würde “reached” heißen und “errichtet” würde built im Sinne von “erect” heißen.
I don’t know my level. I lived in Berlin as an adolescent, so am pretty fluent in things 13-year-olds talk about. My guess you don’t have a level for that??
Hard to tell, but you should be conversational and be okay with B2.
Thanks. I’ll try that level.
I tried a couple of B1 texts. Very little difficulty, so I’ll move up to B2 as you suggested. But there was a technical glitch. The first text was all fine, but the MC questions didn’t show up for the second one. Not sure why.
If this happens just try again straight away. Sometimes, the AI gets the response formatting wrong and then I my display functions can’t read it. It’s only an issue if it happens repeatedly and with a system.
But beyond that, it’s just the normal AI glitch which is probably never going to go away.
Out of curiousity, in the real tests is there simultaneous audio and text, or just audio and you answer the questions (ie the reading part is completely separate). I love this Emanuel, as well as all the great suggestions people have been offering!
I have no clue to be honest. Hopefully someone sees this comment who knows :)
It’s a useful tool, no doubt. The quiz is especially helpful. Unfortunately, I find my patience for things that require me to SIT in front of a computer is lacking – except your articles, of course, those I read over my morning espresso.
Do NOT understand that people have the patience to watch YouTube videos – I need it in audio form, podcasts, audio books and in my earbuds while I move about my day.
As for the content: it reminds me of some of my podcasts: Das sagt man so! von DW, Fakt oder Fake, Radio Teddy Nachgefragt, Topp-Thema mit Vokabeln von DW, WDR 4 Ullas Lieblingsrezepte, Wort der Woche von DW. They don’t do a quiz after, though…
I think your tool is “Supi” for people who have no problem sitting in front of a computer for more than the articles.
Yeah, I hear you. We spend a lot of time in front of screens and I’d also prefer my language learning to be off that!
This is top notch. I highly recommend. It’s 5 stars
Happy to hear :)