Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a great and relaxed Easter. And it’s not completely over yet because today you’ll get kind of a late Easter egg. No, not this. Today we’ll take a look at an app for studying vocabulary. Is it the really the best ever? Of course not, I just said because it’s a catchy headline. But the app has a really great concept. So let’s take a look.
“Studying vocabulary”… ugh. Booooooring. Learning vocabulary sucks and almost everybody hates it. But it is quite important for learning a language and there are many tools and apps out there try to help with it. One of them is Drops.
Drops – learning vocabulary with a twist
Drops is an free app for studying vocabulary. The vocabulary is provided by the app and for every word there is an illustration so you’re not bound to one word translations and it offers various modes for the studying like typing the word, or ordering syllables or – and I really like this one – you are shown the word as well as a super blurry image which you can sharpen by swiping over it with your finger. So you can bit by bit uncover the image and see how quickly you can recognize it.
Now, all this is nice but it’s nothing special and most of it is part of other language apps and programs, too.
But Drops is different in one very crucial way!
You can have the best learning software out there… it won’t help the users if they only use it once a week for a short amount of time. So one of the main challenges for language learning software is to engage the user. With fun little games, and motivational emails, and rewards, and extortion.
“Hey Unicornmaster80, you had better study your deck today.You wouldn’t want your naked selfies on your Facebook timeline, would you?!“
Well, okay… I haven’t seen an app that does THAT yet. But they all try really really really hard to get you to use them a lot.
Not Drops.
Drops lets you use it 5 minutes per day and then it’s essentially like “That’s it dude. Come back tomorrow.” And then that’s it. You cannot use the app anymore that day.
And that plays with one phenomenon about human nature: things we can’t or don’t have are much more interesting than the ones we do have.
Like… women will find you much more attractive if you have a girlfriend. And you’re much more likely to buy something if it is “for a limited time only” or if there are “only 10 left”.
Drops uses this mechanism in a language learning app and I have to say… it is pretty damn genius!
Instead of being like “Hey, come on. Use me. Why don’t you use me a little longer. Hey, hey, I’m fun. Come on. Here, have a cool lingot.” like a desperate single asking for a date, Drops is like “I don’t care how much fun you’re having. After 5 minutes it’s over!” like me in bed…oh… wait, fo…forget that last bit, please.
So yeah… that’s what’s special about Drops. Drops limits your access. In fact, they’re even so bold as to make you PAY for extra time. DAMN! Someone paying to be allowed to study vocabulary … that sounds crazy.But I don’t think it’s completely unrealistic either. The pull of an app that won’t let you use it might be very strong an actually make you it app everyday.
Reverse psychology style.
And that’s why I think it’s really worth checking out. Oh… and it’s completely free … unless you want more than 5 minutes :)
Drops at iStore Drops Website
(there’ not much to see on the website, so maybe just go to the store right away)
And I’d love to hear your thoughts about Drops. How do you like the idea of it? And if you’ve try it, does it work for you? Does it make you want to use the app? And how’s the handling?
I’m really curious because… I never even tried the app.
Yeah… laziest reviews ever :).
Nah… I don’t have an iPhone, so that’s the main reason I didn’t try it. I just immediately loved the idea when I heard about it.
You know… there are those things where you basically know that they’re good as soon as you hear the concept. Like payed vacation. Or sex.
So… I’m really looking forward to your thoughts on this. And also, if you have other cool apps let us know what they do and why they’re cool.
I’m out for now, have a great week and bis nächstes Mal :).
I don’t have an IPhone either but I assume it can be done on my computer. if so, I will be trying it. it would be nice if it comes with the gender. so not Buch but das Buch. because that’s where I’m weakest.
No gender?? That’s half the part of learning vocabulary!!!
Daniél of the developing team just confirmed that they nouns come with gender. Anything else would be weird indeed :)
They need to have an Android version.
I don’t have an iPhone either. It sounds fun and looks attractive (so why not?) however just 5 minutes a day sounds a bit of a tease and like it could be a slow way of attaining a wide vocabulary. I’m about halfway through the 5,000 word German pack on the Memrise android app and that’s taken me 3 months averaging two hours practice a day. It appeals to my competitive streak as it gives out points for practising and ranks you alongside the other users that week / month / since forever. It features lots of user generated aide-memoire content, much of it pictorial. The thing that drums it into the skull is the speed test – five-minute time-limited tests of 100 words with bonus points for getting to the end. Saying all that, if they brought out Drops on Google Play I’d definitely get it in addition just to break things up a bit.
Wow, 5000 words is a LOT. Even with only half of it, I suspect you’re able to read newspapers just fine. And all that in 3 months… you must be really motivated. That’s the way to go, though, in my opinion. Really get into studying vocabulary and not be scared of big numbers.
This sounds great, but I don’t have an iPhone. I do have an iPod I use to listen to podcasts in German. When I have a chance, I’ll check to see if there is a way I can use Drops on my iPod.
You can use Drops on ipad though the proper ipad design optimization is yet to come.
Im was going to a language school when I was in berlin and learned there more then with an app.
Maybe Im the type to learn in groups much better :D. I learned here (http://www.speakeasysprachzeug.de/en/evening-courses-german) in the evening.
I know the school. Their marketing tries to brand them as alternative, cool and hip but I’ve heard bad things about the beginners course recently. Probably it was just the teacher. One question… why do you have a Web.de email address when you’ve had to learn German. Just doesn’t seem a likely thing to have for a non German person. Don’t get me wrong… I have nothing against honest recommendations but I do have something against phoned in plugs.
Ladies and Gents, Daniel here, we created Drops. Let me reply to the questions.
@gabi: it’s mobile only for now and @DantesDame yes, nouns in Drops come with “gender” :)
Android version is in the pipeline but not expected before the summer.
awwww. but thx for answering my question.
Hey Daniel, someone has a rather specific question about one of the games so I decided to just post a link to the comment here …maybe you can help him out:
https://yourdailygerman.com/2016/03/30/the-absolute-best-way-to-study-vocabulary/#comment-36478
I downloaded it today. For someone who knows perhaps zero to one hundred words in German it might be nice. The glacial speed of five minutes a day would either try the patience of anyone familiar enough with German to find your newsletter interesting or cost them a lot of money. For example, “abhängen” is neither on the horizon nor even likely.
I find Drops far too basic and there isn’t a way to get to a higher level. Progress would be far too slow at the app’s pace.
As you have already the software to connect letters I’d say that it could be modified to connect words. Word connection could be done based on subject for instance: house could connect with various rooms or could connect with various building types or with specific expressions like zu Haus oder nach House etc.
In its current form I’m not interested in Drops.
Thanks for those impressions!! One question … did you know it before? If so, how long have you used it before you realized it’s nothing for you.
I didn’t know what to expect. I used it for the first five minute session and found the words so basic that I anticipated similar words into the indefinite future.
I think that impression is correct (I happen to know the scope of the first update). There are many many nouns from daily life and for someone who can already speak a fair bit it’s definitely too basic.
Correct, Drops is dedicated to beginner learners at the moment.
Thanks for the word connectting suggestion, definitely on our list!
Don’t use apple, I have android phone. When is there going to be an app in the google play store?
Daniel (one of the developers) said it’s in the works but they don’t have a release date yet, so my guess would be it’s some 5 months away at least
For now, I create flash cards with the free software Anki. The front of the card is usually a short sentence in English. The back of the card is an idiomatic German translation with words I want to learn. I have to know some grammar, the German words, their genders, declension, conjugation, etc. to guess correctly what’s on the back of the card. If I immediately get it right, I click Easy. Otherwise, I click Hard. Anki shows the hard cards more often than the easy ones. Creating the cards is helpful as well as testing myself on them later.
Agreed. Sometimes creating a flashcard is already enough to know what’s on it… at least that was my experience with pen and paper. It’s a lot of work though.
Thanks for the reply. I find creating and using virtual flashcards with software is easier than dealing with physical cards, and sorting them based on how well I know the answers is a snap. I said the options on the answer were Easy or Hard. Actually, the options are Again (repeat in less than a minute), Good (repeat in 1 day), Easy (repeat in 4 days), Edit, and More. Clicking More yields 10 more options, including Delete. I find the work required to create a card—e.g., Munich, historical Munich / München, das historische München—is only what I would have to do, anyway, to learn the word or the point of the card. In this example you can use the name of a city (“München”) without its definite article (“das”) unless you modify the noun with an adjective.
What happened in Brussels? Did Trump kill anyone there?
You are just a snivelling little cuck addicted to virtue signalling.
Maybe I am but would you have made the same angry comment had I posted this picture?
I guess not.
Also, why are you even reading my stuff. You should have figured out what kind of person I am long ago and left for something more serious and mature.
But is it open source?
I don’t think it is. They’re selling xtra time so if it were open source everybody could just get a patch to use it all day.
Dear Mr. Defiant: I have been thinking about that word “cuck” you used. I’m not familiar with it, but I have concluded it is a misspelling of a Middle English word for deficate, or its short for cuckold. Based on your sentence structure, I am guessing you are not clever enough to resort to Middle English for your profanity, so I am going to go with “cuckold”. Now, I find that a strange epithet. It’s like saying, “you sniveling little victim of you wife’s infidelities”. A strange choice of an insult.
Können Sie bitte “also” erläutern? Und darüber hinaus einen post machen über die heimliche Weise um Zeichen der maskulin und die feminine zu unterzeichnen?
Für “also” gucken Sie mal hier:
https://yourdailygerman.com/2013/11/20/meaning-german-so/
Da ist, wenn ich mich richtig erinnere, etwas dazu drin.
Das andere habe ich nicht verstanden. “heimliche Weise um Zeichen der maskulin/feminine zu unterzeichnen”… das macht keinen Sinn. Was würden Sie denn auf Englisch sagen?
Zwischen
What about it?
I tried the app and agree with the comment above that it would be helpful for those starting out in the language.
One thing I didn’t see here was the tip that dict.cc offers for $0.99 a year extra features which include flash cards for any word found in their dictionary. I have found this feature invaluable, and use almost all of my U-bahn time reviewing the latest batch of German words that I can never quite seem to memorize…sigh….
Wow, I didn’t know they had this feature. That sounds really really useful. And 0.99$ is nothing. I also love the little image they offer for words that can be depicted. My favorite dictionary at this point.
I meant how to distinguish between genders and trying to memorize every word with its gender doesn’t work! Isn’t there some secret way to distinguish between them? That’s my only remaining problem with German, well that and the fact that I have zero practice lol.
If there was a secret way, it wouldn’t be so secret anymore by now I think :). There are people who sit in political talk shows in Germany, ambassadors for instance. They can express themselves perfectly and even they mix up the gender at times. The learning never ends but it doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s not gonna keep you from becoming fluent.
If you need some inspiration and some hints for ways that could make learning the gender easier, check out this post:
https://yourdailygerman.com/2013/05/17/german-noun-gender-learn-tips/
Yeah I knew it was a long shot, but thanks for the pep talk it did help raise my spirit
I am going to regret asking this but what do you do with the keypad/letter quiz bit. No matter what I do I get the angry red cross bit for that part of the process. Bin ich Dick?
Steady with the answer please!
Thanks for the question, Alan, there is nothing to regret. If it’s not straightforward, then the current ux is not good enough. If you are referring to the micro-game where you have letters thrown on the screen and popping sometimes, then you have to tap and swipe-pull the letters in the right order into the box on the bottom. If you are refering to the the game where you have seemingly random letters in tidy order, then you have to connect the letters in the right sequence (you have to look for the word of the illustration on top) with one continous swipe. Hope that helps, if not, scream! :)
I have a question, in the sentence die Firma widerruft alle defekten Produkte. Why is it defekten and not defekte? It doesn’t have an article so the plural accusative has an a for plural,Or is alle produkte genitive?
“alle” functions like an article here. Just like “manche” or “keine”