The benefits of word tracking

Recently a user reached out and suggested adding some form of word tracking to Readerbear. Initially I was unsure about the usefulness of this, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised the value.

What even is word tracking?

Word tracking is a simple system to track your familiarity of a word. For simplicity, we could consider a word underlined red to be unknown, and a word underlined green to be known.

To extend the system further, we could also have words underlined yellow to indicate that we’re currently learning them, and haven’t had enough exposure to instantly recall their meaning.

Benefits of word tracking

The fundamental idea is that it allows you to quickly gauge your comprehension for some content, and focus your attention on words you don’t know or are learning.

Improved study flow

Let’s say we’re reading a book, and we come across a word we’re not sure about. If we’re learning Japanese for example, we would have to try and recognise each kanji compound and what the reading of the word might mean. By using word tracking, the word will instantly be underlined as red for us, so we can immediately decipher that the word is unknown to us.

As we know, words underlined yellow are considered currently learning, so our recall may still be sub-optimal. With this fact, whenever we come across a word underlined yellow, we can treat it as a mini-recall test, and put more effort into recalling the reading and definition of the word in that context.

Discover comprehensible content

One painpoint that language learners face is: How do I find content that is suited to my level? We could try and google content for beginner, intermediate or advanced level, but this only casts a broad net and doesn’t take into account our exact known vocabulary.

Worry not, as Readerbear solves this exact painpoint. Since Readerbear tracks which words you already know, it can rely on a large library of content and find exact which ones are the right difficulty for you. Furthermore, you can filter by content that you might find interesting, such as:

• Netflix shows
• YouTube videos
• Books
• Podcasts
• and much more

Statistics

Motivation in language learning can be challenging sometimes, especially once reaching what is commonly called the “intermediate plateau”. When first learning a language, growth will feel exponential as you’re starting out with a small vocabulary. However once you reach higher levels, it’s much harder to see visible progress.

Since Readerbear tracks which words you know, it becomes to possible to display how words you know, as well as track your known words overtime. This is crucial for motivation, and it gives you concrete evidence that your known words are increasing with every session. Reaching milestones like your first 1000, 5000 or 10000 words is also a great feeling.