Making reading in a second language more enjoyable

When learning a second language, one usually follows a learning program, which includes studying lists of words, reading standard texts and doing exercises. Learning a second language is much more enjoyable if one enjoys reading materials in the new language. Articles that are not too long, written about topics the student likes could be a good way to keep the reader motivated in reading more and thus learning the language.

However, if the student does not know what a word means he has to look it up in a dictionary, and this means losing time, time that could have been better spent reading some more second language materials. One of the hypotheses of this work is that it might be more productive if one could just tap a word and its translation would appear within the text. This would save the learner from having to search for the word in an external dictionary or manually having to type it into a service like Google Translate. Keeping track of all the translations a user needs opens many opportunities for developing automated solutions that improve language learning.

In this thesis we introduce the idea of an application which offers a platform where users can improve a language of their preference by reading articles they like in this language. The application allows users to read articles from their favorite news and blogs websites in the language they want to learn as opposed to static and inflexible texts. Users are able translate unknown words by the simple tapping of a word. The word is pronounced and its translation is inserted in the text. The idea is implemented in the form of the Zeeguu Reader for iOS.