Understand spoken language

New quiz type: Automatic

Submitted by Hugh on 2 September 2013

One of the recent additions is a new quiz type: automatic.

What is it? How is it used? 

The Automatic quiz type automatically changes the quiz type of each question based on your current knowledge of a particular Thai word. So, when you don't know a word very well, it will make it easy for you by asking you the question as a multi-choice (which is easiest, because you can often get the right answer by elimination). As your knowledge of a particular word improves, the system will then prompt you with the Thai and ask you for the English (i.e. use the Thai to English quiz type), which is of course harder. Finally, when you have pretty much mastered a particular word, it will prompt you with only the English and expect you to provide you with the Thai. This is of course the hardest, and requires full mastery of the word to get it right.

The Automatic quiz type is very easy to use; simply ensure that "Automatic" is selected as the Quiz type in the following list of radio buttons. By default, the Automatic quiz type is selected for you.

Automatic quiz type selection

For words which you don't know well, questions will be asked as multi-choice:

multi-choice question

When you start to know a word a bit more, the questions are automatically made harder by prompting you with the Thai, and asking you for the English (i.e. the Thai to English question type). Notice how this will be much harder than the multi-choice question type above:

Thai to English

Finally, when you are really mastering a particular word, the question type for that word will be asked as the hardest way around, English to Thai:

English to Thai

Note that the question type will vary by the level of each word, so one question may be, say, Thai to English (for a word you know pretty well), and the next question may be, say, multi-choice (for a word you know less well).

Why was it needed? How does it help?

The problem I was finding when actually using Lingopolo, was that the questions in quizzes were sometimes too easy (with multi-choice questions for words I already knew well), or too difficult (Thai to English for words I barely recognised). The problem was that whichever quiz type I chose to use (e.g. multi-choice or Thai to English) would not be right for all the words, since each of the words on a lesson such as Animals would be at a different level. What I really wanted was that Lingopolo be gentle with me with the words which were new by asking them as the easier multi-choice question type, and make things more challenging for me for those words I knew well, by asking them as Thai to English, and even eventually as English to Thai. Hence the idea of getting Lingopolo to automatically adjust the question type for each word based on the current level of the word was born.

In precise terms, the question types used are as follows:

  • Level 1 - 3 words => multi-choice
  • Level 4 - 8 words => Thai to English
  • Level 9 - 10 words => English to Thai

I might tweak these precise levels if I find these aren't quite right, but the basic principle will remain in place.

Overall, I am very happy with this new addition, and hope that it makes Lingopolo an even better place for you to learn Thai.