Last year Svenska Spel, in collaboration with ABF, Learnia and the national soccer, hockey, handball, floorball and bandy sport federations, released a sport language learning booklet for newcomers to Sweden, called Sportsvenska för Invandrare. The booklet has been in huge demand with more than 20 000 copies distributed since November 2016.

This week, we're proud to announce a collaboration with Sportsvenska för Invandrare in which we provide the booklet exercises digitally as a Wordalist exercise together with an API integration allowing visitors on sportsvenska.se to test their Swedish sport language skills and share their result on social media.

The sport federations have a huge role to play in successful integration, the local sport clubs are a perfect place to create new friendships and accelerate the integration process. Needless to say, we're quite stoked to be a part of the sportsvenska initiative.

Here's a link to the original press release from Svenska Spel (in Swedish): https://om.svenskaspel.se/2017/06/05/succe-for-idrottens-spraksatsning/

We've been experimenting a bit lately with Text-To-Speech and while doing that, discovered the possibilities with the latest web tech and behold - we got speech recognition, y'all!

Some of you may have already discovered that when practicing in Wordalist, there's a little microphone-icon available next to the submit button.

To speak your answers directly into Wordalist, you need to use a recent version of Google Chrome on a laptop or desktop computer (mobile devices aren't support yet).

It's this simple:

1. Click on the microphone icon
2. Just say the answer
3. In a second the text will appear in the answer field
4. Click on "Answer"!

Ps. Although we've added some programming magic to guess which language you're speaking in, it won't get it right all the time, so just double-check the answer before you submit!

We hope you're as excited about this feature as we are, so please let us know what you think about it!

For a long time, we've wanted to add support for Text To Speech (TTS) in Wordalist. There are a number of commercial services offering TTS capability for websites and apps, but they're quite expensive and not attractive as long-term alternatives.

A few years back, development got going on a browser based Web Speech API and now more and more modern browsers support it, allowing websites to use built in browser text to speech functionality with a quite decent quality.

At Wordalist, we're keen to try this out, so we've added a play button to play questions out loud.

There are a few kinks to work out though, so bear with us while we're sorting them out:

• We can't detect the language of a given question - only guess it based on the exercise language, which means that sometimes the sound played will be nonsensical. UPDATE: As a matter of fact, now we can and we detect both question and answer languages automatically.
• For gap questions, the optimal setup would be to replace the gap sentence with actual correct answers. We'll look more into that!
• Currently, only questions can be read out loud. We'll check out how this is received and investigate what else we can do to boost user learning and retention. UPDATE: We've now added support to also play answers, but not in all cases (we don't want to riddle the interface with play buttons).

Our TTS uses browser features and is not yet supported by all browsers. It should work well in later versions of Chrome, Safari and Firefox as well as in some mobile browsers on iOS and Android. Internet Explorer has no support as of yet.

Here's a link showing which browsers and versions support the TTS feature: http://caniuse.com/#feat=speech-synthesis

We'd love to have your feedback so let us know what you think using the green support tab in the lower left corner!

With Wordalist, you can practice writing in just about any language. But to be able to write in any language, you need to add the necessary keyboard layout to your device. So, to be able to practice Russian, you need to add the cyrillic alphabet to your device.

This may be a bit of challenge, y'all, but to help you get going, we've put together instructions for OS X, Windows, iOS and Android.

OS X

Adding one or several keyboard layouts to a Mac running OS X is easy:

• Open the System Preferences (via the top left Apple icon)
• Click on Keyboard
• Choose the Input Sources tab
• Now click on the plus sign in the bottom right corner, and then choose which layout you want to add
• To quickly switch between languages, use the default shortcut: ⌘ + Space

Pro tip:

Do you have a latin keyboard? When adding non-latin keyboards, look for phonetic layouts. For example, Russian is available both as the standard layout, but also with a phonetic alternative, which maps equivalent letters onto your current keyboard. This makes it a whole lot easier to write in Russian as the latin labels on your keyboard match the closest cyrillic letters.

Here's a guide from Apple: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18448?locale=en_US

iOS

Adding a new keyboard layout to an iPhone or iPad is just as easy:

• Open the Settings app
• Choose the General category
• Click on Keyboards
• Now add your desired keyboards, and you're all set!

Now, iOS will show a globe-icon in your keyboard. By clicking this icon, you quickly switch between your available keyboards.

Read more about the different settings here: https://support.apple.com/en-mo/HT202178

Windows

So, not being a Windows-user myself, this one doesn't come naturally to me. But here are instructions for two of the latest Windows versions:

• Windows 10: http://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-your-keyboard-layout-windows-10
• Windows 8: https://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=27310

Android

This can be a bit different between different Android phones, as manufacturers can choose to customize their version of the operating system. But for most phones, these instructions should do:

• Go to Settings
• Select the Controls tab
• Select language and input
• Click the settings icon next to the keyboard
• Now click select input languages

Here are some more detailed instructions: http://www.beginandroid.com/keyboard.shtml

So, you've started practicing and now you want to step things up a notch. This post will help you customize Wordalist so that it can better adapt to your learning preferences.

Depending on how you like to approach things, when learning something new you may want to either:

1) focus on doing many repetitions before moving on to new questions, or
2) focus on moving though a new material more quickly.

But first, let's just do a quick review on the basics of our learning algorithms.

How does the learning algorithm work?

When starting an exercise, Wordalist reviews different factors, to identify which questions you're shown. Some of these factors include:

• how difficult the question is for other users
• the relative difficulty for you (based on your activity)
• when you last answered it
• how many times you've answered it
• and so on...

We're regularly updating this algorithm to optimize the learning experience, but sometimes the algorithm isn't enough, especially when you're learning something completely new.

Adjust the learning speed / progression

For me, when practicing Academic Vocabulary I prefer to move quickly through the material. Even if I don't nail an answer, I learn it quickly and don't feel the need to repeat the questions too often. But on the other hand, when practicing inflections of colors in Russian I really need to repeat a question multiple times before introducing new questions into the practice session.

That's why you can simply change the rate at which new questions are introduced into a session, simply by choosing any of the three speeds available when practicing:

Fast - Tunes the algorithm to introduce new questions more quickly.

Slow - Focuses on repeating a few questions until you nail them on by one, before introducing new questions.

Medium - As you've probably guessed, this one is somewhere in between the other two :)

Pro tip

You can switch speeds at any time, and we encourage you to do that! Try it out - and we'll be happy if you let us know what you like and what you think we can improve about it!

Not everyone is keen on sharing their efforts and results with other users. That's why we've created stealth mode. This allows anyone to practice and use Wordalist while staying completely anonymous.

How to go stealth

1. Login to your account
2. Click on Settings, and then navigate to the Stealth menu item
3. Activate stealth by flipping the switch

Congrats! That's how easy it is to go completely stealth with Wordalist and practice like a ninja.

Find exercises

Wordalist is full of existing exercises, some created by teachers and other by students.

• Browse and search for exercises. Sort results by popularity, recently practiced, name or language.
• Check out the charts page and see popular exercises practiced by other members
• Find out what others are practicing: once you've joined an exercise, browse through the members profile pages to find out what they're practicing
• If you're enrolled in a course, your teacher will direct you to the exercises you need to join and practice
• Found something interesting? Hit the join-button!

How to practice

Practice section by section, or just hit the practice all-button to work through the entire exercise. You choose!

Want to customize your progression? Check out our post about practice speed settings.

Want to add your own exercise?

Create your own exercises! Vocabulary training, grammar, image questions and more. Add the stuff you want to practice and share with friends and study buddies.

Remember to keep learning - and having fun!

Create a free account

Looking for a change in life? Can't help you with that, but if you wan't to try a new password, that's easily done:

1. Login to your account
2. Go to Settings > Password
3. Enter your current password, and the new one (twice, to not mess things up)

Don't remember your password and trying to get in? Look up the reset password guide instead!

Or did you forget the one you had?

Got to much stuff on your mind? Can't fit your Wordalist password in there? No need to worry, just follow these instructions and you're back in business!

1. Go to this link: http://wordalist.com/password/lost
2. Enter your email address
3. Check your inbox for further instructions and a reset password link

Note that:

• Each reset email that is sent out contains a unique link that can only be used once
• If the link doesn't work, just redo the reset request.
• If you've received more than one reset email, always use the latest one.

Don't want to hang around anymore? We're sorry to see you go, but to unlearn what you've learned, login to your account and go to Settings / Remove account (or follow this link: http://wordalist.com/user/edit/remove-account)

Note:

Once you've unlearned, for eternity your knowledge will be lost. If you change your mind, start from beginning you must, young padawan.

Do you wonder if Wordalist can help you learn stuff quicker? We don't want to waste anyone's time, so here are a few situations where Wordalist isn't the right choice for you:

1. Want to start learning a new language? You should find a class that helps you get started with that. Wordalist won't magically make you speak Chinese in 15 minutes.

2. Are you expecting guides, lessons, or tutored assistance? Wordalist doesn't offer this. In fact, Wordalist does it's best work complementing other learning activities like these, but you won't find it in here.

So, gotten that out of the way, let's look at a few cases where Wordalist does help you achieve great results with minimal effort:

1. Learning vocabulary This is the most popular use for Wordalist, and something that Wordalist excels at. Over the past few years, our users have done millions of repetitions. If you too want to eat words for breakfast, you've come to the right place.

2. Spelling correctly Yes, this may be an art in decline, as alotta kidz just wanna be kewl and ignore correct spelling. Maybe you're not one of those kids, or maybe you're just an old fart who likes to prove a point. In any case, you've got something to look forward to.

3. Building grammatically correct sentences Not far off from the point on spelling, grammar isn't the most popular subject in school. But if you value being able to express yourself more eloquently than Tarzan, correct grammar has proven to be useful.

So, if you've read this far, you should probably just signup for a free account, but don't forget to check out our get started guide.

During 2016 we've done a complete rebuild of Wordalist, from the ground up. As a result all users registered before 2016-05-22 need to change their passwords.

To do this - just go to the lost password page and enter your email. You'll get a link to your email address within a minute, just follow the instructions to choose a new password.

Why changing passwords?

The platform update means that we're changing the way we're encrypting user passwords. Without getting too techy - the previous encryption was well secure but could not be used in the new platform and updating existing passwords was not an option, as the encryption made it impossible for us to decode and re-encode them.