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Comment on Request for some critique on our startup

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OK, ruthless criticism ahead!

It lists 6 languages, plus "other languages", but won't let me even see what the others are without registering. ("Hi, Joe's Repair Shop." "Hi, can you replace the clutch on a '96 Volvo?" "Let me get your name and number before I answer that." "...")

The flowers that overwrite the words on the top-right of the page are kind of annoying.

The "help", "about", "staff", etc., links are all 404, which doesn't exactly look promising.

It claims "3000 words in 3 months", which is over 30 words a day. This seems pretty incredible. I've studied several languages, and I don't think I've ever learned 30 new words in a day (much less consistently for months!). According to <http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>, "The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years -- that's 8 words per day". So I'm skeptical a webpage will help me learn something 4x faster than when it was basically my full-time job.

It says "Read more in our “About the system” page", but I see no such page or link. Do I have to register for that? (What's the point, then? If I have to register anyway, I'll just try it.) Do you have any people who have learned 3000 words in 3 months with your method?

It's not clear if this is written, or verbal. Will I be hearing native speakers? Or is the goal of this simply to read a newspaper?

essOP

Thanks for the criticism. Well, just try it out. 30 words is just two lessons a day - I think people underestimate the power of repetition in learning. 30 words is easy if you do two lessons a day. Yes, the text stuff is not completely done yet, it still references parts that are not online yet. That's why we have the 404s still.

No problem. I did later try it out, and it looks like those 6 languages are all that's offered; unfortunately, the language I'm learning right now (and the previous one) are not among them. Maybe I'll try back later.

Right now I've got a stack of flash cards I carry with me everywhere. Whenever I'm not being productive at work, I pull them out and flip through them for a few minutes, sometimes many times a day. If I can learn (and remember) 5 new words, it's a good day. So I'm still skeptical if the trick is simply "repetition".

essOP

Well, try this. Click on the chinese course and spend 1 hour on it. You should be able to do 2 lessons in that time. Write down all 30 words you learnt on a piece of paper. Sleep on it, wake up the next morning and read the paper and see how many you still remember. It won't be 30, but I think it will be more than 5. Don't forget to click the button to view the pictures for the words.

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