Language Profile - Dev Talk

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zenmonkey
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Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:19 am

I'd like to see the language fields in our profile evolve into something structured - both visually and searchable. So this Dev Talk is to gather requests, input and also think, as a community, on how to develop this.

As a kick off, I'd like to be able to see something like this:

(borrowed from italki - don't mind the colors - I'd think we can do something more neutral than red and green)

Screen Shot 2015-08-21 at 12.12.43.png


In my profile, where languages can be selected from a list and levels chosen. Visually consistent, simple, possibly use bold for active learning.

Needs
1) We should be able to search forum members by language spoken and by language being learned.
...

(your turn...)
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Iversen
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby Iversen » Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:40 am

I kind of like the present free form - even though I had to cut letter after letter away to reach the upper size limit for the language field. One reason is that I still study all my languages, even those I speak/write/think passably . The methods just change. Besides there are languages which I normally don't speak (like Norwegian), but I regularly write in them, and there are other which I can read fluently, but never use actively (like Ancient French), and still others which I sometimes have to revive, but then they function at at least a honourable B-something level (like Esperanto).

If I can't indicate these things within the space allotted, then I can't see the purpose of finetuning and standardizing the indications at all - leave it to each learner either to present his/her skill levels in a few languages or use the space on a simple language list. For those who want to be precise the best choice would be to make a link to their profile threads. It would however be practical to know the native language(s) of any message author, and this important piece of information drowns in the general language field.
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby daegga » Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:47 am

If it is going to be structured, we would need all languages to be available for selection, not only a subset. There were quite a few not available on the old HTLAL forum.
I still miss some way of indicating whether my level refers to productive skills, receptive skills, both (at the same level) or an average of those. Maybe color-coding might be a solution. So for language A I care mostly about receptive skills, for language B mostly about productive skills, hence I select the respective option and my level indicator shows up in a different color.

edit: having BBCode available in the language field would go a long way
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby emk » Fri Aug 21, 2015 11:25 am

This is an interesting idea! But not necessarily a simple one. :-)

zenmonkey wrote:Needs
1) We should be able to search forum members by language spoken and by language being learned.

I agree this would be nice, especially for rarer languages. This could be done either by having structured profiles, or by just adding text search for the current free-form text boxes.

Some other issues to mull over while thinking about this. We don't necessarily need to support everything—this is just my brain dump of the problem space.

  1. Language levels do not necessarily fit into a clean taxonomy. We have native speakers here, and heritage speakers, and occasionally somebody with no "native" language in the usual sense (because they moved frequently during childhood), and people who have actual CEFR certificates, and people who have uneven active/passive skills, and people who can only guess their levels. Right now, folks can actually express any of these nuances in their language list, using text. If we try to express all this using a simple set of bars, we would actually lose (human-readable) information.
  2. When CEFR levels exist, I feel that it's very useful to actually show them. One of the big assets of the old forum was that it introduced people to CEFR levels and how they worked, which gave us a standard vocabulary backed up by a well-designed skill assessment system. The popular "one bar, two bar, three bar, four bar" taxonomy is much less useful for those of us who give advice to newcomers. "Intermediate" could mean anything from "second year language student in a US high school" to "knows that their first term at a French university would be somewhat painful," or anywhere from an overly optimistic A1 to a pessimistic C1.
  3. The old site actually had huge a database of CEFR language certificates that people could choose among, and they could specify what year they passed the test. It would actually be pretty cool if people could search for other posters who've taken a specific exam.
  4. If we care about certificates, we may or may not want to support ILR certificates. We actually have some Defense Language Institute students from time-to-time.
  5. If we want to have a built-in language database, it should include (at a minimum) all ISO 639-1 and 639-2 languages. That's enough to include Ladino and "ancient" Egyptian. :-) But it's not perfect: It includes "ancient" Egyptian and Coptic, but it doesn't distinguish between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian, despite the fact that Late Egyptian readers strongly preferred to read translations from Middle Egyptian, and scholars consider the two to be different specialties. (Here's an explanation of Egyptian's history.) If anybody wants to see what languages are covered by ISO 639, you can search for languages here. I actually have a clean up database + schema for this already, from another site.

Here's one taxonomy which might come close to supporting the kinds of things that people could do at the old site, and which would allow people to represent the sort of information I'm currently seeing in the free-form profile fields:

Language: [ISO 639-1/2 or "Other"]
Level: [Native/Heritage/CEFR level/???/Fun???/Other]
Note (optional, displayed next to language): [Passive/???/Other]

Add certificate:

Certificate Name: [_____]
Certificate Level: [CEFR levels/???/ "Other"]
Year: [digits]

So, looking at these design constraints, I think we have three major options:

  1. The "Google" option: We could stick with a free-form text field, and add a text search mechanism (and perhaps some behind-the-scenes parsing of ISO 639-1/2 names if we were feeling ambitious). Advantages: Easy data entry, not too hard to implement, and it allows people to search for names. Disadvantages: Can't be used to tag threads by language.
  2. We could use the ever-popular "Pick a language" and "Pick beginner/intermediate/advanced/native" system. Advantages: Easy data entry. Disadvantages: Perhaps not precise enough for this community. :-)
  3. A reasonably well-designed system that tries to represent the sort of information people currently display in the free-form text boxes. Advantages: Searchable in some very useful ways. Disadvantages: Data entry is more work than free-form text. This would need to be pretty carefully designed to represent all the useful alternatives without becoming any more complex than necessary.
I would be pretty happy with either (1) or a good version of (3). I'm reluctant to go with (2), because I'll basically end up lying about my language levels. How would I represent my French, with an CEFR B2 certificate, much higher passive skills, and uneven speaking skills? And what should I put down for Spanish or Egyptian? The older forum actually supported several of these distinctions pretty well, and I think that added to the general "character" of the community which formed. A well-designed "pick your level" tool can actually be a learning opportunity for new users (at least after their third post!).
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby emk » Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:00 pm

Iversen wrote:I kind of like the present free form - even though I had to cut letter after letter away to reach the upper size limit for the language field.

OK, OK, I give in. :-) I'm not going to stand against both Serpent and Iversen over the length of the language field. We really do have users with a large number of high level languages. (HTLAL had ProfArgullles, who speaks something like 20 languages at a roughly B1 level or higher.)

I've bumped the language field from 256 characters to 384, so that our polyglots can accurately represent their skills. My only concern is newbies filling up the field with too much text. Maybe we can drop it again and "grandfather" certain folks? :-)

(This is also a good argument for an approach like (3), above. If somebody has a lot of very low-level languages, we can do what the old forum did, and just start hiding them after a certain point, with a pointer to the longer list.)

Iversen wrote:It would however be practical to know the native language(s) of any message author, and this important piece of information drowns in the general language field.

Yes, I agree that we should probably put native languages into a separate field, and boldface all the field labels in the "mini-profile" next to each post.
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Aug 21, 2015 1:31 pm

I like version 3 or something like the version you had in a box in the middle of your post. It gives some freedom, but maybe not so much that it's confusing to read. I also think native language should be bold or highlighted in some way. I suppose it can't really be obligatory since some people have lost their native languages, but having it in a separate field might make it more likely that people fill it in. I suspect many people are more concerned about what languages they are learning and forget to include their native language. I also like the idea of an option that gives the possibility for having tags on threads. I miss that.
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby Serpent » Fri Aug 21, 2015 1:43 pm

Thanks for increasing the character length! :) 8-)

Yeah, I think it's often native English speakers who forget to list L1. And it's vital to know whether someone has learned good/fluent English as an L2 or it's their native language. So the status quo kinda contributes to the idea that English is the default L1 :roll:
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby rdearman » Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:05 pm

Perhaps the most important thing would be to have a required field(s) for Native language, and the rest free form. This would give you the precision if you are looking for a native speaker.

EDIT:
Another thought occurred. Perhaps it would be better to have 3-5 languages which a person would like to be searched for on. I personally would only put down English since I'm not confident enough to list others. But some, like emk, might be willing to put down more languages where they feel they are C1/C2 level and would like to be searched on that basis. This gives you a good 80/20 rule, since you'd cover most of the languages people would likely search for help on using the ISO list of languages.
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby tobreit » Fri Aug 21, 2015 7:25 pm

I would keep it as simple as possible for new members, but customizable for someone who has been here awhile. After being here and the other site, and reading many posts, I know enough about a person by just glancing at their profile. It might just be me, but I read posts, not profiles.
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Re: Language Profile - Dev Talk

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Aug 22, 2015 12:00 am

Lot's of good input here - I'll write up a summary next week.
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