A language learners’ forum

emk wrote: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.)

Would this be lost if I made an edit? I'm hoping to restart Yiddish next year, now that my German is improving Indonesian, Lithuanian, Turkish are not out of the question either (i'm also hoping to shorten the "fluent or close" part soon )

As for the old forum, are you referring to how below basic fluency, the languages are hidden if you set them as "not studying" or "just flirting"?

edit: also, maybe a separate field for certificates, to make it clear which CEFR levels are estimates and which certified?

and i would still love a free field for Corrections wanted (yes, no, specific languages/standards)

My ideas:
1) make the native language field required
2) use the colored bars idea and show a tooltip when mousing over with any additional info (free text input, lets say up to 100 letters each - I think that's sufficient to put "Native/Heritage/Fun/C2/Just messing with" or whatever.
3) A list to pick from would make possible both the colored bars and a search by language function.

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.

The bars could be made to relate to CEFR levels directly (one bar - A1, two bars - A2, three bars - B1, four bars - B2, five - C1, six - C2).

For explaining the CEFR system, I am sure I have a CEFR self-assessment checklist sitting on my HDD 'cause I used it for my MA thesis a few months ago.

CEFR can be too specific while some of my languages are truly passive-only, like Ukrainian or Galician, in most of them I can generally say something, but I wouldn't necessarily pass even A1. This doesn't mean I'm a complete beginner, I just don't care about the touristy phrases

It's been pointed out that hovering is not possible on touchscreen/mobile devices.

Hi, I am on the other site and just registered to this one and perhaps I am quite blind or something is simply missing, but I can't find the field in my profile settings where I can input the languages I am learning. Could someone kindly help me, please?

Also, I am kinda curious about those fancy progress bars I am seeing in people's signatures. How do I do that?

Please excuse my novice questions.

You have to post three timea. It is an anti spam measure.

Has there been any progress on this? For now, it's often really painful to look at other users language list. At HTLAL the list was pretty simple, but at least it was clear. I think the italki style thing would work well here, we could have two separate levels if people wanted, active and passive. I believe it was emk's last list that sounded the best to me, you could have the italki-style bars (or color-code the actual language) in the language section, clicking/hovering could give you another box with more information on that language if you wanted to be more explicit.

As it is, it's so hard to read other people's language lists, especially when they've got more than 2 or 3 languages listed and give extra info in parentheses. I'm afraid to add other languages i've studied but am not actively studying just because of how difficult it starts getting to read.

rdearman wrote: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.

While I wouldn't want people to be searchable in any way that makes them feel uncomfortable, that wouldn't necessarily work for my purposes. What I would really want to use that kind of search for is to find if there's anyone else studying the same language that I'm studying. So if we're discouraging people from listing languages unless they've reached some sort of mastery, then that would be a negative for me. I may only be B1-ish in Icelandic but I think that my log has some useful resources for people thinking of learning the language, at least...

While I wouldn't want people to be searchable in any way that makes them feel uncomfortable, that wouldn't necessarily work for my purposes. What I would really want to use that kind of search for is to find if there's anyone else studying the same language that I'm studying. So if we're discouraging people from listing languages unless they've reached some sort of mastery, then that would be a negative for me. I may only be B1-ish in Icelandic but I think that my log has some useful resources for people thinking of learning the language, at least...

The ability to search for users who are studying a certain language and then reach out to them via PM is one way of achieving this and it seems that was a feature of the old HTLAL forum. Another way could be to move to a more thread-centric model (instead of user-centric) where active users who are learning particular languages can be found via specific language threads and/or their language logs.

Unlike HTLAL, given that the search feature on this forum is free and unrestricted (for the time being) for users, this is how I'm finding and compiling a mental list in my head of who is active in certain languages and who I might be able to reach out to for help. Having said that, my first preference would be to participate in specific language threads so that groups may benefit from the mistakes that I make.

I love language logs, even the discontinued ones, because they provide a fascinating glimpse into experiments and journeys that worked for people. That alone is often inspiration enough. They're even more thrilling when I see that there are recent entries and discussions in them!

Back to the original topic though, I really like the free text format for the language box, and hopefully the community can agree on a particular standard (or a choice of two or three) for the sake of conformity, easy scanning and maybe eventually user searches.

Maybe a question for the administrators - would searching by user require the purchase and maintenance of another plugin? Or is it a default feature that comes with phpBB?

langwijes wrote:Unlike HTLAL, given that the search feature on this forum is free and unrestricted (for the time being) for users,

We have no intention to make moeny off the site, worst case if the costs become to much we'd implement a donation system rather than charging for services. So searches will remain free.

langwijes wrote:Maybe a question for the administrators - would searching by user require the purchase and maintenance of another plugin? Or is it a default feature that comes with phpBB?

Searching by user is really just implementation of an extension to the phpBB software. Of course since this software isn't specifically designed for language learners, we'd have to have an extension written and then installed.

rdearman wrote:Searching by user is really just implementation of an extension to the phpBB software. Of course since this software isn't specifically designed for language learners, we'd have to have an extension written and then installed.

I don't know PHP or how the board software is set up but how difficult would it be to search the 'languages' section of a profile?