– If it is noisy inside your house, then the program may not catch the moment when you have finished your answer. In this case, just click on the microphone on the screen and the program will finish listening to your answer. – If you want to take a lesson, but cannot speak out loud, because you may disturb someone or because it is too noisy around, then while working on “Grammar” and “Vocabulary” instead of answering aloud you may answer speechlessly and then click on one of the buttons: – If your accent is not too strong, you have a good Internet connection and a good microphone in your headset, you can speed up your learning in the “Grammar” and “Vocabulary” programs by switching to the training mode: “Answer Check – Mixed” (New material – recognition, repetition of old material – recording the voice). At the same time, while familiarizing yourself with new phrases, the program will recognize your voice and automatically determine the correct answer. If you practice using a headset (headphones with a microphone), you can use voice commands for voice recognition. This is convenient for practicing without looking at the phone screen. To give the program a voice command, press the headset button and after the beep, say the voice command. The program understands the following commands:
– If you need to work on a complex phrase, you can pause and then use the speaker and microphone buttons to listen to the phrase in the original as many times as you need, and then try to answer as many times as you need.
– If you forgot the answer, you can click on the question icon and get a hint.
– The schedule for today can be changed before starting the tasks. After starting the first task, the schedule can only be changed for the next days.
– To speed up the lesson, you can try Learning Mode – Checking the answer “Mixed” – new material is in voice recognition mode, and the old one is in recording mode. Our recognition system in the Grammar program makes about 5 times less voice recognition errors than Google, in the Vocabulary program – about 2 times less errors than Google. The voice recognition mode is less responsive to surrounding noise, but requires the use of a high-quality headset and a stable connection to the Internet.
“I know” – during the review phase or if you are sure that you know the answer during the review phase of the lesson;
“Microphone icon” – if you are not sure if your answer is correct. If it turns out to be incorrect, do not forget to click the “Error” button;
“I don’t remember” – if you don’t remember the answer at all. Before doing this, we recommend clicking on the question icon to get a hint and then try again to remember the answer.
– Pause – pause the lesson. If the pause exceeds a minute, this time will not be deducted from the lesson.
– Continue – continue the lesson
– I know – count the correct answer once
– Learned – count the correct answer until the end of the lesson
– Answer – you are not sure of the correctness of your answer, listen to the correct answer
– Exclude – you don’t need this phrase, exclude it completely from training
– Yes – to the question “Right?” – confirm that your answer was correct – you do not need to press the headset button, the program itself will go into the mode of listening to your command after the signal
– No – to the question “Right?” – admit that your answer was wrong – you do not need to press the headset button, the program itself will go into the mode of listening to your command after the signal
– Original – listen to the phrase in a foreign language again
– Translation – listen to the translation of the phrase again
– Correct – if the program counted you a wrong answer, with this command you can change the result to the correct one
– Error – if the program counted you the correct answer, but you know that you made a mistake, with this command you can change the result to an error
In the “Answer Check – Mixed” mode, the knowledge of old phrases will be tested using voice recording.
– With the Drill City Program you can use the so-called “dead time of the day” – time, when you are waiting in line, are on transport, having breakfast / lunch / dinner, doing physical exercises or work that does not require focused attention, etc. You can not only practice with audiobooks, but also with the Grammar or Vocabulary program by putting your phone in your pocket and pressing the headset button if you answer incorrectly or do not remember the answer (“error” command). By successively pressing the headset button, you can also perform other commands, such as “correct”, “repeat”, “pause”.
– Several short lessons distributed throughout the day are more effective than one long lesson because the brain continues to “repeat” the material of the lesson after it ends and makes the real effective time of each lesson 15-30 minutes longer. In addition, after 20 minutes of practicing, short-term memory begins to overflow and the learning efficiency lowers.
– Those who need to master the language as quickly as possible can use our program to put their brain into a “full immersion into language” mode. This is a state where the brain is building a long-term memory for a new language 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To do this, you need to complete short 5-15 minutes tasks many times during the day.
In grammar, you can choose a course from elementary A0 level to intermediate B1 level. In words and writing, you can choose a course from A0 (for beginners) to B2 level.
In the film and TV series training program, you can also select content of different levels.
If you are not sure about your level of grammar or vocabulary, you can take a simple test in the corresponding task – “Grammar” or “Vocabulary”. To do this, open the menu, select “Choose course”, click on the link “Determine your level” at the top of the screen.
For a longer lesson you need to pull yourself together and find more free time. As a result, you may fail to study at all, or do it only one or two days a week.
Before a short lesson, there is no need to pull yourself together, and during the day you can always take a break for a short period of time to perform the task.
Additional benefits:
– during the short sessions due to the inertia of the brain, the material is assimilated better.
– the system has the ability to select the most efficient time intervals for repetition of the material.
The system also has another mode of checking the answer – Recognition. You can change the mode after starting the task, then go to the menu, select “Learning mode”, “Answer check”, then “Recognition” or “Mixed”.
If you don’t have a strong accent, we recommend you try the Mixed mode. In this case, the new phrases are checked automatically by the system using an improved voice recognition system, and the repetition of previously learned phrases is checked using the voice recording.
But if a person is distracted by something outside and he has paused the program for more than one minute, then the timer stops and makes it possible to return to the lesson later and continue it.
In the conversational practice program (Vocabulary), you may also see a list of topics and progress in each topic. Moreover, at the end of the lesson, the program shows you the number of phrases learned during the last lesson and in total since the beginning of training.
At the end of the lesson, the program will automatically finish the task. This is necessary to develop a habit of regular exercise.
If you start to learn a language from the very beginning or you urgently need a basic vocabulary for a trip abroad, focus on the “Vocabulary”, where you may choose the A0 level. At this level, you will be offered a minimum set of commonly used colloquial phrases.
People usually use a personal dictionary to repeat the phrases if they are forgotten. But in our case, the program itself invites you to repeat phrases at the most optimal time for strong memorization. That is, the program makes life as easy as possible for the student. At the same time it saves time by not offering unnecessary repetitions at non-optimal times, and not requiring to waste time on maintaining a dictionary and searching for words if they need to be repeated.
If you are not a beginner, then your goal should be to learn all the necessary vocabulary at one level or another. And these may be thousands of words. Maintaining such a vocabulary and correct repetition for strong memorization is a lot of manual work, the need for which completely disappears when you are engaged with the Drill City system.
In addition, in your personal dictionary you will learn individual words and ready-made expressions, several options for each word, depending on the amount of study you choose – minimum, standard or maximum. To change the volume of vocabulary, start the task, open the menu, select “Learning mode”, “Learning volume”.
If you think that the number of repetitions is not suitable for you, you can change it by changing the learning mode.
For the tasks “Grammar”, “Vocabulary”, “Write”, start the task, open the menu, select “Learning mode”, “Learning difficulty”, set “Quick” to reduce the number of repetitions in one lesson. Additionally, you can change the “Memory strength” also to “Fast”, which will reduce the number of repetitions from lesson to lesson in “Vocabulary” and “Write” programs.
In Books and Films, change the training mode to Vocabulary enrichment or Hearing training.
If you are an advanced user, you can set up an individual learning mode for yourself by clicking on the pencil at the top right.
For the ″Grammar″, ″Vocabulary″ and ″Write″, scroll down the help screen and click on the link ″Program tutorial″.
While choosing between the options – not to try and automatically determine the beginning and the end of the answer, or to determine, which is sometimes not accurate, we preferred the second option. The reason is that the student does not have to constantly and repeatedly press buttons during training. If you, like us, prefer ″convenience in 99% of cases″ to a complete lack of conveniences, then we are definitely of the same blood 🙂
“I know” – during the review phase or if you are sure that you know the answer during the review phase of the lesson;
“Microphone icon” – if you are not sure if your answer is correct. If it turns out to be incorrect, do not forget to click the “Error” button;
“I don’t remember” – if you don’t remember the answer at all. Before doing this, we recommend clicking on the question icon to get a hint and then try again to remember the answer.
More than 90% of people have different levels of grammar and vocabulary, as well as writing. Typically, the grammar level is significantly ahead of the vocabulary level. Establishing a single level for all types of tasks will deprive 90% of users of the opportunity to simultaneously improve all their skills, depending on their actual current level.
It is recommended not to do grammar tasks for more than 15-20 minutes at once.
customize it by the student is a big task, which has not yet come out on top in terms of priority.
The ″I know″ button is made for answering if you can’t speak out loud or it is too noisy, or to save time if you want to go through the material faster.
If you think the program is doing too many repetitions for you, select ″Learning difficulty″ – ″Quick″ in the learning modes.
If you see that the program goes on checking the phrases that you have already memorized and you are sure about it, you can set “Memory strength” – “Fast” in the learning modes.
But if you want to see the translation, you need to click on the translation button (on the left).
If you have a laptop or tablet, it is recommended that you use it for Write and Films programs. Then you will see both the text and the translation.
When installing the program on a second device, keep in mind that you are an existing user and register with the same email. You will be able to complete tasks on the device that suits you best for this task.
To install the program on a laptop, you must first install the Android system emulator bluestacks.com
If you are an advanced user, you can customize the learning mode in Films individually for you, including turning on and off playbacks, subtitles, and audio languages.
To do this, start the “Films” task, open the menu, select “Learning mode”, select the mode you want to change, click on the “pencil” in the upper right.
Furthermore, the reason may be the absence or poor connection of the Internet. You can check the connection by opening the menu in “Vocabulary”, “Grammar” or “Write”, and selecting “Internet connection speed”.