I’ve been working on Click Words, a beta Anki add-on that turns text passages into interactive exercises. You click target words directly in the text and get instant feedback.
You can use it to practise grammar, vocabulary, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and other word forms in context.
Demo:
AnkiWeb:
Click Words (code: 202810970)
It’s still in beta, so feedback and suggestions are very welcome. I hope some of you find it useful for your studies!
Are you taking this further, or is this close to your end goal? I should not think it very useful asking someone about the parts of speech in a sentence. Rather, it would be more use to check the syntax, etc., would it not?
Hi Matt, that’s a good point. I’m exploring different ways to practise grammar interactively. I also have Sentence Builder, Cloze Dropdown and Grammar Trainer, which approach language practice from different angles. I see Click Words as another tool in that collection. What kind of syntax exercises do you think would be most useful?
There are many add-ons that could be useful in various ways, yet we remain unaware of them. It’s much like a situation where a free program exists somewhere online that could solve a specific problem we’re facing—but because we can’t find it, we end up building our own. AI now even makes it possible to develop your own Android applications! As a result, more and more people are starting to create their own tools—I personally know quite a few who do. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, if someone shares their work and provides it for free, they deserve to be praised—at the very least, we should say “thank you.” Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to look at or evaluate everything everyone creates. Sometimes, truly excellent add-ons or programs go completely unnoticed by the world simply because they aren’t advertised.
Thank you for taking the initiative and for having the desire to create these things.
@kaiu Thank you for such a thoughtful comment and for the encouragement. I’m glad to share add-ons that I personally use to improve my own learning, and I hope they’ll be useful to others too. There’s still plenty I’d like to improve, and feedback like this makes the work even more worthwhile.
Since this thread got going, I will throw in my two bits. I will try to be helpful, but I might fail at being diplomatic.
I don’t really see a good use case for this add-on.
In my opinion, the example you gave could be useful for someone who has trouble with the concept of adjectives. But is that really what you are after?
If I was forced to impose this kind of exercise on students, I would first use more natural, less contrived speech. E.g “When Mia entered the quiet room, a nervous boy with a small box gave her a strange smile”. Only then would I use it to practice identifying the main action (gives), the main subject (a nervous boy), the main object (a weird smile) and so on. I might also use it for reading comprehension (Who entered the room? What did the boy give?). More generally: Who does what, when, where and how?
I also wouldn’t use this add-on to generate Anki cards, since I don’t think this kind of exercise benefits from spaced repetition in particular or repetition in general.
For practicing grammar, I mostly use very specialized cards. E.g. “When Mia entered the room, a nervous boy {{c1::gave::(to give)}} her a strange smile” to practice time concordance or the past tense.
The other exercise I do, which is more one-size-fits-all but not meant for spaced repetitions, is to copy a sentence from memory. I might catch myself making mistakes (“the nervous boy gived the weird smiles”), taking shortcuts (“a boy gave a smile”) or substituting other words (“the nervous child gave a weird laugh”). I find this latter exercise quite helpful but much more time intensive.
Of course, I might be wrong about everything, so take what I wrote with a grain of salt. In any case, designing an add-on to practice grammar is quite an undertaking, so hats off to you.
@mwal Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed feedback. I appreciate hearing a different perspective.
Just to clarify, Click Words doesn’t generate sentences with AI. Users provide their own passages and choose what they want to practise, whether it’s verbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, vocabulary, or other language patterns in context. So the example was just one possible use, not the main purpose of the add-on.
I agree that sentence structure and reading comprehension are interesting areas to explore. I also see Click Words as a complement to other study methods rather than a replacement for cloze cards or sentence reconstruction. Different exercises serve different purposes, and what works best depends on what someone wants to practise.
Click Words started as a tool for my own studies, and my aim is to make it flexible enough that other learners can use it in ways that suit their needs, too. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and suggestions!
I did not mean to criticise your work. The engine and its presentation look very good; quite a good interface lacking any clunkiness.
It is just that you seem to have done a lot of good work only to teach grammatical parts of a sentence. That is very basic knowledge usually taught and mastered in primary school. Certainly anyone learning a language as an adult might need to refresh that knowledge, but I doubt that they would spend long on this step, although it is fundamental knowledge for understanding and learning a language.
As to your question, what else would I expect? @mwal has some good ideas.
Additionally, I’d expect morphology and syntax: e.g. examples that teach the following.
What form of the verb follows the nouns/pronouns given?
Which of the various forms of the past tense is appropriate in this situation?
Is the subjunctive appropriate in this clause, or the indicative?
Forms of the verb that follow a collective plural.
When (e.g. in English) does the adjective follow the noun?
What form of the relative pronoun is expected in the following situations?
What form of the verb is appropriate after each, every, either, neither?
When does the Germanic preference for the verb being in second place affect a clause in English?
The aforementioned suggestions are things that teach the grammar of a language and then give the learner some practice in using that language’s grammar.
I should say that many of these detailed questions about grammar will be specific to a given language and may not be relevant to other languages.
@matta Thank you for clarifying, and no worries! I didn’t take it as criticism of the work itself. I really appreciate the kind words about the interface and your thoughtful suggestions. And please, always feel free to share your honest thoughts, that’s what helps me improve!
I see what you mean about going beyond identifying parts of speech. My aim with this add-on is to make something flexible that people can use with their own texts for different language-learning purposes. Your examples give me some interesting ideas to think about, especially for more advanced grammar practice.
I agree that the exercises would need to be adapted to each language. Your feedback has given me a different perspective and made me think more about where I want to take this project, what I want it to achieve, and whether I should build on the current idea or rethink the goals a little.
This is really helpful to me, so thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!