As someone who spent years studying and teaching languages, my single biggest advice is to remember that learning a language is not simply a matter of learning words. Don't fall into the trap of throwing a dictionary full of words into an SRS and hoping for the best. Focus on input, not production.
Include phonetic training. Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair in the language, possibly even every single syllable in the language. This is simple, but rarely done.
Include an extensive reading component. This is a monumental task that could be broken into many apps or many short stories that are in app purchases.
Good luck! I'm really, really hoping to see something better than the very low bar hit by existing apps!
> Include phonetic training. Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair in the language, possibly even every single syllable in the language. This is simple, but rarely done.
I believe that this is very good advice.
The realization there are actually different sounds in different languages has came as surprise to me. I always naively assumed that the same sounds where just combined differently. Obviously this has had a negative impact in my learning.
Memorizing how to spell a word like "definitely" would be one of the worst possible uses of a language learner's time.
What I was suggesting was aural training—learn to distinguish words such as "his" and "he's", to hear the differences between bat, bet, bit, bot, but, bait, beet, bite, boat, and boot, etc...
Various idiosyncrasies of an orthographic system are far less important than being able to hear difference between the sounds of a language.
Include phonetic training. Make the user distinguish between each minimal pair in the language, possibly even every single syllable in the language. This is simple, but rarely done.
Include an extensive reading component. This is a monumental task that could be broken into many apps or many short stories that are in app purchases.
Good luck! I'm really, really hoping to see something better than the very low bar hit by existing apps!