I built immersely, a free mobile app to learn from short YouTube videos

31 comments

1. Great work! Awesome app for immersion learning!

2. Downloaded and did the first few units of intermediate. I should be beginner so it was really tough to follow anything being said outside of the highlighted words, but this is a really promising concept! I’ve used Duolingo in the past and WaniKani for SRS flashcards, so a platform that combines the two could be really beneficial.

   From a first impression, I’d recommend focusing on getting as much content and lessons in as possible to build out the progression tree. Having useful phrases and key grammar points as part of the curriculum is great so it isn’t just pure vocabulary (another Duolingo miss). The design is really nice and intuitive. I also personally found that doing a review section at the end of the videos felt a bit unnecessary, since it felt like seconds after learning the word, but maybe that would change with more lessons per unit. Great work!

3. wow thank you so much for this! I downloaded and tried out two lessons so far, and the UI is so beautiful and intuitive! And sooo helpful to hear native speakers from a variety of situations — I love that the videos are from a wide selection, from funny clips to vlogs to language tips/lessons.

   By the way, is there a way to tap on a word and add it to a custom flashcard deck? In the lessons I tried, the words that were tested were the keywords, and I’m wondering if there’s a function where I can add my own words to be tested too. Thanks again!! Really excited to keep using this app. 😀

4. Interesting idea. Though it would be nice if there was a video of it in action though to see it in action without providing an e-mail for signing up.

   Also:
   >Learn in just 5 minutes a day.

   I guess it is not specified how much you’ll learn.😂

5. I really like it, it crashed during the lesson thought, I’ll try it again when I have the time (Xiaomi mi 11t pro last update).

6. Seriously nice! Great job and thanks!

7. I just gave it a go, studying towards N5. I watched three videos total, one about dessert, one about bananas and the last about watermelon.

   I found dessert and watermelon nice and clear, but I could hardly hear the banana one unfortunately.

8. I checked it out and it is fun. Does it work offline?

9. Downloaded the app and will check it out later when I’m not in a restaurant.

10. This is soo cool ! But is the interface a choice, because it’s really small when you’re on Ipad, and I suppose you only focused on phones right ?

11. Wow. Just downloaded but I can definitely see myself using this a lot. I try to watch Japanese videos when I can but my attention span is a little….

    I really like the bite size clips and how immersive it is. Really great app!

12. I like the app, it’s very enjoyable specially the bread video ^-^

13. So I’ve tried it for about 20 mins now and I have to say it’s pretty good. Japanese people really do have a weird sense of humor though, some videos are like the dudes were on 4 cans of red bull and 3 lines of coke ahaha. Also, I think asking if I remember a word literally 10 seconds after saying what it means is redundant in my opinion. I say you should find a solution to that first and foremost because even without watching the video or paying attention I can just recall what word was written on the screen.

14. I tried for a quick few minutes a short while back. Like the idea behind it although it still seems a little ‘raw’. I supposed it’s early days.
    I look forward to more content over time and would refer to it as often as I can.
    It’s a great effort. Kudos!

15. I love it! I’ve been trying to watch bite sized anime like atashinchi to learn less textbook Japanese that’s spoken daily. This app is perfect for the revision I want to do. I love the fact that the transcript allows me to choose the words that I’m not sure and look up the meaning. Is there a way to add those new vocab (not the main selected ones like banana under food) into a list for review?

    Edit: btw I’m using an iPhone XR 15.3.1 If it’s any help haha. Interface is super easy to use.

    Will this be a paid app in future?

16. id love it if there was a desktop version! it looks really interesting and i will definitely try it! 🙂

17. Yooooo no IAPs? Gonna try this out, looks super promising!

18. This is awesome, really excited to work this into my studies.

    Thank you!

19. I just wanted to thank you for sharing your app with us 🙂

    It’s got a friendly UI, and the videos are both informational and funny, which really helps make the learning process enjoyable and easy to stick to.

    Certainly deserving of a 5* rating, in my opinion!

20. Dat 「唐揚げにレモンを絞りすぎた」video tho 😂

21. The app is a great concept and has a really nice implementation. I only did two lessons so far (on intermediate) so I don’t know if the lessons are all the same or if they will get harder in the future. My one critique so far would be that each lesson kind of has one word that it focuses on and it is really easy to just learn that one word for the quiz even if there was no video. However, each video has a lot of vocabulary and grammar that I would like to learn more than just the one “focus” word. I think it would be nice if the lesson tried to teach us more/all of the words and phrases from the video. Also, I the quiz was longer, it would be cool to show scenes from the video when doing the quiz so the user can connect the words with the visuals.

    Great job so far though!!

22. Great UI, fun and truly useful . Would happily pay for a full version / support . Hoping to see this go further, maybe as a resource you can look through :

    https://sentencesearch.neocities.org

    https://www.immersionkit.com

    https://www.captionpop.com/?nl=ja

    However I would suggest a + sign to add a word that is selected onto a favorite folder or that would go onto SRS for review.

    Furthermore, I find that the review right after the lesson is a waste of time ; maybe give the use the option to toggle it on / off ?

23. This is a great way to shift my short-attention to Japanese instead. It has been difficult review long Japanese vids. This is an incredible amount of work that you’ve put in though.

    It would be nice to have an option to flag a word/video for being too difficult to make out. I played the clip for “レトルト” over 20 times and I could not parse what she said to the subtitles at all. It might be helpful to review certain words/videos that get an abnormal amount of flags!

24. im commenting here as a bookmark

25. I just searched for it on my phone and it doesn’t show up in the search results. I was only able to find the download by viewing this reddit on mobile and then clicking on the link…

26. This is incredible. Fantastic work. This is an app I would very willingly pay for.

27. Why does the app need location data?

28. I started using it and i love it!!! So grateful i can use this for free! You’re the best

29. Hey thanks for the app and great idea! I tried out unit 1 of both the advanced and expert levels, and have a few comments:

    Pros:
    – videos play well and don’t take too long to load
    – audio is good
    – subtitles so far are accurate
    – nice touch on letting the user control video speed
    – interface is clean and user-friendly

    Cons:
    – some videos start at speed <1.0x (might be a bug? I only paid attention to that part for the 同棲 video, which started at 0.85x)

    – not all words are underlined (ie no translation/pronunciation guide) for eg こなしunder business 1 in expert, and most if not all of the numbers/counters that appear in adv/expert. As most beginners struggle with numbers and counters, you should consider adding that in. (Not sure if this only happens in the higher levels – if so then this is probably not a con for most at the higher levels)

    – not all terms are translated cleanly – eg ガクチカ under business 1 is translated as “school effort interview” – which yea I get it, but that’s only because I know what ガクチカ means. If I didn’t know the word and couldn’t parse it from the context then the translation makes a lot less sense

    – I’m not exactly sure how useful this app would be for someone aiming to actually learn the meaning of the words, as most of the videos are jokes/short skits where the word to be learnt appears, rather than being a video that actually gives any context (again, if this doesn’t apply to the beginner/int stages than this is probably not a con at the higher levels) – for eg: the video on 便器 literally just explains the pun お便器ですか and doesn’t actually show a urinal at all. Similarly, the video for 外資コン is a joke on the different types of bosses of different types of companies so… you’d have to understand the social context of what it means to work at a 外資コン first before you could understand the joke and therefore tie it to the word, in which case….you didn’t need to learn the word….

    Overall I’d say this is a great concept that allows learners to train their listening skills and uses a lot more colloquial language than textbooks. As with all apps of this type, learners of a more advanced level may not find it as useful in terms of language acquisition, but that is more due to the different learning needs at that level than it is a fault of your app. I’d say with some curating of the video choices and a second look at translations, you’d be good to go. Thanks again for sharing!

30. This is a really nice app and I think it has a lot of promise! I love the concept of using short videos to create a curriculum, especially as they contain so much colloquial Japanese at a pace actually used in real life. It has some real potential to let people step outside of the stuffy, slow examples used by most learning resources.

    A few thoughts so far:

    1) I’ve only done a couple of lessons (on the advanced level) and it has all been short comedy skits. While these are great and very entertaining, in the future it would be good to use more of a mixture of scenarios people might be exposed to (could be a mix of comedy skits like you have, short news reports, casual streetside interviews, TED talks, etc). I appreciate copyright issues may complicate the incorporation of some videos. This would also let you include more of a diversity of speakers. In the videos I watched they were all 20-something year olds, whereas children and older people have completely different ways of speaking. Getting more of a variety of this would be great. (sorry if your other videos already cover this, I’m just basing this on the few that I watched)

    2) I think the quiz at the end of each lesson is a bit redundant. No one is going to forgot the meaning of 3 words when they’ve literally just watched the video.

    3) As you expand, it would be nice to see not just vocab highlighted, but to also include videos showcasing particular grammar points.

    4) Definitely focus on bulking out the content. I understand this is an early version of the app, but people will blast through this relatively quickly and then stop using it without further content. I have no concept of how long it takes you to add in a video – is it a time-consuming process?

31. Dude – I want to preface this by saying that I have lurked on Reddit for literal YEARS, and never created an account.
    This inspired me to do it.
    I HAD to tell you just how epic this is!!!! I shall definitely be using it in the future. I was just Googling how best to improve my native speaker comprehension after falling into a slump about it, and voila – this appeared! I’m psyched!! SO COOL, man. Bravo. This is the best. 👏