User script idea: Read out loud / play audio for the given L1 English text to be able to close your eyes and blindly type the L2 foreign language word

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@cooljingle

Hi all, Hi script gods and Cooljingle,

have you come across the fact that you are lying in bed at night (or maybe you just woke up 04:00am) and feel the need to review (type) words with closed eyes, e.g for user-created courses with just single words and no longer phrases/sentences [and where you really want to get down the backlog]?

This was/is especially true for my English-Portuguese BR DuoLingo course from MartinPen, as the offical Memrise courses 1-7 would also contain longer phrases.

I can not always manage to stare at the bright Laptop screen, no matter it is dimmed already. It is simply not dark enough.
Same applies if I just want to try to review for 20-30mins and fall asleep.
Having a bright Laptop screen with no “very dark themes” does not help nor does staring at a (Laptop) screen and reading (English) text really help.

Would that be hopefully easy to acomplish Cooljingle, as you already have the “Memrise Audio TTS Provider” user script ready?

A simple option before the review or a simple activate/deactivate user script for playing the audio for the English reading would be enough.

Your thoughts and ideas?
Who from you shares the same need for “extra night reviews”?

With best regards from Germany

Thomas

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Not an answer, but: https://justgetflux.com/ And you can get browser extensions/addons/userstyles to change website colors. I use f.lux and an outdated userstyle that makes this website have a black background for this same reason.

I also user Dimmer v1.

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Does the course already have audio? If so I could cook up an ‘all audio prompts’ userscript.

4

Yes, MartinPen’s Portuguese BR course usually has Portuguese audio, added from forvo.com on higher levels according to his course description.

It may happen that not ALL words contain audio. I am not sure about this.
I have installed your user script “Audio Provider” in parallel, that if any word misses audio - like 50languages (longer sentences), it could still be played.

For L2 English (base/source) of course there is only text and no uploaded audio files.

5

It’s late, and I may be misunderstanding things, but isn’t the feature that you’re requesting what the “Audio Review” (the purple button) is supposed to do? If so, that’s a pro-only feature, so of course it’d probably be best not to have a userscript that does the same thing :slight_smile:

I might be misunderstanding something, though.

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I am not searching for features for the “Pure audio mode” or “Listening Skills Mode”: Those AFAIK play the Portuguese word / phrase / sentence and you enter what you hear.

What you typed is rated if it is 100% correct typed into the text field.

What I am searching:
I want to have the L1 source/base language English played.
Then I can close my eyes, listen to the English word (e.g for MartinPen’s PT BR DuoLingo course) and enter the Portuguese meaning.

After I am right or wrong, the forvo.com uploaded Portuguese audio files are played.

This has nothing to do with Memrise Pro features and “Listen native audio” or “Listen skills” modes where I would hear Portuguese (the L2 targer) instead of the L1 source/base language.

7

Okay. I’m not a pro member, so I’m not sure exactly how that feature works, anyway.

However, if you used the “Pure audio mode” or “Listening Skills Mode” on a course that tested English->Portuguese instead of Portuguese->English (or whatever the opposite testing direction of your current course is), would you then hear English and be able to enter the word in portuguese?

EDIT
Or might using cooljingle’s Reverse Translation userscript in conjunction with the “Pure audio mode” or “Listening Skills Mode” work?

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@neoncube
IMHO the “Listen skill mode” plays the Portuguese audio, and you have to answer (type) in Portuguese. I am not Pro, so I can’t test on the web.

On Memrise the “normal” translation direction on the website is EN->PT for words you have already planted and you want to water.
So I have to answer (type) in Portuguese.

If I would activate Cooljingle’s “reverse translation” script, I would not get EN->PT, but PT->EN.
That is the sentence (which is not read out aloud) would be presented in Portuguese, not English.
And I would have to type “English”, instead of Portuguese.

Hoever, I am fine with the standard EN->PT translation direction, as DuoLingo does the PT->EN reverse most of the time in my forward Portuguese course (from English). That is I am bombed with a much higher translation ratio on DuoLingo for English, instead of my L2 target language Portuguese.

Memrise on the other side is a nice variety, forcing me to RECALL all the words/phrases/sentences from L1->L2 into my target learning language.

All is good as the way it is on Memrise.

@Arete_Hime
This evening / night I was testing the above tools f.flux and Dimmer V1 on the 2nd older laptop with shiny screen (the first Laptop seems to have little bit better dimmer HW button, but the display is now corrupted (freezed).
Wow, I would not have thought that I could get the light and colors adjustments that much down, even without using any “Memrise / DuoLingo dark schemes” :wink:
Thanks again for your great tip!!!

But if I really wanted to review 100-200/300 words completely with closed eyes for a words/vocabulary course (without any phrases/sentences) in the middle of the night, I still would need a user script to read the L1 English aloud, so I could enter (recall) the L2 target Portuguese word.
Sometimes “no light at all / absolute darkness” is better than any greatly dimmed down display light if you have to look at it for 30/60/90 minutes :wink:

Sorry guys, English is not my native language…so I am struggling to find the right words and to maybe be able to explain it a little bit better what issues I am running into / what I am trying to do.

1 Like
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Aaah, okay, I think I mostly understand now :slight_smile:

Ya, flux is awesome! Good suggestion, Arete_Hime :slight_smile:

Just FYI, Thomas, flux does have a “dark room” mode (right click -> effects and extra colors -> Darkroom mode). It’s not really to my liking, but you could give it a shot :slight_smile: (You have to select “Darkroom mode” again to deactivate it, BTW, which isn’t really obvious)

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Ah, the “Dark room” setting works on my 2nd laptop with the working display.
On an external connected LCD (1st laptop) this setting was not doing anything, as it seems once I tested it.

Have you also tried to install “Dimmer V1”?

In the activated “Dark room” f.lux setting if you use the scroll bar from “opacity 5%” (left) to e.g 20-30%, the dark room color schema changes a little bit into a more bright red contrast.

Maybe it is not needed.
As I can see in the advnced f.lux settings “Options and smart lighting” there is an option “use wider slider rnages”, where the minimum now gets down to 1200K instead of 1900K.

BTW: A few days ago I stumbled an older DuoLingo thread "Dark theme (Version 2), but it is not very good working with the latest layout changes. The background does not get truly black.

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I hadn’t heard of Dimmer V1 before, so thanks for the recommendation. It sound like something good for me to remember :slight_smile: F.lux also lets one turn down the brightness down, by pressing Alt + Pg Dwn, though, FYI.

My problem with the “dark room” mode in f.lux is that it seems to give me headaches. It seems like perhaps a nice idea, though :slight_smile:

1 Like
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I created an all audio typing userscript here:

Note it requires the All Typing script to be running and it won’t work if your course doesn’t have audio.
Make sure you update all scripts before running too (because there was a tweak made to the all typing script to get it working with it).

1 Like
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Hi Cooljingle,

to have such a listening - DuoLingo like - script ready (and listening mode is not available on the web for Non-Pro users) if one needs it: Very nice!

It uses PT audio/listening prompt and required PT typing.
Well done!

On the Android app the “listening skills” exercise it not PT->PT, but:

  • PT reading / listening (like your script) with the big blue listen button
  • multiple-choice English answers: choose the correct English translation from 4 multiple-choice options

But I guess you know that personally I am searching for something quite different (normal translate A -> B prompt, standard screen with EN->PT, just additional EN audio).

What do you think:
Is is very difficult to additionally read the source/English translation, in parallel of showing only the Englisch text, so one can type PT/FR/SP/IT in the empty text box?

Have a nice weekend!

I really wish I would understand anything about this API and JavaScript stuff, how to debug the “auto accept”, or DL timer objects etc. and then I could maybe jump onto the DuoLingo “DuoLessonsFix” timer pause and Memrise “auto accept” stuff.
Hope you guys find a quick solution…DL is almost dead for user script updates…

PS: I have old + new ideas for extending the review (e.g incorrect answers) script(s) according to my PT1-7 course needs (typing all this sentence stuff which I have forgotten after some break)…
…will have to write my ideas down so we can discuss a later time.

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To clarify, you want generated English audio prompts instead of the Portuguese audio that comes with the course?