I’m currently a 3rd year computer science student at university. Pretty soon I’m going to have to choose a final-year project/dissertation/thesis/whatever for next year. There’s usually a list of projects proposed by lecturers and researchers in the department but students can also propose their own ideas. While the standard list of projects for this year isn’t finished yet, judging by previous years, I’m probably better off coming up with my own (because stuff the researchers come up with seems to usually be extremely difficult and/or boring). Preferably, I’d like to develop a piece of software that’s got something to do with learning languages. It could take the form of an Android app, a website, a desktop application, or something like that.

Does anyone have ideas for software that you could use – that *you* would find useful – to aid your language learning? I’ve got a really vague idea already for something that could select reading material at an appropriate level for the user or in a particular interest area, but it’s not even nearly fleshed out enough yet, and the more I consider it, the more I realise how close my idea resembles something like LingQ.com or a myriad of other stuff that’s already out there. It could be something like that, or an app that manages your study schedule, or something like Anki or Evernote or…

Ideally I’d want whatever results from the project to work for learning Japanese, but I’ve a feeling it’d be a lot easier to make something that works with at least English first – since it’s a bit more straightforward, spaces to separate words and stuff – so it probably wouldn’t be something Japanese-specific like “An app for learning kanji”. Having said that, just give me any ideas you have, as it might inspire something slightly different.

Thanks a bunch :)