Climb – Advanced Learning 4+

Amazing!

I love this app! It really helps when I’m reading a new book or watching a new movie. I just make a list with the title and add all the words i don’t understand. Then I use the quiz feature to learn those words. Quizzing yourself is really great, because that’s exactly how people learn. It turns the process into active learning versus just passively looking up the definition of the word. Makes the words actually stick in your brain. Been looking for something like this for ages. Awesome job!

Completely failed to assess my vocabulary

I have a decent vocabulary but the app assessed me as native/beginner. Are you kidding? Inadvertent was the word of the day. Really? The words are too easy and there doesn’t seem to be a way to adjust my level. I can’t tell the app that I already know words, can’t redo the assessment. Nothing! The games are strange. I don’t see how they help you with vocabulary. The hunt game for example. Just because I know big words doesn’t mean I can spot them as options on a grid of random and jumbled letters. I’m supposed to pull things like erudition out of the air? The gif game doesn’t change words. None of them were challenging: tiara, quicksand, etc.. these are words even young children know. And it keeps being the same set. I don’t see anything to indicate how words become “learned” and the subscription cost is high. Especially given the issues I’m having so far. The gifs associated with some words aren’t obvious in meaning. It’s frustrating to be marked wrong for a word I frequently use because I can’t tell if the gif matches. Zealous for example. The gif in question showed a drag queen performing. Could you say they were being zealous? Maybe? But I got it wrong. That gif doesn’t go with zealous.

Developer Response ,

We apologize for the frustration and inconvenience.

(1) Unfortunately, words in “Word of the Day” are not adjusted per user level yet. We really want to make it based on user level, but at this point they’re not. Currently, words are targeting people with vocabulary size of 5-15k rather than native speakers.
(2) Our games are based on the words that you add to your library. In general, our vision is to embrace self-education by allowing you to choose whatever you want to learn from 50,000 English words. We have some words for inspiration in the “Explore” section and afterwards you can add any words you want and start practicing/playing.

For the assessment, it’s certainly possible to retake it, although it requires some manual steps at this point. I’m happy to do it for you, please send the email address which you see in the “Profile” section of the app to support@theclimb.app

That said, please don’t take the assessment seriously. The most accurate way to count someone's vocabulary would be to go through all the words in the dictionary and count how many you knew. Any other way is an approximation and is an estimate with a certain margin of error.

Great vocab app- with some flaws.

As a student, I instantly clicked when I saw the ad because I always have vocabulary words to study in class. The ’word of the day’ feature is very excellent because you can discover new words each day, and I find it very exciting to learn more words. One thing I would recommend adding is to add more variety of definitions for words with multiple. Another thing I would suggest is to make GIFs non-mandatory. Because I personally like the GIFs- I am a sucker for visual learning. But some people don't prefer the GIFs in the reviews. And one of the features of this app I really like is the feature that allows you to find the definition of a word on the web by highlighting the word. An additional feature I advise adding is to cut back on the subscription feature, and add more free extensions to the app.

Developer Response ,

Great news - the new version (1.7.2) addresses your feedback:
(1) Go to Profile -> Settings -> Quiz Settings: you can now control what questions you get in the quiz and also attributes like quiz length (5, 10, or 15 mins).
(2) We added cognitive games designed to reinforce words you learn. They're available for free.

Thank you for the review and please let us know if you need anything else.