An English course that rewrites itself around one learner
Hover a cell to see why it has its colour. Follow one mistake from the review into the next lesson.
Built 2026-07-02 · Filmed 2026-10-20
A learner says “She go to the office every day” and gets one thing wrong. In my English course that mistake turns up on the map, in her review and in her next lesson.
- The record1sentence: 16 words, 14.2 seconds.
- The mistake1marked: “she go” should be “she goes”.
- Where it shows3places: map, review, next unit.
The course is still in development, so this is a work in progress, not a finished product. Her record is seeded for the film and holds this one sentence and nothing else. The map in the first clip is a de-identified copy of a real learner's July state, with its dates moved.
Exhibit 1Follow the mistake
Three short clips from one film, each with its own sound. Tap one to play it. Playing one stops the others. On the map, colour is evidence, not a grade. Green means she has shown it in several sessions, orange is a place to explore and grey fog is not studied yet. The course's screens are in Portuguese because it was built for a Brazilian learner, and the English you see is the language being taught.
Record: node verb-tense-present-simple-3rd-person, which is the id of this cell.
What to notice: hover a cell and it explains its colour from the evidence behind it. This one, “Presente simples: -s na 3ª pessoa”, says three separate sessions.
From the long cut below, 0:05 to 0:15.
Record: the same node verb-tense-present-simple-3rd-person, in the note on this sentence.
What to notice: her own sentence comes back with “she go” marked, and tapping the mark gives the fix, “she goes”, with the rule in one line.
From the long cut below, 0:55 to 1:03.
Record: no tag on screen here. The unit says it in words.
What to notice: the unit opens by saying why it exists. In its own words, the -s of the third person slipped in her test.
From the long cut below, 1:26 to 1:33.
Exhibit 2What ties the three together
The tie is one tag, verb-tense-present-simple-3rd-person. The map cell carries it as its id and the review's note carries it as its node, so they point at the same thing. The unit is the course's own text, and I did not read its link to the record from the data.
| View | What you see | What ties it to the record |
|---|---|---|
| The map | the cell “Presente simples: -s na 3ª pessoa”, coloured by its evidence | the cell's id is verb-tense-present-simple-3rd-person, read from the selector in the filming spec |
| The review | “she go” marked in her sentence, “she goes” in the popover | the record's note holds quote, fix and node: verb-tense-present-simple-3rd-person |
| The next unit | the block that says why the unit exists | the narration of that block says the -s of the third person slipped in her test; the link itself is the course's, not tested here |
The numbers behind the facts
| What | Number | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| History entries in her seeded record | 1 | the learner's history list, key english-platform:v1:Marina |
| Words in the sentence | 16 | wordCount; recounted from the transcript, 16 |
| Seconds she spoke for | 14.2 | durationMs divided by one thousand |
| Mistakes marked | 1 | the notes on the record |
| Words flagged for pronunciation | 1 | flaggedWords (go) |
The map, the review and the unit are three views of one record of evidence. The colour of a cell, the mark on a word and the topic of the next unit come from the same data about what the learner did, so a mistake in the review changes the map and the course instead of living in a report nobody reads. The map is also honest about gaps: untouched territory is drawn as fog, not filled in with a guess.
What this does not show. Her record is seeded and holds one sentence, so this is the course reading a record of that shape, not a live student. The map in the first clip is not seeded: it is a de-identified copy of a real learner's July state, with its dates moved, so the cell shows how the course draws that topic, and the tag is what ties it to her sentence. The spoken correction is part of the review page but is not played in the clips. I checked that the same tag sits on the map cell and in the review's note. I did not change the record and film what happens to the unit, so “the unit is written from it” is the course's own statement and not something this page proves.
The long cutThe whole film, with my narration
A 1:54 film: the map, the review and the unit in one sitting. Choose English or Português under the picture.