Hey, I'm Yana, a product manager and builder who crafted Lexify, a Chrome extension for English learners, in just 5 days (or better to say evenings 😉) using ChatGPT.
A short intro: I'm a non-native English speaker with language proficiency around B2.
It's sufficient for handling work tasks and everyday routines, but at times, I wish I could express my thoughts and ideas more clearly and have an extensive vocabulary.
Does it sound familiar? I think many non-native English speakers all over the world would second that.
But how can one boost their vocabulary? The most popular advice is:
📚 Read more.
🤓 Use thesauruses, like Cambridge.
These two things combined help to learn new words through their definitions, synonyms, and usage examples. Imagine the growth in vocabulary as you consume content.
I can confirm that this approach works great but can be distracting from the reading itself.
As I primarily read on my laptop, I tried to find a Chrome extension that would help with understanding unfamiliar words.
However, I found nothing; there are multiple bilingual dictionary extensions, but that's not what I'm searching for. I'm not interested in translations but in definitions, synonyms, and usage examples as they boost vocabulary better.
As a product builder, I decided to write my own extension that will utilize and automate the approach I want to use—no more distracting tab hopping and copy-pasting words from the text into the Cambridge Thesaurus.
Here's what I got 📣
The most exciting thing about Lexify: I built it with ChatGPT, with little coding knowledge, in 5 days.
Follow me for the next articles, where I'll show the process step by step of building the app just by making prompts.