Munich, Germany – “Mind the Gap” is a new language learning app created by the German label science-to-touch. The app intentionally links two genres: word game and language learning app. It was nominated as a final nominee in the category “Best Educational App” in a public selection process for this year’s Best App Ever Awards. Since 2011 The Best App Ever Awards are organized by the popular app review site 148Apps and aim at selecting the best and most innovative apps in a number of categories.

On the one hand “Mind the Gap” is a puzzle type word game similar to popular word guessing games. The main difference: Missing words are to be guessed from their authentic context. The app offers hints, and can be played without time pressure or in an arcade mode.

On the other hand the app is designed to improve the user’s awareness of popular and authentic english language patterns. The app is based on a collection of over 500 hand-selected texts coming from different areas such as science, sports, art, music, literature and many more. The texts cover trivia and interesting facts from many different areas of human culture, life and science. The main task is to fill in missing parts of words and to reconstruct the original text by this. The percentage of destroyed words varies from 30% in the entry levels to 90% in advanced levels. Mind the Gap hereby enforces an idiomatic language use as it tackles almost all potential trouble zones of language learning from grammar to vocabulary.

“The app is a father-daughter co-production that originated from the desire for training material for so called cloze-tests, which are frequently used to test and train the language abilities of students. During development of ‘Mind the Gap’ we made the experience that finding the right insertions for missing words sometimes requires Sherlock Holmes like reconstruction abilities and can become a really entertaining task” says Professor Richter-Gebert, one of the two developers of the iOS app. As the author of several award winning software projects designed for the general public he has become an expert in combining authentic content with a fun, relaxing or challenging user experience. In 2012 Professor Richter-Gebert launched the creative geometry drawing app “iOrnament”, which is rated 5 stars on the App Store in 14 countries.

The main features of the app include:
* Word guessing in authentic english texts
* Animated hints by removing letters form the keyboard
* Huge database of 550 texts
* Interesting trivia from all parts of human culture, life and science
* Arcade mode with idioms, proverbs and common sayings
* Automatic correction of results
* Built-in access to language dictionary
* Personalized statistics of success
* Full game center integration
* Color themes
* Integrated Help functions

“Turning a serious test scenario into a fun game was the greatest challenge. We included fun elements as for example a Tetris like arcade mode in which you must reconstruct idioms, proverbs and common sayings under time pressure. You must try to survive as long as you can and crack new high scores. Working on up to seven sentences at the same time really challenges your multitasking skills” comments Angela Gebert, second year English student and co-producer of the app.

Mind the Gap combines a fresh and motivating learning environment with an effective, casual learning method for every day. Each of the topics is decorated with hand drawn sketches, that create an atmospheric entry to the specific topic. “Mind the Gap is dedicated to all language lovers looking for a challenging high quality timekiller-app and to everyone who seeks for an easy way to improve his or her English step by step” concludes the app author Professor Richter-Gebert. The public voting for the Best App Ever Awards is open until July 3rd.

Device Requirements:
* iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
* Requires iOS 6.0 or later
* 53.3 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Mind the Gap 1.2 is $0.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the iTunes App Store in the Education category.

Mind the Gap 1.2
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Best App Ever Awards
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Located in Munich, Germany, Science-to-touch was founded in 2012 by Jurgen Richter-Gebert, mathematics professor and expert in geometry and visualization. It is a collection of projects which are aimed at interactive visualization of science. The basic philosophy behind the project is that visualization and interactivity makes content accessible, understandable and fun. The Mind the Gap App is the second release of science-to-touch. Science-to-touch tries to provide high quality content that helps to get in touch with various interesting topics. All projects should be equally creative, informative and accessible. Copyright (C) 2015 Science-to-touch. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.