OK, after a closer look into this, unfortunately we don’t have a simple solution here. To have the single audio file be accessible for all lessons requires a fairly large update to the back-end handling of audio files, since they are currently set up on a lesson-by-lesson basis.
Perhaps some day in the future we will have a better solution here, but in the meantime you will either need to upload the same audio file multiple times or split the audio into multiple parts and add the lessons in smaller chunks (which, though it’s a bit more time consuming, would likely be nicer to use when studying).
Looks like this “upgrade” has made it’s way into Chinese. And I’ve got to say, I am far, far, far from impressed.
Why make things harder for people to share a lesson?
If I want to share a lesson it is now an extra 50 clicks and just an exponential amount of new friggin around.
Just destroys any motivation to share a lesson.
Lingq – If you keep this “improvement” could you please look at the following:
If someone shares the the top (first) split - the rest (the other splits) automatically share.
If someone prints (ie wants to access the text) it prints the text across all splits.
Text is allowed for shared lessons below the top (first) split - without audio. [Knowing lingq this will never happen – but you are now often just going to get the full audio reloaded - which is arguably worse.]
/failing that, not holding breath that this “improvement” will just go away.
Is there anyone actually sharing split lessons at present?
Is it more or less now?
Does putting up more barriers to sharing lessons actually work / good idea / best possible answer?
What about end use? View stats almost certainly will tail off for later splits, but how much of this is natural attrition, or “just can’t be bothered wading through the new way”?
What about overall view stats - do they drop for split lessons (compared to previous similar lessons)?
I think that automatic splitting text can only go within automatic splitting audio. No separately. And I consider that this should be an option, no forced every users to use it.
I have not been involved in this discussion, nor in the decision to automatically cut off lessons at 2,000 words. For me, automatically cutting off texts at 2,000 words works fine. It makes it easer to import longer texts since I no longer have to worry about the length of text I copy, I just grab the whole thing and import it. Yet I end up with shorter and more manageable texts on the computer and on my iPad in iLingQ.
Mostly I listen on my MP3 player without reading, so having the audio available for download in the first lessons of a series does not present a problem for me. I just download it and listen.
For Korean, where I still have trouble understanding, I like to stream while reading (and working out on my stepper). There, in the lessons that I have shared, like Kim Youngha’s podcasts, I have started to match the audio to the shorter texts. Since I paid to have these transcribed, I have to admit that the transcriber did it, not me.
Shorter texts are better for users, and place less of a burden on our resources. The disadvantage is that we either forgo streaming anything beyond the first lesson or have to go to the trouble of splitting the audio. I am not aware of any technology that could do this automatically. Generally, the further along I am in a language, the greater my ability to deal with longer texts, and the less likely I am to stream. I.e. the reading and LingQing is separate from the listening.
I see the situation was just made worse. Now I can’t even edit my lessons to make them the correct length. Why it was so important to keep people from doing this is beyond me, but I hope you are saving millions of dollars by causing me such pain.
The stars signify the frequency with which those words appear in the language. 4 star words are the most frequent words. It’s just an indicator of the importance of that word in case you want to focus on learning more frequent or important words first. The frequencies are determined by how often those words are found in the content in our library.
We do feel badly that there are some users frustrated by the lesson size limits and splitting. That was not our intent in making this change. Previously, when we had a very large limit on imported lessons, it was more convenient for the importer but we received many complaints from people with slower connection speeds about lessons timing out and not loading both on the website and in the apps. For every complaint we received there were undoubtedly 10 others who didn’t bother reporting the issue. Whenever something like that happens it impacts that user’s perception of the site. If they are a relatively new member and they want to study a course and none of the lessons open for them, they are gone and will never be back. This issue was directly related to the size of the lesson.
We simply could not afford to continue having problems like this just so that importers would have an easier time. In the end, instead of simply ratcheting back the limit to 2000 words, we invested in building the automatic splitting of long texts into parts when importing so that the importer would hopefully not be impacted too much. In fact, for every person complaining about the new format, there are others who very much appreciate the change. Shorter lessons are easier to deal with for most people.
We realize we can’t keep everyone happy but we know we have to err on the side of performance and user experience for the many.
I am importing a book today into LingQ. I love that the Chapters are split into manageable chunks-- that’s good!
BUT…
Very annoying that i have to upload the audio each time a chapter splits-- that’s bad! I understand that technically it is difficult to pull this off (but it is frustrating nonetheless).
Even more annoying when the 2nd split is a small amount of text. For example, I just uploaded a chapter and the 2nd split literally has 45 words (how irritating to have to take the time to upload the 14 minute audio file again). This annoyance, multiplied over a book with ~ 30 chapters … Good Grief!