Can you expand the "context" text around a word or expression to make it more meaningful?

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This is a question that junoba ask on another forum.

junoba ca apple 6 3171
Hi all!

"The Lingq application automatically picks up a certain number of words before and after a selected vocabulary word or expression. Sometimes the automatically-selected chunk of text is not very meaningful and it would take a few additional words from the original text, either before or after to really understand and remember where the expression came from and to be able to meaningfully practice it.

(1) Is is possible to modify the “context” text to grab more words from the original, either before or after the automatically-selected chunk of text? If so, how would you do this?

(2) If the above isn’t possible, is it possible to somehow view the word or expression in context within the original text?

(3) If neither of the above are possible, can you at least determine from the vocabulary list which lesson the word or expression came from so you have a chance of finding it and viewing it in context in another window?

Thanks!"

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I agree with this post, it would be helpful to expand the context to include more words

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When opening a new lesson, the words that you have not previously identified as “known” appear in blue. If you do nothing to them and turn the page, the software will assume you know them and add them to “known words.” If you click on them, each turns yellow and becomes a “lingQ.” You can do review exercises for them or not as is your choice. If you correctly choose the right answer for the word in the review exercises, the number (and color of the word on the page will change). You can manually change the number as well if you think you know the word.

Sometimes words that others have commonly also viewed as a phrase instead of a single word will appear in gray around the blue (or yellow) word. You don’t have to click on the phrase if you don’t want to, it is just a suggestion. If you just click on the single word, only it will become yellow and be identified as a lingQ for review. By turning the page, the other words (gray included) will become part of your “known words.”

In addition, you can create phrases as lingQs by dragging your cursor over the words you want to make into a lingQ in the same way if you wanted to highlight a portion of text and then move it or delete it. (That is, depress the mouse pad with your left hand as the right hand drags the mouse across the words you want to include. The words should turn yellow. Lift up your left hand from the mouse hand to end the words included.
You should see the phrase you wanted to highlight in yellow in the text and they will appear in the lingQ window to the right as a phrase. You will be prompted for review of these phrase lingQs in the same way as for single words. I routinely make lingQs of short phrases of idiomatic expressions and for verbs that have different meanings when combined with different words. If you want to make a lingQ of longer text, I suggest that you nevertheless break up the passage into logical clauses (e.g, the ones separated by commas) as this will make it easier to remember and review them in exercises.

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I’m using classic, and the whole sentence from the current word selection is shown in the definition box, as well as sample usages from other lessons. You can click those sample usages and they will take you to the lessons they were taken from. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to use the vocabulary list (not sure if it’s possible anymore in classic), or what actually gets populated.

Edit: I just checked this out on the new version; all the context I listed above is there. I just tried the flashcards, and lots of context is there, so I’m not sure what the OP is going on about.

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Thanks for replying but, unfortunately, none of this is relevant to what the OP is talking about. He/she wants what’s called the ‘Original Context’ around the LingQ (whether single word or phrase) to be editable. That is, if you look at your LingQs in your vocabulary section, there is a ‘phrase’ which shows you where you first saw this LingQ (whether single word or phrase) by giving you part of all of the sentence the LingQ originally appeared in. The OP would like to be able to expand this phrase because sometimes it is just part of a sentence and in those cases it might not give you the LingQ’s context in a meaningful way.

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Like the OP, my ‘Original Context’ phrases are often incomplete sentences. As an example, here are the Original Contexts for my first five LingQs, alphabetically, in Portuguese. There’s one complete sentence and four incomplete ones with ellipses:


me forçava a engolir a afronta, Bjorn afirmava:

Eu tomei o de abacaxi e um outro que tinha uva.


da estupidez humana que abafa os teus sentidos e



da lareira bastava para abafá-lo.


lado, escutei uma exclamação abafada:

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I posted a response that details how to make links of phrases because I believe this does address the OP’s question about context. I understood his question to be how to include sufficient context around a given link from the lesson to make it understandable both in terms of grammar and the meaning of the words.

I personally have long been altering how I make links and am less likely to click a single word. Instead, I click phrases so that I include enough of the context to make the definition of the word and its grammatical function clear. In Russian which has grammatical cases, this is particularly helpful since I am capturing a new verb and the appropriate case of the noun and adjective that are used with it. However, clicking phrases is also useful for special expressions and for grammatical patterns that are different from one’s native language.

Furthermore, because the word order in Russian is more fluid than in English, Spanish or French, the subject (noun) does not necessarily appear near the verb. If I already know the words in between, I often put in parentheses in the definition window the words that I already know which give meaning to the definition of the words that I don’t.

For example, in the definition window I have written: “(The production of traditional ĐČĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸĐș) involves (a long process) of felting sheep wool.” In this sentence, I already knew the meaning of the Russian words in parentheses. However, the new words were “of felting sheep wool.” I wanted to include “involves” and “of felting sheep wool” together because the grammatical construction is different than in English. The word for “felt” as an adjective was new to me and appeared elsewhere in the article and I did make a link for it. However, I also wanted to make a link for the noun which means, “the making of felt” which is a single word in Russian. Although I knew the word for sheep, I didn’t know the word for wool and thus wanted to make a link that included “sheep wool.” Thus, I made a single link of the verb “involves” plus the phrase “of felting sheep wool” which gave me the grammatical structure of “involves” plus a noun plus the new words “of felting” and “wool.” A beginner may find it helpful to break these phrases and grammar into smaller chunks but that is not necessary for my present level of Russian.

Whether others would make a link the same way I did is irrelevant. My point is merely that one can include enough of a context in the definition box for each link to make the meaning of the words and their grammatical relationship to one another understandable and usable. For example, I can form other sentences with “involves” + a noun (e.g., this involves listening more) and I can use “sheep” as an adjective (e.g., sheep milk).

What is also important is that the original lesson in which I made these links is irrelevant. Rather, what is critical in terms of language learning is only what are meanings of the relevant words in a given context. For this I need to understand the grammatical structure of the phrase and how particular words are used in conjunction with certain subject matter or themes. For example, in English we say sheep wool and but we eat “lamb chops” – a different word.

In sum, what the OP wanted to accomplish is already possible in LingQ without any software change in the program. It is possible to include more of the context in the definition window so that the meaning of the words and their grammatical function are clear and usable. This is accomplished by making links of phrases and including as many other words as necessary in parentheses to make the unknown phrase comprehensible.

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I have the same issue. The context can be confusing and not helping to answer correctly.

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Ah, this is exactly the question I just posted about! (stated much more clearly by OP here lol) It matters even more to me because I use Anki and not LingQ’s flashcards, so the original context field is all the context I ever get and I’d love for it to be complete sentences.
Any chance of there being an answer to this question?

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