Hi Group, I seem to be spending as much time searching for material and getting it imported into LingQ as I do actually listening to lessons. I am tired of listening to people saying to find podcasts and tv shows and things you are interested in to listen to, so easy!! But you have to be at a certain level of proficiency to listen to these things and I am not. If I was I would consider my learning Spanish to be a success! I am somewhere around Intermediate 1 or something, I’ve exhausted the mini stories and the lack of filters in LinQ search makes it really difficult to find suitable material and filter out what I do not want, so then I am forever searching YouTube. Finding material with that magical 15% or so of new words is really difficult. Maybe I am just venting but I would appreciate any tips. Thank you.
Have you checked out Dreaming Spanish on youtube? They have videos on a lot of different topics and at varying levels. The youtube import via extension doesn’t work for these, but you can use a youtube to mp3 converter to create an mp3 and import that into Lingq. Then Lingq will do the transcription.
Easy Spanish may have some videos that may work out for you (again, you probably need to use the converter to mp3).
Not really sure about other good channels or sources that are worth checking out as it’s been awhile since I put any time into my Spanish learning.
Another option you could do is with Chat GPT. Find some articles that sound interesting. Ask ChatGPT to give a summary of the article. Or ask it to generate a dialogue between two people discussing the subject matter of the article.
If it’s too advanced ask Chat GPT to simplify it or even get more specific…at a B1 level.
If it needs further simplification just keep asking.
Steve Kaufmann did a video yesterday on Notebook LM which can take a bunch of a links you provide (web articles, youtube videos, etc) and can generate a great dialogue. Possibly that might give you something for your level. It could be maybe a little advanced. I’m not sure if you can further ask it to simplify and I’ve only tried it once myself. Anyway, you download that audio and import into LingQ to create a lesson.
The lexile number of a book indicates the reading difficuly. Searching for books at lexile 600 might help you; then buy and import them.
With a language like Spanish there should be plenty of resources around your level. I’m not learning Spanish but I bet the podcast “Easy Spanish” would be of great help to you. I am really familiar with the podcasts “Easy French” and Easy German". They helped me so much when I was in the level you are describing. They offer transcripts if you pay for a subscription. (Which is very affordable). Also. they call their podcast “Easy” but really it’s more of an intermediate level. I hope this helps and good luck leebarry!
Doesn’t lingq have a summary feature on articles? i think you can just do that in app/desktop
One tip might be to find books/articles for specific age groups. Like if you read something and it’s super easy, go up an age group. if it’s too hard, drop an age group. a lot of book store websites can filter even just to find titles of stuff you might like.
I also look for age specific websites/articles for that kind of stuff. Like in french there are specific news youtube channels for kids and it’s super short and digestible
Lingq has a simplify feature if the level of the material is high enough. A summary would be great. NotebookLM will do that and so much more. It’s my goto tool these days.
Same problem here, I have been importing quite a lot of stuff I want to read/consume but so far only graded reader or CI material show up at 15% or below.
Eventually I found that some companies have the audio for their graded reader available for download on their site. this helped me consume a lot of graded books. You can download and AI transcribe them on lingQ, watch out of the AI transcription hallucination, mistakes and etc. lff .
I have consumed more than 24+ graded books, normal native books are still quite difficult to read.
Wish lingQ add a readability score in addition to %new word on material we import using formulas like these https://www.dcode.fr/readability-testcalibre%20rea so we can see how difficult a material would be. I sometime dump book text in that site to see how difficult it would be before importing into LingQ.
%new words is ok but is not very accurate for various reason and also since we consume content outside of LingQ too. Maybe AI can be used to create a more accurate readability score prompted to take into account all the books you have read and words, phrases you already known, idiom use, conversation, grammar complexity, tenses, sentence length, and to ignore names, cognates and etc.
I really enjoy the videos for Shackleton Kids.
You might also look at:
Pick a topic that interests you, something like “Ancient Rome”, and search for kids’ videos. For some reason, Spanish language YouTubers are quite prolific in producing entertaining educational videos for children.
Thank you looks promising!
Thanks, very interesting the readability score. I have not yet looked much at graded readers, so seems like a good idea, although mostly I focus on listening. I am fairly decent at speaking Spanish, but the frustrating thing is not understanding it. I wish LingQ had better filters, for example by country. The accent and vocabulary does make a difference if yo are targeting a particular country, like I live in Colombia and I want material that sounds closer to what I hear every day. So I want to filter out Europe (Spain) and a few others, like for example Argentinians really have some different accents and sounds. I started my CI journey at dreamingspanish.com and they have an excellent grading system for difficulty and you can filter the teachers by country. Thanks for your encouragement and ideas.
I just saw Steve’s video on NotebookLM, I should probably take a look, but again sometimes it feels like I am spending mre time fooling with the technology rather than studying! Thanks for the ideas.
Thank you, good suggestions.
The lexile level of a book mayhelp you. 600 is lowish.
As someone mentioned later, there is the “simplify” option. But totally forgot about that either way so thanks for bringing it up. It works well the times I’ve tried it and is a good option.
I started my CI journey at dreamingspanish.com. and they have excellent filters for readability and also by country. I wish LingQ had something like that. I dropped my subscription when I started LingQ but should probably go back again. Although I imagine the videos that you only get by paying will not play in LingQ, the only Spanish site on YouTube that I pay for is like that, the videos don’t work in LingQ, although Yo can get only the transcription. Thank you!
Thank you, yes I saw Steve’s video on NotebookLM, And I have been hesitant to fool around with ChatGP, again, I have a limited amount of time to study and sometimes it seems like I’m spending as much time with the technology as with actual studying! But I’ll take a closer look, thank you for your encouragement.
Thank you, I did not know about the lexile number, I’ll take a look.
Thank you. I have looked at Easy Spanish before so thanks for the reminder to go back and check it out again. I’ll take a look at the subscription.