How beginner content should be on LingQ

Content Forum
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I want to start a major thread on the idea of how beginner content should be on LingQ. My current interest has been aroused by starting Arabic from scratch using LingQ. (http://www.lingq.com/learn/it/forum/1/9970/) This thread originates from a current thread (http://www.lingq.com/learn/it/forum/6/10583/?page=1) in which I summarise my views:

“Just to summarise my views, which are based on an encounter with a language VERY foreign to me, so as to replicate the absolute beginner experience as much as possible:

The main theme is that a beginner level should involve the learners MAKING ONLY ONE DECISION freely: to study. ALL DECISION ABOUT HOW TO STUDY SHOULD BE MADE FOR BEGINNERS. A second fundamental is that BEGINNERS NEED TO FEEL SUCCESS, SO THE STEPS IN A BEGINNER LESSON SHOULD BE EASY TO NAIL DOWN… TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY WILL GROW AS THE STUDENT BECOMES MORE EXPERIENCED.

At LingQ, the beginner stage should be somewhat separate from the regular LingQ. Call it “KiddieLingQ” It should have 100 plus beginner dialogs of 10-20 words max, about traditional and non-traditional topics, spoken at regular speeds, and translated into all languages offered.

Each dialog should have premade flashcards (LingQ-packs) which correspond to the native language of the learner-- this means all different possible combos of the 11 languages offered.

The LingQ-pack flashcards should each have sound embedded, as well as any grammatical or pronunciation notes in the Hint. At the beginner level such notes in a separate ‘Resources’ tab will not be as effective.

In order to “graduate” to the real LingQ as we now know it, students will have to have all words in all LingQ packs at 4. At this point they can get a small seal next to their Forum profile. This, in effect will both encourage people to address them in their learner language and prevent people from cheating to get the seal, as it will become evident whether they have beginner proficiency or not in the Forums”

The following is my take on some of the debates that occurred in the previous thread. They are on speed of speech, length of lessons, beginner pre-made LingQs and whether or not to have a story cycle of beginner lessons. I list the pros for each side and my verdict. Feel free to dispute, debate,q derail, and disparage my views at will.

Beginner content at LingQ: Speed of speech: natural or slowed down?

Pro natural speech: Natural is more realistic; in connected speech, not all sounds that are supposed to be there are really there and the sooner our brains get used to it the better; if listening is the fundamental activity in LingQ, it should be the one we do not compromise on; listening to artificially slow speech creates a crutch that is hard to let go of ; if people want to know how a word is “supposed ‘ to sound they can check a transliteration, an IPA dictionary, or use the sound embedded in the flashcards; slow, over enunciated speech is hard to listen to multiple times

Pro slower enunciated speech: it will scare fewer beginners away; we need to attract people above all

Verdict: Go with natural speech. LingQ has to differentiate itself from other sites and since listening is the fundamental activity at LingQ we should keep it as real as possible

Beginner content at LingQ: Length of lessons in words: less than 20 words; greater than 20 words?

Pro less than 20 words: these have more potential to be interesting

Pro greater than 20 words: easy to nail down a dialog and get a sense of accomplishment from; shorter is more tolerable when listening to natural speech;

Verdict: Go with less than 20 words. Beginner content is rarely interesting anyway, so we don’t need to worry about that; Beginner language learners often feel overwhelmed, baby dialogs = baby steps= feeling of success

Beginner content at LingQ: Pre-made LingQs or student made LingQs?

Pro pre-made LingQs: reduces the pressure on the student to learn how to LingQ: often there are a lot of confounding factors such as temporary bugs, having to refresh the screen, not knowing how to deal with particles or phrases, not understanding why you need to LingQ each different form of a word, not understanding tags; you can also include any formal explanation right in the LingQ in the “hint” field

Pro student made LingQs: LingQing is as fundamental as listening so we should not compromise; the action of LingQing is good for your memory; making prefab LingQs in many native>target language combinations is a huge amount of work;

Verdict: Go with pre-made LingQs. The beginner needs to deal with as few technicalities as possible and they will still see the power of LingQing by reviewing the premade LingQs and seeing them in different contexts seeing how tags work etc. LingQing seems simple in practive, but is hard to grasp. In a way the prefab LingQs can be viewed as the “passive input” for learning the LingQ site itself.

Beginner content at LingQ: A series of unrelated dialogs or a story cycle?

Pro unrelated dialogs: The student will not care about the story cycle if they are doing repetitive listening so the work of doing a story cycle is not necessary

Pro story cycle: ?

Verdict: Go with unrelated dialogs, it is less work.

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Why another thread about this? It was discussed in the other thread. Only to stress your opinion? Why don’t you simply accept that different people have different opinions? Why don’t you accept that different learners have different learning styles? Why don’t you accept that people feel different than you?

I still prefer clearly and not to fast spoken short lessons because my main activity is listening while I’m commuting. I’ve not the chance to have a look at the text when I commute.

Short is for me 20 to 60 lessons. It depends on the lesson. If the lesson repeats the same words or words that was introduced in an earlier lesson, it could have more than 20 words. 10 to 15 NEW words each lesson is fine, but that is MY personal view.

I don’t need premade LingQ’s. I think the process of making each LingQ carefully on my own made me more aware of the words. But that is MY personal opinion.

Offering identical lessons in all languages probably not work perfect. There are things that you hardly can translate because the way you express yourself differs in two languages. I often translate things into German and that is my experience. Also there are different issues and aspects that you have to show in different languages. Examples: gender in some languages, differentiation between formal and informal language etc.

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Vera

“Why another thread about this? It was discussed in the other thread. Only to stress your opinion?”

Well, in addition to the obvious fact we ALL want to stress our views (and there’s nothing wrong with that)… I made another thread because I feel passionate about it, it is an important issue, and the previous thread’s title was focused on length of beginner lessons. If you don’t like the thread, don’t read or reply to it.

"Why don’t you simply accept that different people have different opinions? Why don’t you accept that different learners have different learning styles? Why don’t you accept that people feel different than you? "

With all due respect, you are not making sense here. I never once implied or said any of those things. I even invited people to disagree, hopefully in a relevant and coherent way.

Everything in the rest of your comment is not really relevant to the issue. Even if what I proposed were 100% set up, and you, Vera, were to start as a complete beginner in a new language, you are not FORCED to do anything you do not want to do. LingQ as it stands would still be the same.

My proposal is to make a special effort for people who are complete beginners at both language learning and LingQ, and who are currently turned off by the complexity, technicality and extreme novelty of it all. These people need to be brought along slowly.

I am basing my opinion on my own experience with Arabic. As far as I know from your writing in the Forum, you have not seriously tried a language with a foreign alphabet, or that you haven’t seen before in school. I am, by the way, also a language teacher with 10+ years of experience. I have seen my share of complete beginners.

Such learners need a lot of support. They have a lot of new things to get used to, not just the new language but a new way of thinking about learning languages. You wouldn’t expect such people start with Advanced material in the language, so it doesn’t make sense to throw them into an Advanced level of LingQ.

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dooo.

If I have not commented it is not because I am not interested. What you propose is interesting and something we have to consider.

One immediate problem is who will create for 11 languages the following?

“At LingQ, the beginner stage should be somewhat separate from the regular LingQ. Call it “KiddieLingQ” It should have 100 plus beginner dialogs of 10-20 words max, about traditional and non-traditional topics, spoken at regular speeds, and translated into all languages offered.”

I presume you are excluding the Beta languages that will soon be introduced.

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dooo,

I should add that we are soon going to introduce a beginner mode that addresses some of these concerns. I look forward to continuing this discussion after you see what we have done. I am interested in your ideas, but it would be a lot of work, and I am also interested in the input of others, including Vera, who has created a lot of excellent beginner material for German. It is not obvious to me that it needs to be parallel in all languages. Serge is coming out with great stuff in French, others have done so in other languages like Japanese, Spanish, Russian, just to name a few examples. I kind like the spontaneous creativity of our members.

However, many people are simply not going to like LingQ. Our number one issue is the lack of general awareness of LingQ. If we could achieve in other countries, the same level of awareness about LingQ that exists in Lithuania, where Gintaras has done such a wonderful blogging about us, we could solve a lot of problems.

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Thanks Steve. I am looking forward to seeing the new changes.

"It is not obvious to me that it needs to be parallel in all languages. "
Maybe not. But to me it makes sense because you will have more or less a translation for anyone who speaks one of the current LingQ languages. For some beginners, nothing less will do. It would also dovetail into the making of prefab decks

'it would be a lot of work"
It would be hard work to make but it is not expensive, specialized work. The writer could be anyone who has contributed a decent amount of content and has a background in tutoring. The development could go through stages 1) the words to focus on 2) the dialogs 3)translation 4) recording 5) making the prefab decks . Other than the packaging of the prefab decks on the site, no special computer programming knowledge would be needed.

“Our number one issue is the lack of general awareness of LingQ”
I think an additional problem is people don’t buy into the philosophy of LingQing. But there is nothing inherently unappealing about it, it just needs to be presented much more slowly. IN addtion, I would say this “KiddieLingQ”, “LingQlite” or maybe “1st1000words” level would be in itself a great marketing tool. It could be offered for free as a teaser for the real LingQ. perhaps instead of the current free level.

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An easy way to somewhat implement the proposal above would be to do the following:

  1. Create a small catchy icon to identify the “LingQLite” lessons and LingQs.
  2. Create the lessons and for each lesson pre-make the needed LingQs
  3. This “LingQLite” icon will be prominently identify all such lessons in their titles and identify all such hints in the LingQ widget.
  4. People who sign up with LingQ will be instructed to “click the LingQLite icon” when in doubt. In all cases, if they do so, they will be either brought to a LingQLite lesson or when LingQing, be given a good reliable hint for that word.
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This is an excellent idea. I would certainly like to see this myself for a new language I’m about to take on - and I’m an experienced LingQ user, so I have no doubt it would attract new users to the site. What I like about it is the goal is clear, the LingQs are already prepared (as much as possible) and there’s a little “reward” on successful completion. The marketing possibilities I agree are substantial.

I also agree that content “interest” is not really an issue at this level; the interest comes from soaking up the language, learning new words and SEEING PROGRESS. That’s my experience anyway.

I do think that the recordings should be created by several people, rather than them all recorded by a single individual. This would give some diversity in the spoken word, which will help retain interest. I guess this would be fairly easy to arrange anyway, as they would all be monologues.

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Also audio sound quality would have to be excellent and this would need to be verified prior to making a lesson public.

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As for Steve’s concern about who will create the material - given that these are likely to be the most popular lessons in the language (and content providers receive points based on how popular their lessons are) I would have thought their would be no shortage of volunteers!

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And just to add a further point, before I go to work…
This would in no way compromise or undervalue the existing beginner content. It’s all grist to the mill. If I had taken a LinkLite (or whatever) in German, instead of wasting my time with Pimsleur etc., I would still take some of Vera’s beginner lessons. They are not redundant.

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