Keyboard shortcuts for creating lingQs?
I’ve been learning to touch-type this year because looking at a bilingual keyboard for very long makes my brain hurt. It’s quicker as long as I don’t have to move my hands too much.
Creating LingQs is proving a bit slow because I type the user hint, then take my right hand off the keys to use the mouse to click on Tags, put it back to type the tab (it’s quicker than finding it on my ever-increasing list of tag names), then take it off again to click “add”. Then I have to use the mouse to click “save” to save the lingQ.
Can I create the lingq with less mouse use so I don’t have to move my hand on and off the keyboard so much? I’ve already discovered that, in the tag creation box, typing “tab” then “enter” saves the tag. Are there any more keyboard shortcuts I haven’t found yet? One to save the Lingq maybe?
What you explain is exactly how I do. It takes a split-second to type “noun”, “adj” et.c. but slightly longer to manually choose the tag from a list. I think I have suggested keyboard shortcuts before, and now I know I’m not alone.
Still we have to either drag-and-drop or copy/paste the hint and/or phrase, and that too takes a lot of time. OK, just a few seconds here or there, but imagine if we all saved as many LingQs as Steve… 
I must say that I do not find it tiring to save LingQs with the mouse. Obviouisly others do.
We have a number of ideas on how to make LingQing easier. We are open to other ideas.
I would like to know how big a problem this is. Is this one reason why people do not LingQ more?
We still have to re-arrange the Library, we want to bring in a proper Pronunciation section, we want to enable tutors and members to record themselves and share, we want to allow members to evaluate content and tutors, …we have this and more to do. Should we stop all of this and focus on making LingQing easier? Remember that every little change or improvement takes programming time, and the todo list is already quite long.
Helen,
Re Tags ( and yes we should enable batch tagging in the Vocab section, there is another thing on the todo list), I suggest the following.
I like the list of Tags. It was put in because of requests. People misspell or create duplicate tags. It makes sense to use the list because it will eventually reduce the number of Tags you use.
Right now we do not allow you to delete Tags (another thing on the todo list). But the most commonly used Tags gradually move forward in the list, so that if you mostly use 5 Tags these will be at the head of the list.
First of all, I mostly save the daily recommended amount of words. Not because I believe it’s the gospel truth (;)), but it’s a decent amount of words that I can handle. Not too many, not too few. For longer texts with a lot of unknown words, I usually spread the saving (and the listening) over a few days, so I don’t have to spend to long time in front of the computer while just saving the words. That is, if I intend to spend an hour on Russian (just listening, or reading while listening) I want get to it as soon as possible.
From my experience, any of the “daily” articles at Wikipedia often has enough words for a few days (even though it’s very short), so I save the words from the first part one day, the second part next day and so on.
I don’t want to drown in words, which would probably be the case if I saved everything at once, and read through the “article” (about half as long as your previous post) a couple of times (giving a slightly false impression that I’m “finished” with it).
This being said, the tag list isn’t a big problem for me - I just choose to tab/enter/whatever instead of using the mouse.
I like Steve’s method of creating loads of lingQs because to my mind the big strength of the lingQ system is that it learns what words you know and how well you know them. And I like the tag list. I’m creating progressively more lingQs a day, and spending less time in doing flashcard drills.
Maybe I just need a better mouse ;-).
I have found the track ball mouse to be the most convenient.
I should add that the massive LingQ approach is quite effective in my view and works so long as you do not try to “learn” or “finish” an article. It used to take me 30 minutes to go through 600 word chapters in Tolstoi when I had 40 or more % unknown words.
Now I can go through 4,000 word articles from Echo Moskvi in the same amount of time, and face only 15-20% unknown words. I am hitting over 100 previously saved highlighted yellow words every time I open up a new article. These are the words I am going to learn, not the ones I review in my Flash Cards.
Yet I do review Flash Cards, and I often review various lists in Vocab. It helps me create hooks for words, both the ones I have saved and others that I pick up incidentally.
It is also a good idea to save phrases and review them in Flash Cards.
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I do a lot of LingQs, but I can’t understand how Steve finds the time to do so many more than I do!!!
I really think LingQing is important, and I study a lot of words with flashcards, you believe me or not, I like it and find it effective. But I do think LingQing is a very boring and time consuming task and should be improved.
Some ideas I have are:
- automatic highlight of unknown words, which would become lingQs with just a mouse click (maybe a button “lingQ it all”?)
- LingQing without the need of using the LingQ button. (mouse right-click on the highlighted text?)
- an improved importing function for lingQs lists, where I could easily insert definitions, hints, phrases and tags without taking my hands off the keyboard. (form based importing? spreadsheet based?)
- the ability to edit lists of LingQs, maybe in a spreadsheed manner, so I could edit all the fields.
Well, these are my main ideas. I really would like to have at least some of them implemented, so LingQ creation would become less painful…
Yes, yes! Automatic highlight of unknown words is definitely a tool that I would use (although I very well realise that there are certain benefits with saving the words yourself, adding an extra hook/neural connection et.c.).
Back to my Russian session. 
If you have automatic highlighting of unknown words, then please include an option to disable it! I think it helps me to have to force my brain to look at new words to figure out if they are really unknown. Although it takes time to create LingQs I do feel the process pushes words into my brain.
If we ever see the automatic highlighting I suggest it’s optional (Asian languages without spaces will probably cause a problem anyway…). However, even if everything was automatically highlighted we’d still have to add hints and/or phrases (which probably helps learning the words).
I wonder if a mouse-over dictionary would be a good option to all this, maybe with the possibilty to click the words we want to save. I don’t know.
For some items I don’t have problems with saving LingQs while other items seem to take forever. But on the other hand those not-yet-learned words would remain yellow in later items as well (as Steve pointed out), so it’s probably just a good thing.
Back to German…
Hi Steve,
I really admire what you have donewith this wonderful site; and what you are doing to make it even better. Thank you.
I’d like to share my experience. I feel quite satisfied when creating new LingQs. Maybe it is because I don’t use tag that much. I would be happy to have keyboard shortcuts for the flashcards(and voice). To me, the most desired improvement now is preview(items) function,but it’s OK. You are doing great! I saw “your friend’s blog” today. cool!
Yesterday Progress Snapshot
Steve LingQ’s Created-----> 169!!!
Amazing…
I should be doing something wrong. I would take 3 hours to do so many lingQs… He for sure has some special secret… come on, Steve, tell us how to do this!!!
Ana,
I have to admit that since I found this new Russian news radio website with all the downloadable audio and text I have gone a little out of control. I am now listening all the time. My wife is about to throw me out of the house. It is fascinating to hear the Russians debate current events. This is the last independent radio station in Russia. Just fascinating.
If an item is 20-30 minutes long, it takes, obviously that long to listen to once. It takes 30-45 minutes to read and save LingQs. It is the content that drives me. I am the dog running through the hedge.
Since replacing my mouse creating lingQs is quicker and easier. I would still find a keyboard shortcut to open the tags box, and another to save the lingQ, helpful. It’s not mission critical though.
I have had another attempt at reading the Russian classic, “Garry Potter i filosofski camen’” and found that, after saving loads and loads of lingQs, the book is now fairly intelligible. I am well chuffed!
Poor Carmen…
But I know this state, I myself had my own periods of lack of control too… right now I’m in a more sistematic period, though.