I’ve been using some of the advanced Japanese conversations which have been kindly provided by Emiko and Emma. They’re good lessons and valuable resources but I think it would be useful if there were some function on LingQ that would automatically chop them up into smaller chunks as currently some of them last over ten minutes. I like the fact that you can study from a single 10-15 min conversation but if they were presented in several smaller lessons it would be a bit more convenient to manage especialy when you’re trying to snatch a cheeky 5 minutes of language practice on the sly at work!
With longer lessons you feel a bit more compelled to go from start to finish which can sometimes be a bit laborious.
I agree that, within reason, shorter lessons are better. It is, indeed, a good strategy for making lessons because currently you are getting points per download, no matter how long your lesson is. So maybe the providers of 15 minute lessons can triple their downloads by editing the lesson into 3x5 minute lessons
I also loved, and still listen to, the Em and Em Japanese podcasts. What I do is listen until I am interrupted or whatever, then take a quick screenshot of the lesson. Using the screenshot I can easily find my place later and continue.
I, too, have had the urge to shorten some lessons but there are also times when the longer lessons work. In any case, there is going to be no automated way for us to break these lessons up and match audio with sound. Dooo’s suggestion is a good one. We also may come up with some kind of paging/bookmarking system for longer lessons. However, that probably won’t be for a while.
I was about to start a thread about the very same topic.
I like short lessons much more than long ones. Do everybody have this preference??
IMO theyre more handy and, if the lesson is boring, you can stand it for 5 minutes, acquire the vocab fast, and listen to it several times; but if it lasts more than… say 7 minutes, there’s a lot of new info to process, and you can’t wait to finish it and start with another lesson.
I too prefer shorter Lessons when im learning new vocabulary. I think if i were alot more advance in korean and could listen to longer content and understand 70%+ of it I would do longer lessons =p. It all depends what I use the lessons for.
Iyaki ( talk in korean) lessons. Those are top notch! The content isnt hard per say. Its a challenge but i can follow them pretty well however I get bored having to lingq soo many words in one sitting 0_o. Which is why i prefer shorter korean lessons which i import myself. I seem to have the opposite problem. I dont mind listening to LONG lessons , Its just very time consuming to lingq words in long lessons =p. Which is why im avoiding long lessons until i lingq alot of shorter ones. I hate having to lingq 1 lesson in more than 1 sitting. Anyways just my preference.
Mark, A paging/ bookmarking system would be nice eventually…
Its nice having the continuity of a long conversation or story but you can get that by just listening to things back to back. “Who is she?” for example, when I go through it in Japanese I can zip through with no problems. If I get bored or my concentration wanes I can come back where I left off very easily or if neccesary I could focus on parts that had a higher proportion of unfamiliar words.
If I study the same thing in French, which I’m not so good at, its there in nice manageable chunks for me to study through and its a completely different type of language exercise, more intensive than extensive. I find it far more motivating to be able to tick off a few shorter lessons every day rather than come back to a longer half finished lesson over a couple of days.
To be honest, even when its easy, sometimes its nice to jump from topic to topic, or to do 5 mins of one language then 5 of another. If the maximum time of any one lesson was 5 minutes it would give you the option of squeezing in a 5 minute lesson at work or on the bus or whatever and if you want to hear a longer conversation it could roll on to the next lesson much in the same way youtube does with videos.
Shorter lessons give you the best of both worlds and the convenience to study in the way you want to where as longer lessons limit that convenience by removing the choice.
Far be it from me to bite the hand thats feeding me though. Lingq is ace!
