Beginner content at LingQ is used at least ten times more than intermediate or advanced content. Beginners also have more trouble on LingQ than intermediate or advanced learners, and therefore may abandon their studies on LingQ.
I encourage you to create more beginner content.
Also please add Notes to existing beginner content. Anyone can add Notes to this content.
If you are a tutor, this is a good way to make learners aware of you, and you will be attracting more learners.
If you want to add translations, or videos, please ask for a Pencil so that you can have access to the resources area.
Let’s create more resources for Beginners. We will be helping them and helping LingQ.
In this regard, Vera is an excellent model of someone who has created a lot of content for beginners, (in German) and added Notes and translations.
When Steve talks about “Pencils” he is talking about Editor access. If you are interested in editing lessons for a particular language, you can ask us for editor access for that language. You will then see an Edit (Pencil) icon for all lessons in that language which will allow you to edit these lessons. Whether you want to edit lessons in your target language as you come across typos or omissions or you want to edit lessons in your native language or language you are proficient in, we are looking for editors and are happy to set you up.
Steve, can you give me some ideas about new Beginner content? Right now, I don’t think I have time to do more than adding new lessons to my new collection “Un italiano a Sofia” (“An Italian in Sofia”), about my Bulgarian experiences. However, as soon as my work experience ends, I’ll have more time and I’m considering creating new collections. You have already suggested I create a collection like Albert’s “Puntos de vista”, which I will do as soon as I have a story…
What else?
The point of view series is still more of an intermediate nature. The beginner content is that which appears when you put your level as no knowledge or beginner 1 in the library.
BTW I am loving your adventures in Sofia!! Please keep these coming.
It is more difficult to create beginner content. A story, with each episode lasting only 1 minute or less, is good. Look at what others have done.
Hape, people are finding the beginner content since the utilization of this content is often in the thousands, while the more advanced content will often have 50 or at most a few hundred downloads.
Look at what Vera did in German. Look at our LingQ Beginner series. Look at what Ana Paula did in Portuguese with her simple diary. I am sure there are others that do not come to mind right now.
To judge by your Sofia adventure you are a natural story teller, leading the listener on to want to hear the next episode.
You can also add Notes to existing beginner content. That would also help.
Michele - excellent series so far ! I look forward to the next instalments of your adventures in Sofia.
I find these monologue-type collections to be very powerful and interesting at all levels, beginner to advanced. I’ve already taken advantage of the excellent contributions made by Serge and Marianne (French) and indeed Vera (German). Good work guys !
Note that Rosetta Stone spends so much money on promotion that they actually lost money this last quarter.
Yes, Jamie, the more we can do for beginners, content, notes etc. the better. We need to capture more of these learners and bring them into our community. Hopefully we can move them to intermediate quickly too.
Rosetta Stone lost money? Wow. I haven’t really considered creating content, but I will think about it. There’s so much professionally produced quality graded material for beginners (in English) out there. It’s a shame that you can’t work out some arrangement with the publishers to have some of that on LingQ.
For example, the graded readers series from Cambridge is excellent. The books are now available as digital downloads, as is the audio. The books are all originals - no adaptations.
If you could contact different publishers and they all agreed to share a bit of their content on LingQ (as a kind of promotion for advertising their series or whatever) you could end up with a decent amount of content. Maybe they wouldn’t agree to do that though.
Perhaps you could also include links to some low-level free content available on the web in that language, and people could then import the texts themselves.
I know that LingQ is supposed to have material created by members though. If people create content, do they receive points or something like that?
I have approached some publishers such as Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Assimil, for beginner content, along the lines you suggested, some content for us, and links to their sites, and was always turned down.
I am not a fan of graded readers but many people like them. If these texts are accessible to our members they can import them and learn from them on LingQ. But graded readers are also not beginner material.
Some sites that produce beginner content have agreed to share their content at LingQ, francais facile, Audiria for Spanish etc.
However, I prefer our own member created content. Yes, members receive points based on usage. What is more, creating content is a great way for our tutor members to attract learners, (and earn points that way).
Creating Notes for existing beginner content is also an easy way for a tutor to make members aware that he or she is keen to tutor and help learners.
Yes, we do get points for providing lessons (if they are read by others!) If you look into the English library you will see that one member is in the process of importing all the free audiobooks he can find! The beauty of LingQ is that we have been importing and writing stuff all along, so there’s a wide variety of material available in all sorts of languages.
Sanne, ever vigilant, has noticed that there are two new features being uploaded, one that enables you to quickly select content from anywhere on the web for LingQing, and one that enables you to test yourself on your word database.
As a result of uploading these and other changes, there may be some occasional instability on the site until the upload script is fully loaded. Mark will provide full explanations of these new features when he wakes up.
We do not know what learners like. I prefer the member generated content. For example, I downloaded both Cuore, an audio book provided by Mikebond, and his Sofia Diary. I find the latter much more compelling and interesting. But that is just me. Others may prefer audio books.
We are going to find a way to feature our member generated content more clearly in the Library. Again, please be patient.
Steve, I am very glad you enjoy my Sofia diary so much, but please don’t compare me to De Amicis (Cuore’s author)!
I have tried the cloze tests and I like them, even if sometimes they are too easy.
Some graded readers are beginner material. They begin from just 150 headwords and the stories are short and simple. At any rate, I can imagine the difficulties they might have in sharing material. They might agree to share the first chapter or something, but then people would still have to buy it to get the rest of it.
I still think compiling links to available free external content might be helpful. As a learner, I would appreciate that.
There is a LOT more material available for English learners globally than there is for, say, Russian learners. When I started working in my German 7 years ago I kept offering to exchange books, videos etc with my German penfriends. They all reacted with polite surprise and said thank you, but they had easy access too all the English-language material they needed. Lucky burgers!
I would probably have given up on learning Russian 2 years ago if it hadn’t been for the LingQ library. When I joined LingQ my major worry was, “What happens when I have done all the lessons?” Thanks to Cakura and her copatriots, this has never happened and never will - lessons get added faster than I can use them!
