I agree. One approach is to find a series of course videos at your level in your target L2, and import them into LingQ. That gives you structure. I found some user guides for LingQ but they were out of date, and so simple as to be annoying. It can be disconcerting moving from a structured course to something more freeform.
I have the impression that built in input is LingQ scraping up whatever they can get for free, and most YouTubers aren’t going to agree to have users avoid them receiving their payments i.e. clicks and advertising.
What I was thinking was that if you don’t know anything about your target language - nothing about vocabulary, sentence structure, or other cultural components, even a couple of paragraphs in that language is going to feel like an extremely daunting wall of text. What I was thinking is that for most noobs (and we all start out as noobs), dealing with even a couple of paragraphs is likely to feel daunting, so it would be better to start out with at least a small amount of explicit instruction (via textbooks or through courses) and acquiring at least a minimum of familiarity with some of the vocabulary and sentence structure before diving into the deep end. I am curious about how and why your approach works for you. Are you unusually persistent? Are you good at dealing with material with a high learning curve? I’d really like to understand.
It reads: Hello. Do you need help? Thank you, my name is Li Jie. Hello, Li Jie. What is your friend’s name? My friend’s name is Liu Li. Hello, Liu Li.
Subsequent lessons gradually get longer and more complicated, but always build upon and reinforce previous lessons. At the same time, the story is coherent and sufficiently interesting. It’d be difficult to describe a better starting point.
I definitely understand and have experienced being intimidated by material that is above one’s level (including diving straight into mini-stories), but I feel that with “Who Is She?” followed by mini-stories LingQ has done a nice job providing everything needed to gain the “toehold” that Stephen refers to in his videos.
From there, it’s just a matter of locating material of appropriate difficulty, and for that I do believe LingQ is unparalleled. You can import an entire playlist of videos, sort them by unknown word %, and just go through the list.
Yes, I’ve often imported a set of videos only to find that even the easiest one is beyond my level. It’s easy enough to just go find something else for now, then go back to it when you’re ready.
Thanks for your comments. I have some favorite comprehensible input YouTube channels I want to import into LingQ, but LingQ cannot create usable transcript or text, so it’s useless for may LingQ features. It’s too bad because I love the way LingQ works with the material that comes within it.
Yes LingQ cannot generate text, it just imports the transcript and audio. YouTube transcripts can be good for courses, and dreadful for more natural speech. @ObstTorte’s method is to generate the transcript outside LingQ, then import text and audio. That’s no good on iOS, but fine on Windows and Android.
