Every few months I review the mini lessons. The narration has changed since the last time I did, and it’s really bad now.
The narrator talks very fast, much too quickly for people new to Slovak. I’ve been doing this for 2 years, and I still have to slow every lesson down to 66% to follow.
The sound is distorted due to the record volume being too high. It’s hard to understand.
In the section with questions, the narrator does not leave any time for the listener to answer the question. This is important practice when learning.
His pronunciation is not great. As one example, in lesson 20, he keeps pronouncing “Alica” using a hard k for the c. In Slovak, this should be pronounced ts.
The narrator is a different person. The stories are now much shorter, because he talks so quickly. They used to average about 4-6 minutes each, now they are closer to 2 minutes. This change was made within the last 6 months. I’ve listened to these stories over 10 times, so I remember.
Using an iPad, on the Continue Studying row of my Library, I can click on All, scroll way down to the last time I listened to a Mini Story, click on the download icon and get the previous narrator.
But if you don’t believe me, listen to one of the stories to see how bad the narration is. You don’t need to know Slovak to hear how fast he’s talking.
@jkorchok An update here. I checked with our content team and we have two versions of the Mini Stories now available in the Slovak Library.
The old one is still available here: Login - LingQ