Thank you, Steve, for this tip. It works nicely. What about adding this to a help page about searching the library?
Edit Note: Steve beat me to the punch, but here is another way to find a provider’s lessons and courses.
@u50623: " how can I find Serge’s great French lessons?"
- Type provider:serge in search box
- Click Audio Duration 1:00 - 5:00
- Click Lessons
This returns a number of Serge’s lessons. One lesson is "Proverbes et expressions Françaises, Se jeter à l’eau, prendre le taureau par les cornes "
4.Click on the arrow beside the box that says Open and a drop down menu appears.
5. Click ‘View Course’ and all the lessons for that course, ‘Proverbes et expressions Françaises’, are returned.
To search for a course,
- make sure nothing on the left side is checked,
- type provider:serge in the search box and press enter.
Nothing will be returned. - Then click in the box Course. All Serge’s courses should appear.
Another French provider you can try is leie92, though, confusingly, you must search for her provider name, which is Marianne.
I hope this helps.
As I said, there are some issues in the library. Once we have sorted things out we will update the Help. Thanks for your patience. Meanwhile letting us know about specific issues in the library is helpful to us.
Fasulye, like Jeff says, Lingq discourages long lessons, that’s why we’ve made those collections you mentioned (talk about) just 4 sentences long. The other reason is that each lesson is a full conversation about a specific topic from the collection, say we talk about pets there would be a full dialogue about going to the vet, so that makes sense too.
Also, just like kcb points out, length doesn’t determine the level. And we can assure you those lessons aren’t for beginners, we tried to replicate a full native dialogue so you’ll encounter kind of complicated sentence structures and vocabulary for intermediate students (advanced students too).
We see you’re not a big fan of IDEL’s lessons but we also have longer lessons for intermediate and advance students. We have a set of collections called Madrid-Barcelona, it’s a story divided up in episodes (collections), just like a tv series:
MADRID - BARCELONA
A very funny and entertaining story for our intermediate and advanced students. Do you really want to understand real Spanish? Do you want to speak the way we natives do? Then try out this Madrid-Barcelona series.
This B1 version has exactly the same audio + text as the C1 one but with less dialogues in each lesson:
Season 1 - Me mudé a Madrid Season 1 - ¡Me mudé a Madrid! - B1 - LingQ Language Library
Season 2 - ¿Quedamos? Season 2 - ¿Quedamos? - B1 - LingQ Language Library
Season 3 - En el restaurante Season 3 - En el restaurante - B2 - LingQ Language Library
Season 4 - ¡Vaya resaca! (NEW!) Season 4 - ¡Vaya resaca! - B2 - LingQ Language Library
This C1 version has exactly the same audio+text as the B1 one but with more dialogues in each lesson.
Season 1 - Me mudé a Madrid Season 1 - ¡Me mudé a Madrid! - C1 - LingQ Language Library
Season 2 - ¿Quedamos? Season 2 - ¿Quedamos? - C1 - LingQ Language Library
Season 3 - En el restaurante Season 3 - En el restaurante - C1 - LingQ Language Library
Season 4 - ¡Vaya resaca! (NEW!) Season 4 - ¡Vaya resaca! - C1 - LingQ Language Library
¡Vaya resaca! - making of (NEW!) Season 4 - ¡Vaya resaca! - Making of - LingQ Language Library
Since you like longer lessons, you should take C1 collections from Madrid-Barcelona, the text is the same as the B1s but you have more dialogues in each lesson.
saludos
IDEL
Aprender español en Lingq —> http://spanish-lingq.blogspot.com/
Thank you for your clarifications, IDEL. This is indeed helpful for me. What you are doing is what we call in German economics “Gewinnmaximierung”: For an absolute minimum of content and work you want to earn a maximum of LingQ-points! I have a different work ethic here for my projects on LingQ. But I see that also your lessons with only 4 sentences get a lot of views, so there is an audience for such mini-mini lessons here on LingQ.
I appreciate the alternative you offer me: Your C1-level collections persent the type of lessons I would like to listen to. They have a good length which is neither too short nor too long and it’s a good audio quality. My active Spanish level is between B1 and B2 but I have tried C1-level lessons shared by other people here in the library and I have no problems in understanding passively contents presented on the C1-level. So I am satisfied with your C1-level dialogues and I will listen to more of them.
So thank you very much for these links to your C1-level lessons! 
Kind regards,
Fasulye
Fasulye thank you for your kind words, you’re too sweet!
Regarding “work ethics”… Since we find that giving the same points to a lesson that lasts 10 seconds or 20 minutes is far from being fair (we see that as an insult) we’ll be creating short lessons rather than long ones, that’s just pure logic. Lingq doesn’t encourage making original lessons either, they encourage copy-pasted lessons that you can find all over the internet, so just the mere act of making original content is a treat. What we also find unethical is receiving the same points for a copy-pasted lesson than for original content ones, the working involved in the making on each of them is incomparable.
We’re not making lessons just for the points but neither just for the sake of it… at least not such a big amount of lessons, we had our share of that in our own personal accounts. So it’s this or not doing lessons at all. We felt very discouraged to make any lessons at all and this is the only way to keep us making lessons. We don’t know how many lessons you’ve done for Lingq, but from your words we can guess you’ve done just a few, but we’ve made hundreds and hundreds of them, lots of hours of hard work is being involved and enthusiasm and energy runs out sooner than later.
Since you have a B1-B2 level, you could take almost any lesson at all, if you like the subject go for it, don’t be afraid of advanced content, you can do it. That’s the beauty of having an intermediate level.
Cheers and have fun!
saludos
IDEL
Aprender español en Lingq —> http://spanish-lingq.blogspot.com/
This is an issue that arises from time to time. I do not see an ideal solution.
LingQ does not pay for lessons, and in turn the lessons are available free of charge. We compensate providers from confiscated points (another controversial issue) based on usage. There is no easy way for LingQ to evaluate neither the effort put into the lesson, nor the value of the lesson to our members. So what we have now is not perfect by any means, but I do not see how to improve on it without involving lots of manpower and arbitrary decisions about the value of lessons. So providers provide the lessons that they want to provide, and learners choose to study the lessons that they like.
I should add that the quality of the lessons created by IDEL is excellent, and I often mention them to people as examples of the kind of excellent content created by our creative members. I would love to reward them more but don’t see how to do this. In our experience it is hard to sell content when there is so much free content available. Members are, however, free to give points to members who create outstanding content.
Dear IDEL,
To answer your question on how many lessons I have worked so far: My lessons are co-productions together with Evgueny (for German) or Silvia (for Dutch) which contain self-developed interviews / conversations or self-written texts by Evgueny, so “copy & paste” is neither our team-style nor is it the style of other quality content providers here on LingQ.
The average lesson of our production is 10-12 minutes long. Our transcipts have an average length of 1 1/2 A4-pages font-size 14. Just a few lessons? I have counted our lessons: So far 44 lessons! We are still producing and I do it for just for fun! I don’t have any use for points at the moment, because I cannot study my target language Danish here at LingQ.
I listen to lessons in other of my foreign languages to maintain my language levels. My passive level of Spanish is higher than my active level of Spanish, so I have no difficulties to listen to C1-materials. For example those about scientific topics, because I am especially interested in natural sciences as a hobby.
I have some problems with the search function of the library since the LingQ-update 2.0, otherwise I would just neglect the “4 - sentences lessons” and other uninteresting stuff. As far as I can filter out the high-quality lessons which I want listen to, I am satisfied.
My project-work together with Silvia: Podcasts with Fasulye
Link: Login - LingQ
My project-work together with Evgueny: Gespräche mit Evgueny, Evgueny & Fasulye
Link: Login - LingQ
Please have a look and check that I am am doing original co-productions (= teamwork) for LingQ!
You will not find any “copy & paste” among this material!
Kind regards,
Fasulye
One more thing. To get an idea of the effort that Alsuvi and IDEL have put into creating content for our members, I suggest you go to the Spanish Library. Click on Playlists. Everyone is free to create Playlists. Playlists help members navigate the library and find content of interest. Note that every Playlist in Spanish has been created by Alsuvi or IDEL. Check out the quality of the lessons. They are certainly not all 20 seconds long by any means.
So I sympathize with Fasulye in the sense that I would not like to study a bunch of 20 second lessons as an Intermediate learner. On the other hand I have to respect the body of work that Alsuvi/IDEL have created for LingQ.
As I have said on another thread, there are things in the Library that do not work as they should right now. Our programmers are having to deal with some administration issues at the present time but hope to get to the Library next week. Once everything works as it should there, we may be able to look at easy ways to enable learners to customize their searches in the library in order to focus on certain kinds of content, or to avoid certain kinds of content.
Steve, the main criticism of IDEL is that shared lessons on LingQ are just “copy and paste” and I think in many cases this is not justified.
Fasulye
And thanks for the advice, Steve!
I have never used any playlists so far, I must confess. I have just tried it out and found the Spanish playlist “Ciencia divulgativa” Advanced level shared by alsuvi. I had already tested one podcast of them so this quality ocntent of my taste and I will really enjoy that. By the help of playlists I can find such material easier.
I am not proficient enough in using the search function of the library since the LingQ 2.0 update, so all kinds of tips to facilitate this are welcome.
Fasulye
Fasulye,
Thanks for your efforts in creating great content for LingQ and for your enthusiastic participation on the forum. I do not think that IDEL claims that all shared lessons at LingQ are just copy and paste. However, it is true that we have a lot of content that is copy and paste, some of it is good, and some of it is not. Again it depends on the interests and tastes of the learner.
At times the massive amounts of VOA , or other common sources of easily copied content, can dominate our library. I would like to look at ways of enabling learners to not have to look at lessons that are of no interest to them every time they do a search in the library.
One more thing. Once the Library is properly fixed up, we could do a Webinar on how to use it. In fact it might be a good idea to have a few free webinars on how to get the most of the new LingQ 2.0 in a variety of languages. What do you think?
What does the abbreviation “VOA” mean?
I find it an excellent idea, if you as Administrators could offer webinars on the usage of the new LingQ 2:0. As a webinar language I would be fine with English as the lingua franca. I am especially interested in all the tips and tricks of the usage of the library, but first the issues there should be cleared up. When offering webinars you have to take into account the time differences between the continents. From Skype - experiences I know that it is tricky to match Western Canada with Central Europe.
Fasulye
VOA = Voice of America?
QUOTE of Steve:
“At times the massive amounts of VOA , or other common sources of easily copied content, can dominate our library. I would like to look at ways of enabling learners to not have to look at lessons that are of no interest to them every time they do a search in the library.”
This would indeed be very helpful for me, if we can achieve this!
Fasulye
Hi there,
just for the record, as Steve said, we’re not saying all lessons at LingQ are copy-paste lessons, but it’s true that there are a lot of them in the library. We just said that it’s not the same to produce and record original content than just a copy-paste lessons but unfortunately LingQ rewards these two types of lessons the same way. Also it’s not the same a really well recorded/good sound lesson than those recorded with cheap microphones and sorrounding noise, and again they receive the same reward at LingQ. But we already had this discussion long time ago and as Steve said, it’s difficult to change this.
In your case, Fasulye, all your content is original, great, good for you! We really think that what makes LingQ’s library special and different from anything else on the Internet is all the original and high quality content. And here I would like to talk about quality. To assess the quality of a lesson just for its length is just unfair and inaccurate. You can find much more interesting vocabulary, great expressions and nuances in a 4 sentences or 20 seconds lesson than in 15 minutes one. The linguistic/learning quality of a lesson shouldn’t be evaluated just for the length. You may prefer longer lessons because you don’t like to open-close, open-close short lessons? Ok, that’s fair and it’s an option, but please, don’t assess quality just for the length!
Now and for the first time, we’re going to explain the origin of IDEL, the major Spanish content provider at LingQ.
IDEL is a two people team, Berta and Alsuvi. Each of us used to create lessons for the library before IDEL. Berta has 103 lessons in the library lasting from 2 minutes to 10 minutes + 27 lessons of conversations with Oscar (from 10 to 20 minutes length). Alsuvi has 317 lessons (from 2 minutes to 10 minutes length). All of these lessons were recorded by ourselves with high quality microphones and post-production work. The text of some of them was taken from elsewhere (such as the Ciencia divulgativa lessons), but most of them was created from scratch by us. Anyone who have created original lesson for LingQ can imagine the amount of work that is needed to create and produce 447 lessons! And of course, we didn’t do it just for the points. But sometimes you just don’t feel rewarded for all the effort and finally, as we said before, enthusiasm and energy runs out, so we stopped creating lessons for the library, both of us.
However, one day, after several talks, we saw that we had nice ideas and we had fun creating and recording short dialogs, so we decided that we were going to create just short lessons specially for beginners. I (Alsuvi) had been using Vera’s German lessons for beginners at that time, and I just loved them. They were short, repetitive and easy for someone learning a language from scratch. Those inspired our popular Absolute beginners collection.
At the beginning we just made lessons for beginners, but as we were having fun and nice ideas, we started to create more complex dialogs, with more natural vocabulary and expressions, and those are the intermediate and advanced lessons. They are short, yes, that’s the essence of IDEL (we will no longer spend hours transcribing long conversations, it’s not funny anymore) but they are full of interesting content for Spanish learners. In some of them, such as in the Madrid-Barcelona series (specially from season 2 on), you will find real, natural, unformal Spanish, expressions that we natives use hundreds of times everyday, and this, you will not find it anywhere else in the library.
We agree many people would not like to use really short lessons and it’s ok, but we have already recorded 1138 original lessons for LingQ and even though they are short, there is a huge amount of work and thinking behind. We have created high-quality lessons with great sound (much higher than the average at LinQ) for every level and covering a wide amount of topics, from general things to really specific ones.
You can check out all our lessons from our blog: http://spanish-lingq.blogspot.com.es
Saludos
IDEL
Aprender español en Lingq —> http://spanish-lingq.blogspot.com/
And a big thank you to you and berta for the quality job that you do.
Saludos!
Thank you, IDEL, for explaining, what is behind your podcast project. I will listen to the lessons of Berta and Alsuvi and I have also seen the interesting dialogues of Berta & Oscar. I personally am not involved with the beginner level of Spanish because I learned Spanish at the university from 1992-1995 and have kept the language active since then. As we already have discussed here is that I need to filter out effectively here in the Spanish library what suits to my needs of listening to lessons about 5-15 minutes of quality content. But Steve has already promised that the library usage and the search function will be improved further. So I am in good hope that I can continue listening to Spanish lessons that fit my personal criteria and I appreciate any lesson recomendations.
Fasulye
Have you tried the SpanishLingq podcasts? Those by Guillermo and Mariano are especially easy to listen to. These are in South American dialect. Also I like a lot of Alsuvi’s other lessons as well as podcasts from Radio Praga. Sorry not to post links. I don’t really know how in this new system to even find some of these things again! If you want to try anything I’ve mentioned and can’t find it, I’ll try a little harder to fingure out the links for them.
Jingle, to find the link for a lesson, you have to follow these steps.
In the Library you will see the Open button in each lesson description. Beside it is a down arrow. Click on it to see a list of options. Choose Email link and an email window opens up with the link. I know this is not as simple as it should be and we are going to simplify it I think.
The other, and easier option, is to share a lesson, wich then brings it to the attention of either all of us, or just your followers.
As the dust settles from our make over, we want to know what problems you are still having. What else do you have trouble finding?