Why don't people create more LingQs?

Open Forum
1

I am an avid LingQer. I am in second place here at LingQ. But when I look at the activities of many our members I see that most of them do not create many LingQs. I often wonder why that is. I LingQ a lot and go through a lot of lessons and happily click on “I Know All” even when I don’t know all. I find that this keeps me moving through interesting content, which I listen to, and it gives me a lot of yellow words to review when I read new lessons, whether from our library or from the Internet. How can we persuade members to “get LingQing”?

Here, from the Friends area, is the list of the leading LingQers. (Bravo to Jeff, by the way).

jeff_lindqvist66381
steve48940
skyblueteapot46808
mikola37486
yan1337007
alleray34677
dillemme28886
hape28610
zenithm25147
blackydierennmaus24926
crowderd24622
inchaur21465
peterlaunonen21053
adalbertolito20790
Aineko20598
klc3620312
_MissTake_19751
contextkid19212
nobuo17640
michal17294
gregloby16443

2

For me, I think a way of marking where I last left off in the text and audio would be useful.

I often have only 5 minutes here and there to LingQ. So I will read/listen to a paragraph or two and then I have to close the window and do something else. Presently if I want to remember where I left off, I have to do a screen shot and save it to my desktop. Then, the next time I want to LingQ, I have to 1) be at the same computer2) I have to open the screen shot as well as Lingq, 3) I have to navigate to the lesson 4)scroll to where I left off based on the screenshot 5) Locate the right place in the audio.

If this bookmarking effect were made easier, IE I could do it with one or 2 clicks and return to the same place in 1 or 2 clicks , I would be much more likely to decide that this or that 5 or 10 minutes I will Lingq, because I would have the feeling that I am pecking away and making progress rather than spending time clicking to find where I left off (or endlessly starting lessons without finishing them).

3

Geniale! Je l’essayerai!

4

Comme dooo a dit, geniale! Moi, je l’essayerai aussi!

For those who didn’t follow, MissTake is suggesting that Ed simply highlight the last row he reaches in the text and creates a LingQ for it. Then, look for it the long LingQ the next time he opens the lesson and remove it. He can even add a note in the hint field like “start from here” or enter the audio location time.

Great suggestion! We will also think about how this bookmarking might be done in a built in way but in the meantime this will work.

5

I think people with advanced handsets/gadgets would tend to LingQ more.

6

Bookmarking is no problem for me. Since I’m working on the text from the very beginning, I create LingQs in that order (I also click “Known” a few times on the way). At some time I might take a break, and whenever I get back (later in the day, or the day after), I start LingQing where the first blue word appears. How hard can it be?

7

I don´t do a lot of LingQ-ing because I am extremely lazy (although the Quick LingQs function is an absolute boon, especially for us lazies). Like Jeff, I have no difficulty finding my place. The suggestion of how to record the audio position is so useful: un grand ‘merci’!

8

Excellent question Steve.

I find the LingQs system quite amazing. You have the words you LingQ highlighted in yellow with the definition and a hint. That is almost a time-free reviews of those words in a text. More important, you save a lot of time not having to go in paper dictionnary or having to create a flashcard in a software.

The review system work well and the option of getting an email each day with a set amount of random LingQs makes the review of the vocabulary quite easy.

As far as I concern I have no problem at all, LingQing all the unknown words and not having a single new word add into my total at the end of a lesson. LingQing gives no immediate reward but in the long term it will pay off.

Setting a small ritual to review your LingQ can be easy. For my part, I review it when I eat my breakfast and drink my coffee after my shower. I am relax and instead of reading a newspaper, I LingQ.

9

The LingQ system is amazing, but why keep tabs on members’ lingqs. I mean really, isn’t this site about learning language according to one’s own agenda, standard, method? Are we learning or competing for the LingQ crown?

10

I don’t think I go through content quickly enough to create that many LingQs. Also, perhaps I need to find more difficult content.

11

Yvette,

You make a good point. However, remote learning is difficult, and there is a lot of attrition, because we do not have the stimulus of classmates.

Some people are quite self-motivated and do not care about their own statistics let alone about what others are doing. On the other hand, many others do follow their own stats and watch what others are doing.

We do many things to encourage our members, and prevent “attrition”. Not the least of which is our community, many of whom, including yourself, are active on the Forum. LingQ offers a number of features, learning features, community features, and you are welcome to take from it what you want.

I will be trying to encourage people to LingQ more, because I do believe it is very effective. Many people do not realize that keep up to their targets is a great way to get ahead in their language.

Yes Angela, it is sometimes a good idea to challenge yourself with more difficult content, or at least to vary the difficulty level, do some easy stuff and then some more difficult. That is what I do. With the difficult lessons I learn new words, and with the easy content I reinforce what I already know.

1 Like
12

Yvette: I understand and agree with your point about not being in a competition for a LingQ crown but, with all my respect, I think you misunderstand Steve intention.

Let me try to give you another perspective on his question: Why don’t people create more LingQs?

With that question in mind, I can derive a set of sub-questions.

  • Is the LingQ system work properly ?
  • Do the users know how to use it ?
  • Do people use another flashcard program, if so why ?
  • How users not using LingQ learn new vocabularies ?

The answers of the principal question and the others will help him improve the current LingQ system or maybe create a new feature.

Also, I find that it make sense for him to try to get people LingQing as his site and his system is base upon that. That doesn’t mean users can’t workaround the proposed system or use only a portion of the feature offered nor that it means Steve is against such an use of LingQ.

It’s the way I view things, if I am wrong I am sure Steve will correct me.

13

I dont know how you ( steve ) can lingq as fast as you do … =p. I love the lingq system and its motivating but i find it a bit tedious to create lingqs ( even with the new quick lingq method). Reason being, I make my own lingqs for each word. I just cant get myself to use other peoples “hints”. I have to personally go through each single word and make sure the hint is correct or satisfying for me. Reason why i dont trust other user hints is because many times ( in korean) i already know the word and i look at the user hints and more often then not the hint is either incorrect or completely off or doesnt mean anything to me. Soo lingqing is a very very slow for me. And when i have a lesson with 200+ unknown words It might take me 3-5 different lingqing sessions.

I wish i could lingq like steve though =p.

14

Both Grunts and keroro make good points. It is worthwhile looking at how different people use the system.

In my own case, I consider listening, reading and LingQing as my main learning tasks.I want to expose myself to as much content as possible in my target language, listening and reading. I want to see as many yellow previously highlighted LingQs as possible in my texts, so I LingQ a lot. Listening and reading get me used to the language, and seeing the yellow highlighted LingQs helps my brain notice the words and phrases that I want to learn.

I do not worry about how accurate the Hints are. My understanding of the scope of meaning of a word and how it is used will only improve over time. I don’t mind things being a little foggy. So I create LingQs, and if the User Hint is irrelevant or the dictionary definition makes no sense, I really do not mind. If I am totally perplexed, in Korean say, where the dictionary is often of no help, I may delete the LingQ. But in Russian, I take it and move on, in the confidence that things will be clearer in the future.

The main thing is to cover my texts with yellow highlighted LingQs. This is not only great on the website, but is especially important when reading on my iPad, because there only the yellow words can be clicked on for meaning.

I occasionally review flash cards, occasionally talk or even less frequently write. I sometimes, but not often , check up some point of grammar, but rarely. Mostly I just listen, read and LingQ.

My “LingQs created” is an indication of how active I have been, and my “Known Words”, however inaccurate, is an indication of my progress, because it tracks my exposure to the language. I know from experience that exposure, just like erosion by wind or the rain, gradually and inexorably leads to progress in the language.

15

I should clarify a little further. I speak in Russian, and if I were not so lazy I would write more. I benefit a lot from speaking and seeing my report. It gets me thinking of the words that I could not find, and I then notice them more in my reading and listening. On the other hand, at the present level in my Korean learning, I have no desire to confront by ineptness by speaking to tutor.

16

Just watched your Cantonese speaking video (and a few others). Laughing my ass off - not that you are not good, but that you are very colloquial and good.

17

太过奖

18

i already know the word and i look at the user hints and more often then not the hint is either incorrect or completely off or doesnt mean anything to me
I agree with you, Kekoro. Yesterday I created a video for the second lesson of ‘Russian from scratch’ collection, and decided to check how this video embedded to the lesson. Accidentally I clicked ‘Quick lingqs’ instead of ‘’. And I saw hints for Russian letter ‘ё’ (pronounced as yo). The first hint for if (250+ hits!) was ‘your’. But, ‘ё’ does not neither mean ‘your’ nor sound like ‘your’ (it is completely different sounds, believe me, my English tutor always points out that I mispronounce ‘your’, ‘girl’, ‘learn’).

19

We are going to do something about the incorrect hints issue. We are soon going to be building a system for flagging incorrect hints so that an administrator can then check and remove these incorrect hints. We do recognize that it is an issue.

20

If you’re going to worry about your Lings completely nailing the exact meaning in context, it will rapidly become an onerous chore and very demotivating.

Like Steve, I really don’t care too much about the exact meaning, as long as I have a “flavour” of it and it improves my comprehension; the user hints are great for this. Later on, I may choose to fine tune the meaning when I see the LingQ again in another context. This process I believe helps get the word in your brain, albeit passively at first but stronger with repeated exposure.

I LingQ like a lunatic. Even words I already probably know I will LingQ anyway (especially if there’s a user hint). I don’t think you can over-LingQ. If I worried about getting the exact meaning every time I would certainly under-LingQ and so not make the same rapidity of progress.