When processing any phrase, keep an eye out for any and every useful sub-phrase.
This does not mean that all phrase should be broken down into smaller phrases rather than words, but it does mean that you should keep an eye out for smaller phrases which we may be missing. These can sometimes be easily created at the time you are dealing with a larger phrase, by simply creating differently chopped versions of the larger recording .
Example 1: The phrase "a balloon is normally round" is a perfectly valid and useful phrase. It is short enough that it is correctly broken down into individual words and does not follow the page about handling long phrases. However, there are useful sub-phrases which this sentence can and should make you think of, i.e.:
- a balloon
- normally round
Example 2: The phrase "a camel can survive for several days without drinking". Again, this is perfectly correctly broken down into words. There are though other sub-phrases which this phrase can inspire, e.g.:
- a camel
- can survive
- several days
- without drinking
Indeed, there are even more sub-phrases which still make perfect sense in their own right which could also be considered, e.g.:
- days without drinking
- several days without drinking
There are 2 thoughts which you should keep in mind:
- all unique sensible sub-phrases have learning value for the student
- the shorter the phrase, the more useful to more students
All unique sensible sub-phrases have learning value for the student
When saying "sensible", what this means is that there are sub-phrases which are not really forming a complete thought, e.g.:
- a camel can...
- can survive several...
The shorter the phrase, the more useful to more students
The most valuable page for a student is the page for a single word. Vocabulary is at the heart of language learning, and so students will naturally learn individual words first. An individual word can be thought of having word length 1 (mostly they do have length 1, but there are some compound words, like chambermaid, which are made up of several words).
The next most useful are phrases of 2 or 3 words. Phrases like "a beautiful dog", he does, plain water, nine o'clock are fantastic as they give the student the next step up from individual vocabulary items to simple phrases with just 2 or 3 words.
The general aim should be to make sure that Lingopolo has all the useful 2-3 word phrases in priority over longer phrases. All 3-4 word phrases should be in place in priority to longer phrases etc. Of course, when doing dialogues, by definition we are dealing with phrases which are much longer than this. The aim though, when adding such dialogues, is to keep an eye out for all the shorter phrases which might need to be added to Lingopolo.
If you are working on a long phrase and notice a missing shorter phrase, add it before you forget.