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LingQ pros and cons | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| Švejk Super Polyglot Newbie Canada lingq.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4604 days ago 29 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Czech | Message 97 of 116 19 April 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
1) With regard to dictionaries, for German alone you can choose from about 35 dictionaries. You can make one of them your default dictionary and have a few others set up for easy access. There are at least two dictionaries for German that are conjugating dictionaries. The number of dictionaries will vary from language to language. If a user asks us to add a dictionary we do so wherever possible. 2) You can change the word or term that you want to save to your flash card. There is a little pencil beside the term in your card, you just click on it to edit. These are the kinds of issues that arise at our forums and we try to respond as best we can. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Mae Trilingual Octoglot Pro Member Germany Joined 4989 days ago 299 posts - 499 votes Speaks: German*, SpanishC2*, Swiss-German*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, ItalianB2, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Swedish Personal Language Map | Message 98 of 116 19 April 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, I guess you mean my comments. Švejk, I wrote that it was nothing personal. I just found that you couldn't participate to a discussion without being absolutely impartial, since Lingq is you "baby", and you must have economical interests too. I do not say that this is reprehensible, just that it does not allow you to be impartial. That's it.
Yes, I've read the answers too. If you read my complete posts, you must have noticed that I didn't say it was a bad tool and that I'd never use it again. And here is a specific question. In your first post you said:
Not all lessons are frequented equally, and of course each lesson has different content. What I missed a little bit was a defined standard on all lessons. I have had conversation with other (very popular) polyglots about this level issue, finding that it could be the weakest point of LingQ at the moment. I am willing to rejoin and also to pay for the extras if there was a standard level for all lessons. Of course, there were lessons I liked, but for learning it is much more relevant that they are useful than funny. I might like a lesson, but what if it doesn't help me to make any progress? Please, do not believe that I want to talk this project down. You deserve a lot of respect for starting a project with limited resources, to pass on your experience with language learning. Hopefully I will not end in the "hate"-corner, because such kind of struggles between polyglots are unproductive and nothing but a waste of time and energy, one could use better for language learning. Peace? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Švejk Super Polyglot Newbie Canada lingq.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4604 days ago 29 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Czech | Message 99 of 116 19 April 2012 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Not all lessons are frequented equally, and of course each lesson has different content. What I missed a little bit was a defined standard on all lessons. I have had conversation with other (very popular) polyglots about this level issue, finding that it could be the weakest point of LingQ at the moment. I am willing to rejoin and also to pay for the extras if there was a standard level for all lessons. Of course, there were lessons I liked, but for learning it is much more relevant that they are useful than funny. I might like a lesson, but what if it doesn't help me to make any progress? Please, do not believe that I want to talk this project down. You deserve a lot of respect for starting a project with limited resources, to pass on your experience with language learning. Hopefully I will not end in the "hate"-corner, because such kind of struggles between polyglots are unproductive and nothing but a waste of time and energy, one could use better for language learning. Peace? [/QUOTE] The library is an area that we are now working on improving. It is my view that to progress in a language, we primarily need content of interest, more or less at our level, to listen to and read. In my experience, if a lesson is interesting, it will be useful. Our interests vary over time, so we will eventually cover a wider and wider range of subject matter, acquiring the necessary vocabulary. There are lessons that specifically focus on certain aspects of language structure and grammar points, at varying levels of difficulty and all in the target language. Some lessons contain additional notes, explanations, videos, translations and resources to help the learner. It depends on what the lesson creator provided. In all cases we need to make it easier for people to find what they want. We will also add more structure, in other words, more advice on what to study and in what order. These are just some of the things we are working on to make the library better. I don't know if that answers your question. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mae Trilingual Octoglot Pro Member Germany Joined 4989 days ago 299 posts - 499 votes Speaks: German*, SpanishC2*, Swiss-German*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, ItalianB2, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Swedish Personal Language Map | Message 100 of 116 19 April 2012 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, it does. Thank you for answering.
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| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5558 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 101 of 116 20 April 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hallo Svejk
The ridiculous thing about this whole discussion, is that Wulfgar basically gave Lingq an excellent review.
and then went on to list a handfull of specific points that detracted from it's superbness. You could have just said: "Thank you very much". It's a while since Lingq got a mention here, and I imagine you must have had a bit of traffic from the free advertising. But from the whole tone of the debate, you would think we all hate it. In fact Lingq almost always gets good reviews, probably better than any other language site. And for most of the members here, text plus audio is exactly what we want as our basic language learning resources. (Naturally, there are a few other aspects, but I don't personally think that everything needs to be available on the same site). I accept that any misunderstandings of the operation of Lingq needed to be corrected (like being able to remove all the blue words with a single click) but the volume of your responses was a bit overwhelming, and at times snidey, as no doubt you find mine, but then I don't have a product that I want you to use. :) You were also dissmissive of a couple of long standing complaints that people seem to be quite bitter about, and are *frequently* mentioned on your own forums: the points issue, and recognition for vouluntary help. You really either need to find a solution or a better justification for such a sensitive issue. You also started a thread on your own forum, presumably to encourage the other members to respond here. The first comment from a member said "I read that thread. same old" Do you not see the ridiculousnes of that comment? Can you imagine a commercial enterprise being succesful by saying "We got a load of criticism, but it's just exactly the same old stuff we've been getting for the last 4 years, so I think we can safely ignore it. Now onto important business. Does anyone have any idea why more new members aren't signing up?" And the yet ridiculouser part is, that we're your natural target audience. You should be begging us to tell you exactly what we don't like about it, so that you can fix it, especially for us, but instead you act as if we're some sort of rivals, that you need convince of the wonderfulness of your system by beating us into submission. It's possibly a little unfair to hold you responsible for the words and opinions of your members (but you did start that thread, and they do tend to follow your tone and opinions) but do you really think that anyone from this forum will be encouraged to join your site after reading the negative sentiment expressed in that thread? You should be starting threads called "Hug HTLAL day" or something. Less "Taliban", more "Hearts and Minds". edit: Sorry for bad spelling/typing. This screen is too small + other excuses Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 April 2012 at 3:30pm 17 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5558 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 102 of 116 20 April 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The trouble with topics like this is, once you start, you keep getting sucked further in.
BTW: At the moment, I don't use Lingq much because I don't have broadband, but I have listened to quite a lot of their material in the past, and if I live long enough to start another language, would use it more in the future. In my view, Ling has an underlying problem with it's basic philosophy. it doesn't know if it's Svejk's plaything (with consequent dictatorial rights), a friendly democratic community helping each other, with "giving" or "sharing" just for the pleasure of it (like lang-8 or tatoeba), or a commercial enterprise. At the moment, they try to emphasise the community aspect, encouraging everyone to contribute material, but at the same, members (and administrators) in the forums are always making snidey comments about people wanting stuff for free, while causing resentment (as mentioned before) by exploiting the members and contributors, through the points expiring, or not being rewarded for work done. The community idea is a nice starting point. For example, if any HTLAL member contributed lessons, I would definitely look at them. But I think it would no longer be relevant if Linq becomes really successful, as there will be simply too many mmembers (eg at Lang-8, there isn't so much a community feeling, you have to find your own friends in the mass) One of the most annoying issues is the constant bitching about Benny. Whether they think they are a community, or a commercial enterprise, constantly slagging off the hero of (probably?) the most widely followed language blog on the planet, isn't a very sensible strategy, irrespective of whether you think he is a charlatan, or even if he actually is. (And all the bloody time. Please, just stop it. Really.) If they actually read Benny's blog and forum (which, apart from the titles, they appear not to feel the need to do) they would realise that many/most of Benny's followers actually are also seeking perfectly conventional learning materials, and are more potential customers. One of the reasons I do visit Lingq at the moment, is because the German forum is much more active than here (although I don't dare post - they're too good), and the best thing about the German forum is "Ilovelanguages" aka Robert from Austria Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 April 2012 at 3:42pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Švejk Super Polyglot Newbie Canada lingq.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4604 days ago 29 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Czech | Message 103 of 116 20 April 2012 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In fact, this thread started with a post from Wulfgar, in which he acknowledged that he found LingQ useful, and
then presented 5 or 6 specific issues that bothered him. This was followed by 8 or 9 posts by others with criticism or complaints about LingQ, some of which referred to their experience 3 or 4 years ago. I have summarized in a post above here what the main points raised were, and how I responded to them. I don't understand why some people feel that we at LingQ are obliged to change our ways of doing things in response to comments at HTLAL, nor why the many people who comment on our forum are obliged to conform to the wishes of people here. None of the contributors to our forum are spokespeople for LingQ. Anyone here at HTLAL is welcome to comment on a LingQ forum, and to engage members of our community in any discussion they want. We don't control what people say. They don't all follow "my tone". We often have debates on any number of issues, and no one is censored for their opinions. We have discussed the points issue at our forum, which is really where this discussion belongs. Points are either purchased or earned. Points are like tuition fees, required only for interacting with a tutor. At a school you pay your tuition fees up front, and they are gone whether you attend class or not. At LingQ you can buy as few points as you want or need. You can buy just enough for one discussion with a tutor and buy them just before you sign up. Once you have bought them you have to use them within three months, or give them away to other members. It has been our experience that this encourages more activity with our tutors. Without this constraint, users tend to hoard their points. Points are also earned, either from the use of content in the library, or from providing tutor services. Since the points earned from content come from the confiscated points, people who earn points that way would, without points confiscation, earn no points. Tutors can convert their points into cash, but there is a minimum level they need to reach in order to be able to cash in. Some tutors only want the points to use on the site. It is our view that the points expiry system in fact generates more activity for our tutors. If points are unused, as I said, they can also be gifted to other members. All things considered, we still feel that for the majority of users of the site, the points system serves its purposes. I any case, the proper place for this discussion is really our forum at LingQ. Re compensation for translation, there are many, many people who have contributed to translating and continue to do so. It is difficult to keep track of all the people who translate different parts of the interface into the 15 or so languages, and most of these people are happy to help out. It would be very expensive to pay for all of this translation so we greatly appreciate the help. This is not so unusual on the internet. LingQ is first and foremost a place where people come to learn languages. There are a number of ways in which people help each other, and it starts with the content that is provided every month for up to 20 languages. This is available to anyone for free download. The access to this vast resource of audio and text content, at different levels of difficulty, for 20 languages, represents by far the largest use of LingQ. It is free. All of the infrastructure to support these free resources, and for the learning functionality and community functions at LingQ had to be conceived, and implemented by people. These people work full time, and therefore need to be compensated. There are constant changes and improvements, bug fixes, and adaptation to new technology and changes in browsers. This is a lot of work. Therefore LingQ is necessarily a commercial enterprise, since we have no other source of funding. I believe in free debate and discussion. I present my views in a straight forward manner, and welcome people to disagree with me. That does not mean that I expect to persuade anyone, nor that I am necessarily persuaded by what others say. The essence of discussion is not persuasion, but a diversity of views, which stimulates thought and further discussion. Schoenewaleder may not want some of our members to talk about Benny, or to express their views of HTLAL, but that is not something that he/she can control, nor something that I want to control. I can assure you we exercise far less control or pressure on what people say and how they say it at the LingQ forums, than is the case here at HTLAL. Edited by Švejk on 20 April 2012 at 5:36pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5558 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 104 of 116 20 April 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is it you think we are censoring? I must admit, I try to exercise a little self-censorship whenever the subject of Benny comes up - we have threads on him too, just not so often, and they usually spiral out of control into personal abuse - but apart from that, as far as I'm aware, there are just the usual rules about being polite, and not making personal attacks. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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