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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| JayR9 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4703 days ago 155 posts - 162 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 19 17 January 2014 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello and thank you for all your replies. I really do appreciate all your feedback.
It seems italki is the more popular one. I have courses at home to use such as Assimil, pimsleur or Michel Thomas but just wanted to get something else to help go alongside one of them that I choose. Thank you all again 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 19 17 January 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well they're different. At least italki is quite different from LingQ from what I know.
It's like asking what is more tasty: strawberries, chocolate or soup. Edited by Serpent on 17 January 2014 at 7:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3972 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 11 of 19 24 January 2014 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a paying member of LingQ, and I have been a paying member for most of the last few years. The major strength of LingQ for me is its retention of the meanings of words. Look it up once, the system remembers, so the next time you run across that word, hovering the mouse over the word reveals its meaning. This frees you up to do extensive reading without constant referencing a dictionary (except at the start, of course). I found it took me about a year of extensive reading to get up to a comfortable level of reading a couple of languages for which I already had the fundamentals in.
Notes: I am a reader, not a talker, and don't care to become a fluent speaker in another language. I believe LingQ works well for the "main-stream" European languages. There seem to be a lot of members who study Spanish, Russian, German and French, though I do not know the numbers. From the comments of other members, I conclude that LingQ works but not well for Mandarin and Japanese. The stumbling block is the difficulty in separating "words" in those languages. (A difficulty not confined to LingQ, by the way.) In any event, LingQ provides no real help for absolute beginners of any language, and buying a small grammar book is recommended. In addition, LingQ provides no instruction in writing or reading Chinese or Japanese characters. LingQ does not have adequate library materials for what it labels "beta" languages, and for a few of the "alpha" languages adequate library materials are also lacking. (In other words, you will have to find your own learning materials). LingQ reduced the 100-word limit to 20-words. The site admin claims 20 words are enough to lure someone in, and that more than 20 words lure no more people to sign up. Speaking for myself, a mere 20 words would never have lured me to sign up. Beware that LingQ is rather elaborate and not bug-free. (The software that apes LingQ's basic functionality is less elaborate and has fewer bugs, but it is decidedly not bug-free itself. I know because I have tried it.) So far as I know, there is no limitation on the number of materials a non-paying member can use. Consequently, there is no limitation on the number of materials a non-paying member can "borrow" from LingQ (though frankly, even if no one is asking me, IMHO to do so is unethical: some members put a lot of effort into providing learning materials). Bottom Line(s): (1) I am glad I found LingQ and definitely consider my money well spent. (2) I would not recommend LingQ for learning Mandarin. I base that solely on what I hear other members saying or claiming, because I do not study Mandarin myself. Unfortunately, with the 20-word limit there is no way for you to find out yourself. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 19 24 January 2014 at 6:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you seen Learning with Texts? does LingQ have any advantages over it?
I don't get how borrowing other people's content is more unethical than borrowing a book from the library. If someone wants only paying members to use the content, they should make it paid. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3972 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 13 of 19 24 January 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, I have seen and used Learning with Texts (LWT). I go back and forth about my answer to your question. LingQ's advantages are
(1) by using LingQ, you have LingQ's servers as storage and backup for your lessons. (LWT requires the user to back up his or her own data) (2) Questions about lessons or language usage can be posed to the creator of the lesson or to other LingQ members. (3) LingQ offers tutorial services (correcting writing, conversations, and the like): disclaimer: I myself rarely use such services. *[(2) and (3) make for one-stop shopping with LingQ, whereas with LWT if one wants those services, one must seek elsewhere (italki, lang8, and so on).] (4) Something relatively new with LingQ is a Notes section, which is handy for adding metadata to definitions. (5) As far as I can tell, the developer of LWT is too busy to respond to many user questions, and, again as far as I can tell, has not responded to any questions in several months. Responses almost always come rather quickly from LingQ's staff (though solutions to problems do not always come as quickly; or even ever). (6) LingQ does not require an installation (installing LWT requires several discrete steps and may seem rather daunting, but if the steps are followed exactly and precisely, LWT installs rather easily; for those who do not want to install LWT on their own machines, a fellow calling himself Benny the Irish Polyglot hosts LWT on his site; I used it briefly and only to a small extent, but I can say that it did work at that time). (7) Services are paid for by points with Lingq, and even a membership can be paid for with points. Points are earned by tutoring and by creating and uploading lessons that get used. In theory, a member would never have to pay a dime for LingQ; in practice, I suspect only a small handful can do so. To sum up, I prefer LingQ to LWT and I consider LingQ to be cheap at $10 per month. Other former LingQ members I know disagree, sometimes strongly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 19 24 January 2014 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, this could be seen as a disadvantage since nobody knows how long LingQ (or any other website) will last. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 19 24 January 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
And that's before we look at the availability of materials at LingQ - I tried it when I started learning Portuguese, but I'm focusing on European and it was all Brazilian there. And the site made my Firefox crash every single time. (if anyone cares, maybe it's better with MemoryFox add-on?) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 19 25 January 2014 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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a sidenote: welcome, Mork the Fiddle, you're a treasure. If I could, I would give you more lik...usefuls. :-)
Well 10 dollars, that doesn't only depend on where do you live but as well what kind of job do you have (or you are a student like me :-( ), whether you feed a family etc. I think the price/value ratio is a tricky thing to guess beforehand when it comes to most software tools as everybody (except for the winrar makers, thanks for that though) understands how important are first impressions and advertising. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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