LingQ pros and cons (Links & Internet Resources) Language Learning Forum

LingQ pros and cons
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Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources

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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6706 days ago
4250 posts - 5710 votes

Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
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Message 9 of 116

15 April 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged

hrhenry wrote:

Have you tried using Learning With Texts? It offers a lot of what LingQ offers, the cost being only your setup time (well, and looking for text). It offers some decent statistics on your progress, too.

Not yet! I haven't downloaded it but registered for an online account a while ago, but unfortunately I haven't had the time to use it.
1 person has voted this message useful

Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4806 days ago
3277 posts - 6779 votes

Speaks: Czech*, French^C2, English^C1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

Message 10 of 116

15 April 2012 at 1:26pm | IP Logged

I have tried LingQ and abndonned it. The thought is great but there are a few bugs. I
dislike the really limited amount of lingqs you can make in the free account. I think it
damages their business because many people will just leave instead of getting addicted
and wanting the other features. Perhaps a good middle way between this and unlimited
would be a few thousand slots. Secondly, I didn't like the efforts I would need to put in
unblueing the many words I know so I could use the tool for a language I am not a pure
beginner in. And third reason, I was getting spam.

Overall, good thought, certainly a good tool but the business style is burying it.
2 persons have voted this message useful

numerodix
Trilingual Hexaglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 6580 days ago
856 posts - 1226 votes

Speaks: English^C2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin

Message 11 of 116

15 April 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged

As others have said already, I too find the interface rather poor and not very convenient
to navigate. The idea of lingq is pretty cool, but the execution is so so.
4 persons have voted this message useful

Mae
Trilingual Octoglot
Pro Member
Germany
Joined 4788 days ago
299 posts - 499 votes

Speaks: German*, Spanish^C2*, Swiss-German*, French^C2, English^C2, Italian^B2, Dutch, Portuguese
Studies: Russian, Swedish
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Message 12 of 116

15 April 2012 at 2:38pm | IP Logged

I totally agree with what Cavesa said. I used LingQ to learn Russian and a bit of Portuguese. I quit after a few weeks, even if I had paid twice (2 months) for the "more Lingqs"-feature.
Problems:
1) The limited amount of Lingqs: Of course, they want you to pay for their services, but if you have a verb you want to learn, you will need one Lingq for every conjugated form. This is not a problem in a language like
English. In Russian there are many more forms, adding all the cases, prefixes and suffixes, etc. You get it...
2) I wanted to brush up other languages, and found it bothering, to "register" all the words I knew, to make the level I had fit to the word counting widget.
3) I helped translating the code for the website. Of course I volunteered to do this, but it would have been nice, if we got some extra points or extra Lingqs for the work we did!
4) The quality of the lessons has no standard (imo). A lesson for Portuguese consisted in a handful of foolproof sentences, where a telephone number needed to be repeated. Even for a beginner's level, this had nothing to do
with the beginner quality of some Russian learning lessons, which were quite demanding. I'm not complaining - I just wanted to point out that there are different authors and their lessons' quality is not comparable.

Wulfgar wrote:

Cons: 1) The message that many users take away is that the best way to learn a language is to read and listen and not worry about other skills. The reading and listening will take care of the other skills.
[...] This probably isn't the worst thing that could happen to a learner, but it's unbalanced and inefficient imo. I sort of knew how the owner claims to learn languages before I joined. He really talks up this extreme
method, but if you listen to him enough, you'll find out he does actually study grammar and converse too. Unfortunately, people take home the reading and listening only part, and assume the rest happens by itself.

That's exactly how I felt about too. Fair play?

Wulfgar wrote:

This is further propagated by many articles in the library. Anything with LingQ in the title will be full of this strange language learning technique brain washing. One of the first Russian lessons I opened,
for example, was something called “The lingQ Manifesto”. So bizarre.

There were many weird lessons! One of the Russian lessons I opened, seemed to be a translated baths catalogue...

Wulfgar wrote:

2) In the lingQ introductory video, the owner claims to have “learned 10 languages the lingQ way”. This is false, so it’s unfortunate he put it in his advertising.

I found this inopportune too, because this leads us back to your point #1: People are encouraged to learn languages with Lingq, Steve talks to them in his videos, and people think they can be led to the result of speaking
as good as Steve just reading and listening to Lingq lessons. Of course advanced language learners do not believe that a single technique can bring you this far. But newbies don't know it better.

Wulfgar wrote:

I don’t use points [...] because they expire. You have a limited amount of time to use them. Pretty much all the members hate this, and there are frequent threads arguing about this. Plain and simple – it’s a
shady business practice. [...] I bet they would make more money if they reversed the policy.

I knew that this wouldn't happen, so I just deleted my account. Instead I use several resources available on the internet for free, to complement my studies.

Summary: In the very beginning I was thrilled, but after using the tool for some time, I realised that it wasn't as good as I thought. I do not state that it is useless, it is just not for me. There are still too
many bugs. Lingq may be a good tool but - as jeff_lindqvist wrote - there is not much you can't find somewhere else on the web for free.

Edited by Mae on 15 April 2012 at 8:45pm
6 persons have voted this message useful

clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4975 days ago
1116 posts - 1367 votes

Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

Message 13 of 116

15 April 2012 at 6:02pm | IP Logged

Well, I like the idea a lot, but the way dictionary works could be improved :(

- the numbers are counted as separate words
- Proper nouns as well
- it does not conjugate the verbs to proper form.

1 person has voted this message useful

Švejk
Super Polyglot
Newbie
Canada
lingq.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4403 days ago
29 posts - 77 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese
Studies: Czech

Message 14 of 116

15 April 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged

I was alerted to this thread by google alerts and would like to comment, as the co-founder of LingQ.

1) I am glad that Wulfgar basically enjoys using LingQ although he has some issues.
2 I do believe that reading and listening, massive reading and listening and related vocab review, are the most
important language learning activities. They are also the easiest to arrange and the cheapest. This does not mean
that one need not refer to grammar, talk and write. It is just a matter of priority for me, especially in the beginning
stages. This is a reflection of my experience. All we try to do at LingQ is make these activities easier and more
efficient. Some people like this philosophy others don't. Some people like LingQ, others don't.
3) LingQ is simply an extension, a more efficient way, of doing the kinds of activities that I spent and still spend
most of my language learning time on, listening, reading and vocab review.
4) There are 20 languages at LingQ. It works better for some languages than others. I use it from time to time for
Japanese and Chinese and am happy, but it is not perfect. Few things in language learning are.
5)The points expiry issue comes up all the time. I do not think most of our learners are concerned about this.
Those that are concerned tend to comment on the forum. All of our lessons and content are given to us free of
charge and are available for free download. The lesson providers are compensated from confiscated points based
on usage. The points expire in 90 days. Members can buy as many or as few points as they want. They can even
donate unused points to their friends on the site. This system ensures that points are used, and provides income to
content providers. Not shady at all, just a system that we use.
5) The Forum could be improved, but with our limited resources, it is not a priority at this time.
6) Ditto for private messaging.
7) There is no need to click on each blue word. On your first few lessons you can eliminate all the blue words with
one click. Thereafter you can also use QuicklingQ to go after new blue words.
8) There is a wide selection of dictionaries for each language. For Korean the most popular one is Naver, which I
have used, and find quite good. Google translate is integrated and comes up immediately, but often is inaccurate.
9) The site was much clumsier in 2008. We are now in 2012 and many things have changed.
10) It is only after we reduced the number of free lingqs to 100 from 300, that we have seen a strong growth in
paid membership. We have to pay our programmers and other staff, so we prefer any approach that ensures us
enough revenue to operate.
11) We don't count numbers as words. Proper names and other unwanted words (non-target language etc. ) can be
eliminated from the count by the user.
12) It is easier to count each form of a word, since the definition of what should be included in a word family is
arbitrary. I prefer this anyway, and often , in fact, save different forms of the same verb or noun, for a variety of
reasons. Not everyone likes this approach, however, but we cannot always agree on everything. I have learned
Russian and Czech in this way and feel I have benefited. We cannot conjugate or decline words in different
languages, but "Le Conjugeur" and similar resources are available as reference and results can be stored in one's
word cards.
13) We do rely on members for translations of our interface, and we appreciate this help. There are lots and lots of
people doing this for us. It is too difficult to keep track of who did what in order to reward them with points.
14) Lesson quality is an issue. We have an enormous quantity of lessons. Members can rate them and alert us to
bad content, for us to cull. All lessons are free to the users, so it is just a matter of choosing lessons that you like.
The Library is one of many areas we will be improving over the next few months.
15) We do not censor opinions at our Forum. We essentially only censor spam, insults, and vulgarity. There may
have been the odd additional thread deleted but that is a rare happening, and it would certainly not be because of
negative opinions about LingQ. The oft recurring discussing about the points issue is one example.

4 persons have voted this message useful

lwtproject
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
https://learning-wit
Joined 4689 days ago
149 posts - 264 votes

Speaks: French, Dutch*, German, English, Mandarin
Studies: Italian

Message 15 of 116

15 April 2012 at 9:48pm | IP Logged

If you are not completely computer illiterate, try "Learning With Texts". It takes 15 minutes to install
(EasyPHP +LWT on Windows, MAMP + LWT on Mac OS X), but you have many advantages:

1. Much faster than LingQ because it runs on your computer
2. More flexibility and adaptability than LingQ (e.g. dictionaries)
3. Study all languages that are written with Unicode characters, not only the few that LingQ offers, even Right-to-
Left script!
4. Complete tag support for texts and words to better organize your material/learning
5. Export to Anki and other programs, import your words from LingQ and other sources
6. Save 10 US$ per month
7. Nevertheless, you may use LingQ's library with a free LingQ account, just copy & paste the content, and link to
the LingQ audio file
8. Many people like it: read many reviews here
9. Last but not least - no silly avatars!
10. It just works: bug-free since October '11!

Download and all instructions: LINK.

Enjoy the totally free and open-source "LWT", and let it bring your language learning to the next level!

Quote:

We do not censor opinions at our Forum.

Mentioning LWT in the LingQ forum causes the post or even the whole thread to be immediately removed (= censored). But that's
OK for me - I am only a silent reader @LingQ from time to time.

Edited by lwtproject on 15 April 2012 at 10:22pm
12 persons have voted this message useful

math82
Newbie
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5224 days ago
17 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian

Message 16 of 116

15 April 2012 at 10:13pm | IP Logged

I've used LinkQ as my main tool in learning for just over a year and found it great. Yes, there's some clunkyness in the navigation, and some inconsistent lessons in the library, but overall the I think the method is solid. Any place I find audio and text, I know I can use it learn at LinkQ.

Of course I use some external materials to check grammar, and practice speaking elswhere, butI think it's a very affordable system. Steve is always available on the forums to answer questions. Complaints about lack of free LinkQs? Well you're saying "why can't I use this for free?".

LinkQ counts every individual form of the word? Okay, so your word count is just a rough guide. Linguists recognise that it's hard to define exactly what a "word" is, maybe give LinkQ a break for not giving a decisive anwser : )

1 person has voted this message useful

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