Hi LingQ Community! I just hit 100 days using LingQ for Spanish learning and also just reached the Intermediate 1 level. I’ve found reading posts from other learners really helpful and inspiring, so hopefully this can provide that to someone else!
I’ll start by saying I really love this program! I took 4 years of high school Spanish and 1 year in college (many years ago - before the internet!), but I never felt like I learned much and definitely have described myself as “bad at learning languages.” But over the past year, I took trips to Mexico and Colombia and I really wanted to be able to communicate with the locals while I was there.
When I got home from Colombia this summer, I started researching how to best learn a foreign language as an adult and those readings eventually led me here. I honestly can’t believe how quickly my Spanish reading has improved in just over 3 months!
I realized about a month into it that I needed to add a lot more listening to my learning, so I now aim for 30 minutes/day of listening and 20-30 minutes of reading. I am planning on adding Italki in the next couple of months. We’re going back to Mexico in April and I’m excited to see how much better I can communicate this time!
Question for the community — so far I have only used materials in the LingQ library. I would love suggestions for easy Intermediate podcasts or YouTube channels, so I can try importing things myself. I love history, psychology, and travel as potential topics. I would also love to try a young adult novel or two, if anyone has fun ideas about that!
Totally open for questions/comments if anyone has any. Happy to be part of this learning community!
Well done, it’s really encouraging to read this. I am around a month and a bit in and feel I am making more progress now I have started using Lingq. I initially tried to follow the Dreaming Spanish formula of just watching their videos but I am not convinced it’s efficient for an adult learner. Being able to hear and see the transcript suits me much more. Being a newbie, I do not feel qualified to offer any advice but I am aware Dreaming Spanish do intermediate videos that are said to be really good. I am going through their beginner videos that someone uploaded to Lingq and find them much more digestible with the transcript. Good luck with your Spanish journey and thanks for sharing your progress update.
I’m the same way in desiring audio + transcript in order to keep me interested enough and make progress. I’ll use the desktop version and import YouTube videos with subtitles and listen/watch and read at the same time, pausing if I can’t keep up with LingQing new words. My goal usually is to get to the point of being able to understand native videos and podcasts on news, current events, history, etc. which really interest me as a politico junkie, so I usually will just use simpler language learning materials until I reach that level. My level with Spanish is low, but since I know Portuguese, I can generally follow most of it. One podcast series that has really helped me jump up a level very quickly in a few languages is the Easy Languages podcasts–you can import the mp3 of the podcast and transcript for each podcast if you go to the relevant Patreon page and pay for a subscription. I think it’s worth doing this around the upper A1/lower A2 level to help you jump quickly, at least with Romance languages. I’ve used this approach for Easy Catalan, Easy French and am now doing it for Easy Spanish. They may not always be topics that appeal to you, but I think the friendly banter between two natives on an intermediate level is helpful for upping knowledge quickly. I also like that they come out weekly (or so) and are only about 20 minutes long, which makes it more manageable at the beginning. For Spanish, I also like the Radio Ambulante podcasts, though they are more challenging. Another one with free transcripts I’ve enjoyed from time to time is Spanish Language Coach (google it) who has some interesting podcasts at different levels.
Thanks for your message! So glad to hear this was inspiring for someone! I have read the Dreaming Spanish beginner content and it was good for adding a lot of new vocabulary. I think my favorite beginner level podcasts that are already in the LingQ library are Unlimited Spanish and Un Día Español. I found those were ones that I could listen to multiple times without getting too bored.
Really appreciate the specific suggestions of content! That’s exactly what I was hoping to get from this post. I’ll take a look. I guess it’s time to learn the import function!
