This was a really informative thread. Very inspiring when I found it 10-11 months ago actually. I think it would be great if LingQ or Steve Kaufman had power users like you on their youtube channel to do an interview after 12 months of LingQ usage to discuss the process you used, LingQs role, suggestions for improvements for the platfotm, and in the end what types of content was most valuable and also useless for you to use. Thanks for your contribution to the LingQ forum!
I think for this thread alone you herbm deserve a free renewal, if not a lifetime subscription. Thank you.
Amen to that. Herbm is brilliant. Nice chap, too.
The most important step was learning the 5000 most common words using Anki (though which flashcard/SRS you use isn’t critical). I did this in the 1st 1 to 3 months. (1 month for first pass).
LingQ worked best over the long term for me because the gamification kept me “playing” and I enjoyed the reading (read about a dozen full books and a bunch of other things).
Doing the OLD (not web based) Glossika was highly effective, very time consuming, and eventually I stopped (after a couple of months).
Watching TV/Movies (and YouTube) was almost always fun and helped some.
RosettaStone was extremely helpful and was a positive influence on my accent.
Learning that “prosody” was at least as important as phonemes for pronunciation was amazingly helpful.
Failure to find consistent determined speaking partners was my greatest failure.
The best way to do language exchange it to speak you target language while your counter-part speaks your language – almost exclusively, except when something needs explaining. Almost no one understands this simple, demonstrable fact.
Thank you (and all those who responded) for all the kind words and encouragement.
Currently I am reading “Deep Work” en Francais using LingQ simply as an assistive reader.
Wow, great job! Im really impressed by your commitment and hard work! Im currently also learning french and I`m wondering where you got these 5000 most common vocabs from? Because I´m always looking for these, but also hesitant to use some of these public anki decks, especially when they got no rating. Could you tell me, whether you created your own deck with the help of some word list or whether you downloaded a deck from anki? That would be super helpful, thanks in advance!
A word count in general can not always be as true as we want the count to be. There are so many cognates and proper nouns that do not reflect words we would truly be using.
I teach English as a Second Language and feel that your methods are all over the place. I would sit down and evaluate all of the programs and stuff that you are collecting for your language learning. You need to take out a pencil and strike out a few programs and ideas until you complete some of your programs. You might be collection a great deal of words but all of those words might not be in the same focus areas. thus leaving you with huge holes and the inability to have a quality conversation on a specific topic.
Daily
LingQ 30-60 minutes per day
Rosetta Stone 30 minutes per day
TV Shows or Podcast 60 minutes per day
Audio book 30-60 minutes
Weekly
Talking with people via zoom or skype 60 minutes
Writing 60 minutes
Reading book with audio book 30-60 minutes
Anki 30 minutes (space repetition should be spaced out every few days)
Define 1 focus area that you will study for at least 30 days. I am currently studying about the ocean. Therefore, everything I ready and watch should have vocabulary that is similar. After 30 days I start a new focus area but continue to reactivate prior knowledge of an old focus area once a week through videos, tv shows, podcast, or language exchange.
What is your daily lingq goal?