What I’ve experienced is that LingQ is not easy to find. I stumbled upon it accidently.
I can only speak for Germany. The situation is that there are a lot of well known language learning sites. The other problem is that language learning in schools is well established in Germany. There are a lot of school books from a good quality. My daughter is learning English and she’s started with French too. Every student at secondary school / grammar school has to learn 2 languages. I don’t like the way they teach it because they focus a lot on grammar and spelling from the beginning. But it seems impossible for me to change this.
For adults there are lots of community colleges and the language courses are the most popular ones. The problem is that most people are not used to learn languages on their own. And if they want to do it they’ll buy usually books with CDs (what I did before I discovered LingQ) or they’ll find busuu or babbel. I guess these two are the most popular language learning pages in Germany.
It’s a difficult situation. You have to spread the word about LingQ. But I assume that it is not possible only with the viral effect. I can’t tell you how often I find links to the other language learning websites.
Vera, first of all thanks again for all you do for LingQ. We have a surprise for you next week that we hope will respond to at least one of the wishes you have expressed about things you would like to have at LingQ.
I do not know if we can track the effect of your promotional activities, maybe Mark or Alex knows.
We could try to have country specific campaigns to see if there is any effect. Our penetration in Germany, as well as the major Western European countries is very very low, almost insignificant.
If I look at Germany, we have about 4 people a day who register at LingQ, and we have less than one person a month who joins. We could try to have a campaign for a month or two in Germany, or even in a specific location. If we can achieve a level of three people per month converting to Basic, we would be doing well! I should add that we had a Basic conversion in August and one in early September so we are on a bit of a roll!
The countries of the EC, excluding Lithuania, has not been an area of great success for LingQ so far. Anything we can do to raise awareness of LingQ has to help.
Okay, my blog is more for learners of German, not for learners from Germany. Probably blogging in German would be more helpful but I’ve to admit that I don’t have the time to do this because of all the other things I do for LingQ.
What I think can distract people from Germany is that they get the impression to be on an English website, not really addressed to native German speakers. I’ll try to keep the translation up to date, but I cannot tell you how often I get emails in English. Germans are used to get informations in their native language. It is a cultural thing, I guess. Sure you’ll find people that won’t get distracted but I know a lot of people who would switch to another website if they come accross a lot of English. They will move to babbel or busuu. I had only a short glance on both of them but there you’ll never get the feeling to be on an English website.
Vera, this is an interesting comment. We are constantly changing things, improving things, and all of this has to be translated. Much of the translation is not up to date. We need to do a better job with our translations, no doubt. Any time users come across English in other language versions of LingQ please let us know. We cannot be constantly following up on this. There is only so much we can do so we do rely on the community, both to point out problems in the other language versions, and to help with the translations.
There are also other things we are going to do which will help our traffic in languages other than English.
We are moving in the right direction, especially from the time we reduced the free LingQs to 100. People need to be pushed to make a commitment.
I haven’t posted here before but I have had a Lingq account for sometime. I don’t use it very often and I haven’t ever paid for anything. I think if I were taking a language class, I would be more likely to use it because it would be helpful for reviewing vocabulary and practicing reading. I think it’s a great site for people who need review for a classroom situation. But here’s the deal: I’m not taking a language class right now and I find using Lingq to be tedious. I just don’t like using it and so I rarely do. I don’t want to sit at my computer for language practice. Considering the number of language classes I have taken over the years I should probably feel otherwise but it just doesn’t appeal to me personally.
I’d rather listen to content on my iPod and read. I probably would improve quicker if I used Lingq but I have never liked reviewing vocabulary or marking up vocabulary in a text. But listening and reading is very helpful. I found out 30 years ago that the only way for me to actually learn French is to read it even when I didn’t understand what I was reading—and this was after 4 years of high school and another year of college French. I did pay for conversational French for awhile because years of intimidation in classes made me not eager to speak. But my French has been getting better and better just the last couple of years from listening lots and lots, especially in the office when I am doing something else. (I’m trying to see if the same thing will work with Sanskrit.)
So I guess I don’t have many recommendations about how to get more people to use Lingq because as a long time learner of many languages, I should probably be considered part of your target market—my degree is in Latin and Greek but, of course, don’t read them very well because I need to listen more!----yet I don’t enjoy using Lingq. Taking the lazy way out has been working well enough for me and I have always hated actively studying vocabulary and such and I’m not about to start now.
In any event, I would like to thank Steve for acknowledging that a classroom situation may not be the best way to learn a language which is what I always felt. But before reading what Steve (and Krashen and Keith and Khatzumoto et al.) had to say, I didn’t have any confidence that my experience of plowing through French novels again and again until I got good at reading them was a genuine learning strategy and not just something I fell into because I was tired of classroom work.
Thanks for the lengthy comment. These things are a matter of personal preference. There are people who study their Anki daily and swear by them. I am less inclined to do so. I am reader and listener like you.
I do find that if there are many unknown words, I prefer to read at LingQ. I will even use the bookmarklet to import Russian emails, although I really don’t have many unknown words in them. LingQ sort of developed out of my frustration at reading in languages where there were always enough unknown words, that I felt uncomfortable not looking them up, and yet I did not like using dictionaries.
At LingQ I see the evidence that the unknown words count is going down. My Czech lessons are full of yellow words and a declining number of blue words. My Russian lessons are mostly white with some yellow and blue. With Russian texts I often use QuickLingQ to get through the lesson and create LingQs and the read in iLingQ, where I can also listen, and look up any words that I am not sure of.
I think this is a matter of preference and habit as well.
I have always felt LingQ could appeal to people who want to tap into their unrealised potential, ie those into self help/improvement and/or alternative ways of thinking or seeing the world. For example Toastmasters, people who are into motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins, etc
The reason I say this is that the crux of using LingQ involves buying into a very non linear way of thinking that characterizes a lot of “peak performance” or “unlock your personal power” type of products. Note Steve’s key metaphors for learning "walking in the woods’ , “the crooked tree”, “the fog lifting”.
I do not want to equate LingQ with a dodgy new age movement. I personally think the fact that it essentially is a tool, and not an ideology, differentiates it quite a lot from that.
However I would say playing that angle up when packaging it could be a step in the right direction.
Remember that LingQ is not a course but above all a place where people and resources and languages connect. We have people who just like to talk, and others who just like to read, or listen, eager Flash Carders, and grammar geeks, and a mixture of all of these.
At some stage, a while ago, there was talk of introducing testing or certification or something of the sort. Just wondering if this is something that is still being looked at? I wonder if testing organisations offer language schools / institutions discounts when students sign up for tests through the school / institution. If so, this could be another marketing angle.
I have no idea what this would cost, but have you looked into more traditional marketing options like ads on buses and whatnot? What would it cost to have an ad on the side of a bus in Rio?
As Vera pointed out, there are unique challenges to marketing in different languages/countries. Take Korea for example. Many (if not most) parents pay for extra language instruction (including private tutors) for their kids. If you could put an ad in some magazine popular with parents advertizing LingQ as a good study method for students, there might be some effect.
At any rate, if you’re happy with the conversion rate, then that’s good. Perhaps the conversion rate is what it is though because you are mostly being found by language keeners. If your traffic got a big increase, would the conversion rate stay the same?
One thing you could maybe do is organize your youtube videos into playlists on different topics/themes/languages. It’s a bit difficult to navigate as it is.
And while social networking services are the main form of free/cheap internet marketing, there are many more social networks in other countries, Mixi in Japan, Orkut in Brazil, etc. Are you active on these as well?
@dooo: Two years ago I made a video in German “LingQ - A tool for learning languages”.
LingQ as a tool is a good hint from dooo. I think to sell it as a tool when you promote LingQ is better than to market it as a philosophie or method. That could distract people.
Yes, I agree. I joined so that I would be able to use the “tool” of LingQing.
But if LingQ takes off, other sites/services will just copy this tool. This is why I think it might not be a bad idea for LingQ to have other elements - language exchange alongside tutoring, courses alongside content, and so on.
The other good thing about LingQ, of course, is that it provides easy access to a lot of content on which to use this tool. The tool is not useful without content, and for many languages it is difficult to find appropriate content for extensive reading/listening at the beginner/intermediate stage.
Peter said:
“At some stage, a while ago, there was talk of introducing testing or certification or something of the sort. Just wondering if this is something that is still being looked at? I wonder if testing organisations offer language schools / institutions discounts when students sign up for tests through the school / institution. If so, this could be another marketing angle.”
You know, I think that could be a very powerful idea - especially if you could get some outside testing agency involved (i.e. like the people who award Cambridge English Certificates, German Test DaF, etc.)
In Germany (and I guess in the other parts of the EU as well) there are well established testing system and certificats (international comparable). No chance that LingQ can compete with them. Probably partizipate, but not compete. The problem is that nobody will trust certificates from an unknown organisation.
@Vera - I wasn’t so much talking about certificates being provided by LingQ. I’m just wondering if these testing organisations offer discounts to schools/institutions if students sign up via the school/institution, instead of directly through the testing organisation (i.e. the school/institution promotes the testing organisation’s business, and therefore is charged less for each student that takes a test/exam).