Even as things stand, I believe it’s quite possible to (for example) learn German on LingQ, and then enter yourself for the Test DaF.
I think you’d have to go to a local branch of the Goethe Institut (or maybe the local Deutsche Botschaft) to take the test, but you wouldn’t (as far as I know) need to enter through a language school or to have taken conventional classroom lessons prior to sitting the exam.
Yes, you can sit the exam without using their courses.
@Steve, Vera et al
I am no marketer, but it seems to me that as a tool, or as a suite of tools and platforms, LingQ attracts less traffic than it would if there were some ideology packaging it. Real linguists would ignore the ideology and go for the practical value. Less knowledgeable or less scientifically minded language learners need a some stories, parables, a mythology to get them into the way LingQ works.
(I believe grammar functions as such a mythology for many people now, but since grammar is de-emphasised at LingQ, something has to fill the void.)
@dooo: I’m different. I was looking for a tool not an ideology when I discovered LingQ. Lots of people don’t trust ideologies. What have attracted me the most was the amount of content on LingQ.
Vera I don’t think LingQ needs to target you or those who have similar attitudes to you in order to increase traffic. ( Or me, neither)
Jay, we simply do not have the time to pursue all of these departments. However, if any members has contacts in such departments, please spread the word.
Mark, thanks for the suggestions. We have had newspaper write ups in various Japanese, Chinese, and Korean magazines with little impact. Radio exposure seems to work well, if the it is the right program. C’est la Vie on CBC sent a lot of traffic although a radio campaign in the US did little for us. We could try ads in commuting trains for sure. It is an idea to consider.
Targetted social networking in countries like Japan or Brazil is another good idea. The problem, as always is time. We have our hands full with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. If members can use these other networks to spread the word that would be great.
We created the certificate but there was limited interest.
A number of our members take TOEFL and TOEIC and tell us about their great results. I think these third party tests are more meaningful than tests we could create at LingQ. LingQ is just a resource, one of many.
You’ve also got to completely rearrange the marketing materials for different countries and so on. I’m wondering if your conversion rates for different countries are also different?
As for tests, I don’t think LingQ tests would have any chance of competing with the major testing organizations out there. It’s actually quite difficult to make a good language test, and these organizations have a lot of experience. It’s probably best for people to do just do whatever examination is standard for their language.
LingQ could, of course, make people aware of these exams.
Yeah…more ideology…that’s exactly what people need…haha
I think that the best way to get LingQ out there more is to just keep making it better. More content, especially at the beginner level. A better for system for interacting with that content. More interface translations, along with blogs and videos in those languages (a team of translators, for those things would work well). Of course, new languages.
Concerning content: I’d learn French here if there were more quality collections like 'Who is She?". Alas, most of the other stuff just doesn’t interest me. Eating out? Not for a second. We need collections which are stories. People like stories. Detective stories for example. Right now, I’m reading detective stories in Dutch. I’m on my fourth now and want to read all the ones I have (at least 50 or so). Never read a single detective story in English in my life…
This site promises something great, and the potential is certainly there, but it fails to deliver in that very thing: interesting content.
(I realise I may get flamed for this, but this is my experience with LingQ. I hope it can be seen as constructive criticism.)
@imyirtsesehem,
Just out of curiosity, where are you getting these detective stories from? At what level are they written?
It is, presumably, legal to take out-of-copyright stuff from the Gutenberg project and modify and simplify it and then share your version on LingQ.
One of my Russian students bought a Penguin reader, which was “The Speckled Band” by Conan Doyle, which someone had just simplified a bit, according to some formula. I figure we could do that, if we could guess at the nature of the simplifying formula.
@SBTeapot
If you want the formula, I would suggest checking out Alexander Arguelles’ most recent Youtube lectures (perhaps following up with an email exchange with the man himself.)
The way most graded readers work is that vocabulary is divided up into different levels of difficulty. Each publisher is different and they don’t give out their vocabulary levels. They also typically grade grammatical structures. Level 1 (or Level 0 in some cases) may be written entirely in the present tense.
Vocabulary and grammar which are being newly introduced in that level are generally presented in a way which will make it easier to guess what the meaning is (this may involve adding a picture, or just explaining it in the text, or adding a glossary). And, of course, special/rare/unusual vocabulary will be used (police vocab for a detective story) that isn’t party of the different vocab levels, but this extra vocab will be presented in an easy to understand way.
If there’s a “formula” involved, it would just be making sure the story sticks to the vocab/grammar specifications for whatever level it is being written for. Graded readers are really hit and miss - particularly the Penguin ones, I find - probably as there are just so many of them.
The idea of graded readers is that you can begin reading at whatever level is comfortable for you, then as you move up in level, the new vocab/structures will be introduced in an easy-to-understand way and you can get used to them. Then, when you’re comfortable at the higher level, you can move further up the ladder. You shouldn’t have to use a dictionary much, if at all. And, by the time you’re comfortable reading at the highest level, you can then transition smoothly into material written for native speakers.
I think that it would be too much work for LingQ to develop its own system of grading for all these different langauges. Individual members could get a sense of what graded material is like by reading lots of it, but that would involve them spending their money and time, and I don’t know how many people would be willing to do it. Going through a classic text and simplifying it would probably turn out to be a surprisingly difficult job to do.
While I like graded material very much, LingQ’s functionality works well with authentic, but very short, material. Perhaps LingQ needs to put more effort into soliciting material like this which can then be translated into various languages. Experienced language learners probably have a pretty good intuitive sense of what material will be suitable for beginner level learners.
Also, there are frequency lists. In any language you can list words according to how frequently they occur: the first 1000 most frequent, then the next 1000, and so on…
I reckon a basic reader would use the first 1500 or 2000 most frequent words. Anything falling outside of this would be avoided (and if used, would always be explained with a footnote.)
And Intermediate reader might use the first 2500 or 3000 most frequent words.
(Seriously guys, see Prof. Arguelles’ most recent lectures on Youtube!)
I’ve had a look at the Prof’s lectures, and at his website. I’m not convinced this is an area he has done any research on himself, and the lectures are fairly low level (1st year linguistics students, maybe?) They are perfectly fine but aren’t going into the technical detail I’m looking for.
I need to find some computational linguists I think.
I suspect Professor Arguelles would be mildly offended by any suggestion that his “fairly low level” lectures are intended for “linguistics students” - first year or otherwise. :-0
Frankly, I didn’t realize that you would consider yourself so far above his level.
Interesting.
I don’t think vocab is usually divided up purely based on frequency lists, although that is certainly taken into account.
Level 1 books would be written with just a few hundred “headwords”, ie. word forms based around one common root - “happy”, “happiness”, and “happily” are all different forms of the same base word, so they would count as just one headword.
If a footnote is used in a basic reader, the person reading it has to be able to understand the footnote! So they are not often used.
JayB, I don’t think there’s anyone above the level of the professor in either pure knowledge of languages, or knowledge of how to acquire them (from several decades of first hand experience.) However, I’m afraid that a man of such genius (which he modestly denies) would never be taken seriously by most people. It’s a shame that a level of skill like his will be treated like crack-pottery, even within what seems to be a community of devout language learners. His insights are perhaps only for those who have lists of dozens of languages.
@ Bortrun, the books are all Dutch books. Written for Dutch speakers. They aren’t a very high level, because it is expected that average Dutch people will read them and not necessarily university graduates and academics - which is exactly the kind of Dutch I need right now, to take me into the advanced stage.
The reason I don’t think the professor has done any research into readability is that I’ve looked at his publications list, and while impressive they are not in the specific area of readability calculations (which is a branch, I believe of computational linguistics rather than SLA).
I don’t know why you think my comments would offend the good professor, but when I e-mail him I can ask him how he feels 
I’ve already put a comment for him on one of his Youtube videos, but have no idea if he ever checks those comments.