Richard Simcott is now a member of LingQ and he recently Tweeted about this and asked for some advice on how to get the most out of it. Here is my advice.
There are many ways to use LingQ. Each person needs to find their own path. I can only talk about what works for me.
Taking Czech as an example, I began with the beginner texts in the Library. I find these by setting the level to Beginner (1 or 2).
In the early stages I listen many times to the same content, 5 or ten times. I move on to new content well before everything is clear to me. I do not expect to remember words or to understand everything I listen to or read. I just want to expose myself to the language.
In the early stages I mostly LingQ words, since I know no words.
As I progress in the language I rely more and more on Imported content. If I were studying another language which had more content in the Library I would use these resources more.
The further along I get the more I LingQ phrases rather than words. I sometimes Tag them for grammar.
Most of my learning occurs through the listening, and reading texts and seeing and reviewing the yellow previously saved LingQs which I am trying to learn.
I rely more on deliberate word and phrase study at the Vocabulary page, rather than the “Lings of the Day”. This gives me more control over what to study. It is worthwhile becoming acquainted with all of the sorts, filters and options on the Vocabulary page.
I am now trying to start talking more, and find the following quite useful. I save phrases, set the Flash Card to show the term and the hint on the front of the flash card. I then set the number of terms to review to 100, and start my flash cards. For each flash card I record the English, the text to speech, and then record myself repeating what the TTS said. I record this as one long file. I then listen to these recordings. It is almost like a directed Pimsleur exercise.
I have had the occasional painful discussion in Czech but not many. I will start to speak more when I feel I can hold up my end of a conversation. In Russian this point came after more than a year. Once I did start talking to our tutors I was able to improve my speaking and could not have improved my speaking without their help.
I have been reading a book on the history of Central Europe ( I am now reading it for the second time). There are many words I don’t know. But I recently discovered a website on the history of Czech Republic and have imported it and am going through it. This is giving me many of the words I need for the book.
So now I am off to read some more on Czech history on LIngQ from this website. I will create a lot of phrase-LingQs, record them as described above and when I listen to all of this, I will refresh my knowledge of Czech history and get a better sense of how the words come together.
Hape, thanks. But to do this and create a sequence of “Native language”>“Google TTS”>“Imitation fo Google TTS” while flashcarding would seem cumbersome. Unless I am missing something, you would have to just use the record and pause buttons on Audacity or the like.
I don’t pause. I just record myself saying the English, the TTS which is usually lower volume, and then record my version in the target language. It is quite a useful review, for both words and phrases.
What I find the most useful is pronouncing the phrases myself and then later on hearing myself pronounce them. They seem to stick better that way. Besides, I have them right away without having to wait for a Czech speaker to volunteer at Rhinospike. No doubt for longer texts I should use that site, but then I also have to record in English for the community. This is just a lot easier as well.
I wish we had a functionality like that here on LingQ. We could for example ask our tutor not only to correct the submitted text, but also to record it (maybe for additional 10% price? just an idea). To be honest, I didn’t like the way Rhinospike worked, because I recorded a few texts in Polish and nobody recorded my submitted texts in Turkish…
Another advantage of this solution would be that texts written by language learners and corrected AND recorded by tutors could be added to LingQ Library, which could help with gathering materials for not-so-popular languages like Polish, Turkish. What do you think about that?
First of all I apologize for the typo on the title of this thread.
@customic, we are going to implement something like what you described but I can’t say when this will be available. In the meantime you can request your tutor to record any text for you You should probably offer him/her points for doing so. You can then add this to our library.
Now that you guys have implemented a “gift points” functionality, you could set up some sort of general “tutor marketplace” in which people could students could post special requests and the points they are willing to pay, and tutors can post their “Services rendered” Of course, this may be what you are already talking about. I know personally I have created a few programmatic interfaces for dictionaries which are not compatible with LingQ to make them compatible with Lingq. Some of these are quite simple, but others take quite a bit of time. I could offer my programming services (with regards to projects around LingQ of course) on a marketplace such as this.
With regards to the title, my mind “auto-inserted” the missing “to” and I didn’t even notice the typo until you pointed it out.
Customic’s request is something I’ve asked before long time ago. I’ve made equal experiences with Lang-8 and Rhinospike. I’ve definitely putted more in than I got out.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience with Lang8. I’ve had well more texts corrected than I have corrected others. I wonder if the popularity of a language has anything to do with people’s personal experiences. I would imagine that the number of Turkish users on a site would be much less than the number of spanish speakers for example. Veral, which languages are you writing in on Lang8? German is a very popular language to learn, which could explain why you have given way more than you got (unless of course your submitted writings are also in a popular language, then my hypothesis would be wrong.)
Hi everyone,
I completely agree with customic.But I think there is a misunderstanding here.Customic is favourite Turkish learner on LingQ system.And I like his Turkish passion.I recorded his corrected copy in Turkish(9,December) and,shared with his courtesy.
Although it’s not very popular language on LingQ,I spend a lot of time to create new lessons,recording stuff,etc…Pesonally,as I mentioned before on other threads,I just want to introduce my native language and like to do something about it.I recorded customic’s writing willingly,and I can record someone’s writing again who want to interest my language.(by the way it’s free)
Ozne, thanks for all you efforts. I am fully committed to my Czech right now but I do want to get to Turkish. We also need to tell people about LingQ and that Turkish is available at our site. The more we can all promote LingQ the more learners there will be for all languages.
Thank you Steve.I’m happy to hear that you’ll begin it
Would you please re-announce that Turkish is available here at LingQ.Did you know that Richard Simcott and Luca both of them are learning Turkish nowadays.
ozne, it will take a while to build up the learner base, and to build up the base of content in the library. Turkish and the other Beta languages are still in their early stages.
