Positive comments:
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I recommend LingQ and have given LingQ subscriptions as gifts.
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I recommend the approach of @noxialisrex , as explained in this video A Power User Shares His Advice - 90-Day Language Learning Challenge – Toby’s story fundamentally changed the way I approach learning a language and other subjects — Read, read a lot, read a lot more. His discipline is motivational. I understand Danish now largely due to LingQ and Toby’s method of using it. Note: Toby also met with humans for speaking practice, which, for me, is critical for learning and motivation.
Negative comments:
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The default configuration for the reader is “paging turns to known” – this confused me when I began using LingQ. I think it is the wrong setting for the default and it probably turns new users away. By the time a new user realizes what is going on, many words have been categorized as “known” and you cannot recategorize or even identify “known” words using LingQ’s interface. (As a remedy, you can use [Rooster Burton’s approach](Solution: Known Word -> New Word, but it’s not user-friendly for many people.)
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LingQ: Would it be so hard to allow us to see the “known” words and recategorize them using the vocabulary interface? Even knowing about this problem, I messed up in a new language and had to spend time using Rooster Burton’s method to reverse it.
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It has been discussed in this forum many times that we would like an option to allow us to complete a lesson without having the unclicked words move to “known”. LingQ has ignored our clamoring and some members are under the impression that LingQ is philosophically opposed to this as an option. This is unfortunate, as I think it would improve the experience for many people. For reference, see discussion “Finish Lesson” – Why assume un-clicked words are known?"
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There is a learning curve to using LingQ effectively. I think novices might browse the available content and not understand that LingQ’s most useful feature is the user’s ability to upload their own content. LingQ is useful for learning song verses (even in your mother tongue) and much more.
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LingQ’s SRS does not offer me the control that I find helpful. I use Anki. I wish I could create LingQs liberally and then get to choose which go into the SRS. I wish it would extract or link to the associated audio for each LingQ rather than using text-to-speech for it.
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The shared content is wild – this is both good and bad (like the internet), but I would like to see a version or a setting that would use AI to screen content for minors.
In Summary:
I love LingQ. I don’t know of any other software that offers similar capabilities. I look forward to many years of learning languages and am very thankful for LingQ.