From a German teacher? That’s just too funny!
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Hi!
I used LingQ for a year, enthusiastically at first but then less and less as I came to discover that, one after another, all the things I was excited about didn’t actually work. I tried really hard to like the program and to make it work for me; I figured out work-around after work-around,…, but when the English sentence translation broke, I threw in the towel.
What would it take? If everything worked as it should, I would definitely recommend LingQ again. In concept, it’s absolutely amazing and fantastic.
I know that there are ways that a person can still definitely learn a lot using this program. It’s still a great program for some people. It just doesn’t do what I needed.
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What do you use instead?
I use the video feature which allows me to import and view preferred content and quickly look up the meaning of words and phrases while watching it. I have not found an alternative that works on iOS.
I believe that having interesting content is key. For me, that means buying ebooks from genres that really interesting and importing the content into LingQ. Epubor removes the protection, which allows me to copy and paste the chapters. It’s great that we can now import entire chapters without needing to break them up.
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Totally agree, I was about to not register because of the unfair reviews, but once I registered I felt bad for the team who did a great job responding to the complaints, and their job is underestimated because of this
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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.
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Hi Avec Le Coeur.
I’m a pretty new user of LingQ. That first link you put about user @noxialisrex 90-Day language Learning Challenge is not working. I’d like to watch it…
Edit: I found it. thanks for the tip.
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I’m primarily working on 3 languages at the moment: Chinese (Mandarin/Traditional), Spanish (Ecuador), and Korean (South Korea).
For Chinese, I simply copy text found online into a Word or Notepad document and use the HanWangKaiMediumChuIn font which I downloaded and installed free - you can search for it online - it provides the bopomofo pronunciation markings for most Chinese characters - font size can be adjusted to whatever is comfortable, dark mode works great on my computer, Google Translate provides text-to-speech as needed (I think Word does too but haven’t tried that in a while), great for confirming pronunciation of new words - and I’m reading aloud with a native-speaker friend and conversing afterwards for a total of about 30 to 60 minutes per day. I do make note of any vocabulary or pronunciation that strikes my interest while reading/discussing. Actually writing the vocabulary down on paper helps with the learning process.
For Spanish, I read out loud together with a group of native-speaking friends for about 90 minutes per day including discussion. I write down any interesting vocabulary. I find that even without ever going back to read my notes, simply writing things down really helps with learning vocabulary and grammar. It’s been about 4 years now, and I went from zero to conversational doing really nothing else except reading and conversing with friends for 90 minutes per day.
For Korean, since I’m kind of short on native speaker friends willing to spend an hour or more per day on me for free, I created my own rather large YouTube playlist and made a shortcut to it on my phone home screen so I can easily listen to it in the car, I have created printed transcripts in English and Korean to mark up with colored pencils during “seat time,” as time permits, and I do have access to a paid online conversation tutor, but of course since I spend considerably less speaking time on Korean than on the other languages, verbal progress is slower.
So, basically “old school,” the same stuff I did before I discovered LingQ.
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If you have any questions feel free to reach out. I don’t use LingQ much at the moment because I simply don’t need it, and it’s cheaper for me to use services like Storytel, Bookbeat or Nextory to get access to ebooks and audiobooks.
The essence of what I have been doing is unchanged though. Read a lot, listen a lot, read+listen a lot, have meaningful conversations as much as possible!
As far as the topic of this thread. I try to avoid giving recommendations or having this conversation altogether, at least IRL. The better people know me, the more likely it seems they will just dismiss any recommendations I give as not replicable and therefore irrelevant.
For people that only know me in one context, say that I speak Swedish, and we have a conversation about this, I typically start as general as possible. I will only get more detailed if I get questions that seem to come from a genuine interest.
“How long have I been learning Swedish?” - Thousands of hours (not 4 years).
“How did you learn?” - I read or listened to hundreds of books and had hundreds of conversations with people.
“How did you read?” - I started by just buying the first ebook and audiobook I could find in Swedish (the first Harry Potter book) and reading it with the audiobook. I would pick a few words per page, look them up, and read it again.
If at this point there was still interest, then I might talk about using LingQ or italki and how I made them work for me, what I like, don’t like, etc.
Online is another story, because I can write a sentence to a novel as appropriate and usually people online are self selecting into groups like the /r/languagelearning subreddit or the LingQ forums. In those cases, I will certainly recommend LingQ as a great tool to support extensive reading or R+L!
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Thanks for the detailed reply. I was particularly interested in the 3 phases you mentioned in the video. I am definitely still in the first phase of reading, but I can see a need to move up my speed, progress, and trust my intuition more in relation to how I understand the texts.
A curious case (for me anyway) recently happened in relation to my language learning. I made friends with another English speaking French learner who hasn’t really listened much to French, but has read a lot of news on Le Monde. Where as I haven’t really read much but have listened to thousands of hours of audio. His vocabulary was stronger than mine but my pronunciation and maybe my understanding of native French was stronger. Neither of us spoke very well, I could speak a bit better. It was fun trying and after a few weeks we were both much better. It lead me to the conclusion of that my vocab should to be stronger and thus here I am at LingQ.
So I guess my goal is to try and push ahead into phase 2 listen less and read more. Speed up and be much less fussy with looking up words, knowing if the word is important I’ll eventually learn the nuances associated with that word. And if I don’t come across it again, then so what, move on. ATM I’m at plus 5000 words in LingQ but feel like I have more, I just haven’t come across them in the app.
Back in the day I worked in IT, till I got into my 40s. We generally spent a lot of time finding and researching solutions and then implementing the good ones. What we did was like “Standing on the shoulders of giants”. It feels like that again. So one IT guy to another, Thanks for clarifying and showing me the way.
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I recommend LingQ sometimes, but unfortunately it has to be said along with a warning about the random and often quite large technical issues. Still, I have gifted LingQ subscriptions to dear friends whom I expected to love LingQ despite its flaws, like I do.
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I find that impossible in Greek.
After thinking about this for a while, I’d recommend Lingq to anyone who wants to read in a foreign language.
I wouldn’t recommend if for working with imported video or audio, and I wouldn’t recommend it as a complete solution. It’s very good for reading, but not for anything else.
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What?? They put bopomofo inside the characters in the font??
That is genius, if I understand that correctly.
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Yuppers!
Edited to add:
Also, if you’re learning Japanese, Microsoft Word has a feature called “Ruby Text” that adds the pronunciation above the Kanji.
Edited to add again:
Actually the “Ruby Text” also works for Chinese.
Here is the Ruby Text used simultaneously with the HanWang(etc) font:
In case you want to compare them, I guess?
And, editing to add again, just highlight the text in Microsoft Word and select “Read Aloud” from the dropdown menu to hear the text read aloud in whatever language. 
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Libre Office has the same feature, also called ruby text.
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Simple. If you’re a touch typist, working from the keyboard is faster and more comfortable.
Of course, then there’s the LingQ problem that the keyboard shortcuts don’t always work.
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For some of us, using a mouse causes physical pain.
Edited to add:
And also some of the default keyboard shortcuts are just as bad.
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Indeed. That’s why I am using a trackball since 20 years now. Still I heavely prefer keyboard shortcuts, as they are simple faster.
And I need the keyboard for typing translations in the LingQs anyway, so why should I switch back and forth between mouse and keyboard if one device could get the job done?
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I recommend LingQ although I warn it takes a while to get the hang of it.
But for me it’s like a filing cabinet where I keep everything. I have learned over the years that the best way FOR ME to learn a language is to quickly get the basics of the grammar without memorising and to get a good enough passive vocabulary to leave learner textbooks behind and use authentic materials. I use LinqQ at both the beginner phase and the advanced stage for organisation. At the moment I am using it for two languages I am more or less a beginner at and one that I speak well. For the first two I put texts and audio recordings from the courses I’m using into LingQ so it is easy to access, listen to, look up words and store the vocabulary. With the third one I upload articles, videos, texts and film scripts etc and use the same facilities mentioned above. I feel it gives me a sense of independence and order. The biggest boon for me recently has been the AI transcriptions of audio. That’s helped a lot.
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