It’s still interesting to know your opinion about the topic. 
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I remember exactly the same, slowly, with a sore back, sitting every day to learn something. 
6 months ago when I found out about Lingq and learned it, my whole back even stopped hurting from happiness:sweat_smile:
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I strongly recommend LingQ for people have at least the equivalent of at least one college course in the target language and want to expand and consolidate vocabulary and get more exposure to audio and written material in the target language. The way in which LingQ allows users to ‘LingQ’ words and phrases and then study those words and phrases within the context of the lessons provide what are basically scaffolded learning experiences for the user.
This is very handy for LingQ’s users and allows LingQ users to get in a good deal of solid language practice without having to create lessons for themselves. And to gain more practice working with the chunks of meaning contained in each sentence. These are areas where LingQ really shines. And for users who already have enough of the basics of the target language under their belts to be able to make sense of sentence structure, and individual sentences fairly reliably, the move to working with paragraphs and short articles won’t be so difficult, even though it is likely to considerably more challenging. Here at least, the increased challenge will be at least partially offset by the fact that being able to listen to music and audio and read text is far more rewarding than merely translating, studying vocabulary, and working with structural concepts entirely at the level of the individual sentence.
For a user who already has a fairly strong grasp of these basics, building upon that foundation is likely to feel relatively effortless at first, and the user will be able to make very rapid progress until the user starts hitting the limits of the user’s familiarity with the structural underpinnings of the language, and the user now needs to have a better grasp of clauses and complex sentences, of other verb tenses, and various other structural elements in order to continue to make rapid progress.
I believe that LingQ can also be useful to people who had more advanced levels of fluency in a language, perhaps even native-level, but are now rusty.
My mother, for instance, says that she hasn’t made much use of her native language (Hindi), since she came to the United States in the late 60s. Given how rusty she is, it might be beneficial if she were to start off with Duolingo to review the fundamentals before going on to review more advanced material. such as what LingQ offers. (I did, in fact, suggest something like this to her, but it’s her life, and revitalizing her Hindi doesn’t really seem to be on her bucket list).
LingQ is also a handy source of native language audio, visual, and written material, which can be can also be useful for people who are a bit rusty in the target language (which might even be their native language), but who want to blow off the rust or might want convenient access to material in that language.
I emphatically do NOT recommend LingQ for people who are new to a language, unless perhaps, they are experienced language learners who already know how to craft individualized study plans for themselves. For everyone else, I would recommend starting either by taking a language course at an educational institution, or acquiring a language book or two and getting started with an on-line course, then moving on after the basics have been consolidated. Taking a semester long college course in the target language and using Duolingo, or something like it simultaneously or afterwards in order to consolidate a basic vocabulary and acquiring mastery of the basics also strikes me as being a very sound approach. After that level of proficiency has been acquired, it will then begin to start to make sense to start working with LingQ.
So far as I can tell, using Duolingo in conjunction with textbooks and a few secondary sources is comparable to taking a semester course in that language in college.
In my case, I’ve taken a semester of Spanish in high school and re-took Spanish during my second year in college.
Later on, after I became a Duolingo user in 2018, I enrolled into Dutch for English speakers, English for Dutch speakers, Spanish for English speakers, and English for Spanish speakers.
After a year or two, I had a reasonably good grasp of semester 1 level material, although my grasp of some of the vocabulary was still a bit weak. It wasn’t until I’d used Duolingo for over a year that I had a reasonably good grasp of Dutch vowels, consonants, and dipthongs, had a reasonably good grasp of where the syllable breaks where, and had a reasonably solid grasp of how the present tense verb conjugation system works in that language. And after about 12-18 months of working with Duolingo’s Dutch course for English speakers my Dutch was actually noticably better than my Spanish, although I had taken coursework in Spanish previously, but had never taken any coursework in Dutch. My grasp of other verb tenses, such as past tense and future tense is considerably weaker than my grasp of past tense, if only because I’ve gotten a good deal less practice working with words in these tenses.
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