I made it about 5 sentences into the first lesson and hit the 20 lingq limit for free accounts. Is that all there is? It’s difficult to determine if this platform will work for me in just a few minutes. What am I missing?
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Regarding our LingQ limit of 20, we do believe you have a good sense of the value of the site by the time you create 20 LingQs. However, we do realize that some don’t find that enough time. What I have done for you is to increase your limit to 100 LingQs to give you more room to explore the site. Hope this helps!
You can also invite friends to join LingQ and get additional 100 LingQs for each friend who joins. Check the invite page for more details: Login - LingQ
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From my own experience after having dabbled with or used a bunch of other apps (Duolingo, Memrise, Rosetta Stone, others) LingQ will 1000% work for you if you’re willing to put in some time. Language learning takes time, but since LingQ isn’t beholden or constrained to the limited vocabulary contained in its lessons like a lot of other apps are, the sky is the limit as far as what you want to study. You can import e-books, Youtube videos, whatever you want. Just my two cents. You could also watch Steve Kaufman’s videos on Youtube about his philosophy to language learning, which is more or less what LingQ is.
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If you register as a newbie to learn a completely unknown language you will spend 20 Lingqs on the very first 20 words you see. I have a rather high known word count and I still create about 100 Lingqs per reading session. The actual value of Lingq cannot be grasped during a trial session, since the value of Lingq lies in its mass immersion opportunities. Even a hundred Lingqs will only last for 20 minutes or so. Because that is what it means to be an absolute beginner. You dont know any words and have to Lingq them all. You would be much better of to allow a trial period of 7-14 days of unlimited access. If you allow the new users to gain some momentum they will be much more likely to stay but if you offer a free trial period which then expires 20 or 100 clicks later they might have less warm feelings toward the platform. Lingq is great and I really believe that people will want to stay when they start to feel that it is working. But for that they should be able to experience what Lingq is actually made for: mass immersion.
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I agree that a free trail period would be better. But I remeber Zoran or Mark mention that they had tried it before and the 20 lingq limit works better.
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Works better for what? Did they receive more subscriptions that way? I cannot remember it being different in the past so I am not sure what model it is compared with but as a free trial it simply does not work.
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Yes more subscribers, that’s what I read. I am quite astonished if this is really true but then again I dont see any reason why they would lie.
I think you can keep the free trial with the 20 lingqs forever, vs with a 7-day trial you’d be very limited. It’s been a long time since I tried the free version, but I think it gives access to most (if not all) of the lessons, you just can’t save many words or upload very much.
I wonder about a 7-14 day full access trial followed by the 20-lingqs per day current thing. Why not both as opposed to either/or? But maybe they’ve already tried that, I dunno. But if you’re enjoying the trial and then suddenly get hamstrung by the 20 per day limit, I think you’re more likely to sign up. Maybe.
In the end the monthly subscription is low risk so I guess people just subscribe to try it out in full and not because the free trial convinced them.
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That’s what I did when I first joined. I had listened to Steve’s videos quite a bit before joining so that was what really helped convince me. I did try some of the free options elsewhere like ReadLang, and one other one that you can install on your computer. LingQ promised the ability to import content I wanted to read so that ultimately sold me on the LingQ experience. However, I would not have understood the value without the research on the other tools or Steve’s videos from a 20 lingq trial.
They may get more initial subscribers by doing what they do, but I’m curious what the retention rate is from those subscribers. Would offering a robust trial help get longer lasting subscribers, potentially at the expense of less initial subscribers.
Also…maybe having some background about why the approach is so great…links to Steve’s videos or something that helps new people who are coming from a Duolingo or SRS approach to really see the value.
Thanks for the feedback. Lingq may be great. It may be the perfect fit for me. I wouldn’t know. The reality is, after getting shutdown at lingq, I had many other programs to review. Each had substantially longer trials available. I now have months and months of those programs’ material to go thru. Some are free, others paid. Would lingq have been better for me? I don’t know. It will be a very long time before I get around to trying lingq again and that’s entirely lingq’s fault. Motivation to learn a new language is hard enough without getting stopped at a site before I’d even learned which buttons did what.
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It’s not a 20 per day limit. It’s 20 total. Kaput. Over. Coming back the next day or even a week later? Still can’t do a thing.
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Don’t waste your time messing with Duolingo, Memrise, Rosetta Stone, or Anki. All of them are good for getting a passing familiarity with a language, but they cannot and will not get you to fluency if that’s your goal. LingQ can. The others are a waste of time, as is any flashcard-primary app. Pimsleur is useful but has a very limited vocabulary. Beelinguapp is good, but does not have the functionality that LingQ has.
If you’re interested in getting fluent, try buying a one month subscription and see what the site has to offer. I went from testing as a beginner to a solid intermediate Russian speaker in about six months with LingQ. All the other books and apps I’d used before weren’t nearly as helpful.
I paid for the monthly membership to find out if LingQ was for me. Once I knew I decided to pay yearly which is way cheaper.
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That is a significant difference.
I agree. Lingq is the best platform for language learning.