I was wondering, might it be possible to go from A0 to C2, in a completely foreign language, using only LingQ? I know it’s not efficient but has anyone here had a similar experience?
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Personally used Lingq from zero to conversational. I highly recommend it.
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I personally think you should use a textbook to get your feet settled at the beginning and learn the fundamentals of the language, then branch off into all kinds of resources. I started LingQ when I learned the Arabic alphabet, about 6 months into it, and will soon stop for now since there is a lack of Egyptian dialect content on there and my frustrations with Arabic on LingQ. Hopefully when I learn French the quality of this platform will shoot up exponentially.
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I had some questions about your experience with LingQ but after visiting your profile a lot of things has become clear:) But still could you tell how did you deal with а grammar and chinese characters at the begining of your journey using only LingQ?
I never tackled grammar. Just put words one by one and it creates meaning. Accuracy wise, I just use lingq and lingq the whole sentence or part of a sentence to get the idea and your brain will get used to the “grammar”.
Chinese characters wise, I ignore tones completely until recently to start speaking. It’s faster to attain characters that way to read.
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I’m trying this in Italian 
! I suppose your success depends on the distance between your native language and target language.
That’s impressive:)
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LingQ is a tool to make engaging with TL content more effective.
Is it possible to learn a language completely through TL content in an input-based approach?
Yes, 100%.
Is there a good reason to avoid other tools?
Probably not. Just try to have fun and use whatever you enjoy IMO. It is a very long journey to C2, so a bit of novelty can come in handy
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Is it possible? Probably.
Is it ideal? Maybe for some people/certain circumstances, but as someone who decades ago found themselves living for 11 months in south america without any fluent english speakers around… I had to use a dictionary and come up with my own ‘drill n grill’ exercises to supplement the nearly non intelligible input I was getting 24/7 in order to properly unravel it at first (I’d had some spanish in HS so I appreciated remembering how to conjugate verbs a bit, but… wowza, I may as well have landed on Mars, lol). Once I hit the point that I was able to ask the meaning of specific words and get an answer in spanish that I understood, things took off VERY quickly (yes, I started thinking and dreaming in spanish after a few months of brutal grind, lol).
Personally I feel like LingQ’s ideal use case is once you’ve gotten some really super basic vocab and grammar in there- which you can get in almost any number of ways, pick any and go for it- then you can start getting more reading/listening content flying at you via LingQ. The real high value target to work towards here IMO is listening native speakers dishing content at one another naturally, ie more ‘street level’ talking… this is the sort of thing you’ll need to wrestle with when you travel that almost all formal instruction has a VERY hard time replicating.
There’s a certain musicality/rhythm/flavor/phrasing that you have to adapt your ear to w native speakers that is definitely a learning curve but it is genuinely delightful once you get there.
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From an input perspective. Yes, absolutely (although to be quite clear, I’ve not achieved C2 in anything! But I steadily improve everyday). From an output perspective, you will want to do some things outside of Lingq (although technically, here, you could use tutors on LingQ…so in that respect yes as well). You can also write here and get feedback. This is output as well. So I think you could if you consider all that is available on LingQ. You will not be a true C2 (covering reading, listening, speaking, writing) just by reading and listening is my main point.
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are tutors good? or is it better to use italki or one of the other big ones?
I don’t have experience with either so I’ll have to defer to someone else’s opinions. I believe there are probably some good tutors on LingQ depending on the language. Italki will have a lot more tutors to choose from. I also don’t know, costwise, how either compare.
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Tutors are good. Recommend doing Italki once you reach a certain level of listening comprehension or else you’re not gonna get a big return of investment
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