LingQ for beginners

Open Forum
21

Well, when I showed the beginner French content to flowersuccess (then aged 9) she was most taken by lessons that I could describe in a couple of words. Eg: “here’s how to count to twenty, here’s a lesson on colours, here’s a lesson about pets”. “Here’s an extract from a podcast where two people you’ve never heard of are talking about the politics of forty years ago” wouldn’t have interested her much.

whoaholic, now fourteen, is about a beginner 2 in French, but even he likes a simple concept eg “Here’s a French student describing a typical day at school”.

The trouble with adults creating content for other adults is we tend to overcomplicate the topics.

I studied Japanese from scratch with LingQ, and there are a lot of good beginner 1 lessons, things like “greetings, colours, Skype vocabulary, do you like coffee or tea?”

As a student I would put in a plea for a lot of single concept, 1 minute or shorter lessons, for absolute beginners.

22

I generally agree with SBTP. I especially value very SHORT lessons as a beginner, maybe 15 to 20 seconds max, no matter what the topic, for very practical reasons. When I am flashcarding, I like to listen to the audio over and over and pick out the term I am flashcarding. As well as knowing the meaning, recognition of the term while listening without a script is part of flashcarding for me in the early stages. If the audio is too long , this can become tedious.

23

Steve wrotes "We are also actively seeking to tie up with providers of more traditional learning systems to integrate with LingQ. If you have any suggestions about publishers of language courses that we might approach please let me know. "
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I know some German publishers of language courses. But I guess it would be better to ask them in German. I would try to come in touch. If you send me an email how you ask in English, what the conditions and rules are and which German publishers you’ve contacted yet, I’ll think about how I can help.

24

We have expanded our Lessons section to allow Notes, Translations, Exercises and Videos. We will try to add some Notes to our own LingQ beginner series.

For content from other providers, if you can add notes or even videos, this is greatly appreciated.

Hopefully if we can get some third party beginner content to sell, this will give our beginners an additional option.

In answer to Vera’s question, here is the letter that I have been using. You may have to modify it. We are looking for language courses as well as other kinds of audio content for which transcripts are available, including audio books. Getting these people to reply is a little time consuming. Any help would be great. These language courses need not be courses written for English speakers.

"We, at LingQ.com, would like to offer your products for sale at our site, integrated with our unique language learning and vocabulary acquisition functionality. This can generate revenue for you and increase your online presence.

LingQ is an online language learning community with over 200,000 registered users. Our learning system takes advantage of modern information technology to facilitate language learning from interesting and/or instructional language content. In the past the language content in our Libraries has been member generated and made available to members free of charge.

We have recently introduced a Store where premium language content can be sold. We would like to work with you to offer some of your excellent range of … at LingQ,

The pricing of your content will be up to you.
LingQ will collect 30% of the sales price as commission.

Please let me know if you have any questions."

If any of you know of possible sources of content that would be interested please let us know or contact them in your language.

25

Steve, have you tried sending this letter to Linguaphone?

You could even offer them a new means of generating revenue from their older 1960s generation courses (which have mostly now been discontinued in print editions.)

It’d be a win-win situation for them - I just can’t see how they could refuse!

26

Thanks Jay, I will give them a try.

27

@Steve: Another idea. What is if they are willing to promote LingQ on their website too. Do they get an discount? Or can they earn reference points (as other users) or what could I offer.

28

Vera, it would be great if they promote LingQ on their site as a great way to study their materials. We could certainly give them the points for referring new members, or even offer their readers a discount or something. I would prefer to get Mark in on this discussion.

29

In my opinion it would make perfect sense to promote bidirectional.

30

Of course we would promote them in the description that accompanies each collection and lesson, through the links that are there. We would also talk about them in our newsletter and on my blog and at youtube and at the forum of course.

31

Let me know what Mark says. In the meantime I’ll prepare a letter.

32

I’m very curious to, in the future, start a completely new language on LingQ. I’m using it now to recover and expand French, but I didn’t start French here by a longshot. I’m beginning Dutch, but I heard a lot of Dutch growing up so, although I don’t speak it, it’s not unfamiliar.

It’s not as easy as it seems to prepare interesting/comprehensible materials for really low-level learners. I suspect that in the future, I’ll use Colloquial and Teach Yourself books in addition to LingQ when I begin a new language.

That being said, when I started relearning French, I bought a bunch of intermediate-level textbooks to use in addition to LingQ. I haven’t opened any of them. I didn’t plan it this way, but my French study has been on LingQ, and listening to podcasts, and watching the French in Action series, and so forth.

If I try to think back to when I first started Japanese, I don’t know how I would have done on LingQ. I had Teach Yourself and Colloquial, and I found those books very helpful. Of course, I was already living in Japan when I started studying it, so I got a lot of exposure and feedback.

As well, Rosetta Stone is very popular and it more or less jumps right into the language, not providing any translations.

33

LingQ can be great, and it is. But the question of whether it is suitable for absolute beginners is not even worth asking. The answer is NO. And that’s OK: there are plenty of great resources to go from zero to something. Michel Thomas and Assimil come to mind. Everything Steve says in his post can be true, but it fails to address the question. The answer to the question is still NO. If every element of the target language is mysterious to you–which is what being an absolute beginner means–LingQ is clearly, undeniably not the right place for you. Not yet.

34

LingQ and only LingQ is not enough. You need some grammer books at the beginning.
But none of grammer books is enough, too.

35

I’ve been learning German from scratch for the past 6 weeks or so using lingq. The content is excellent (thanks guys) and I havent even attempted to read a grammar book. I have watched some grammar explanations on youtube which have all helped explain certain things, i havent done any speaking yet, but my reading and listening is improving and my vocabulary is improving. My main motivation for German is reading about history, so im not particularly bothered if i mess up the der, das, die, dem etc… as long as I can enjoy native historical content (particularly about post war Germany, the DDR etc) and have the occasional trip to germany, for the time being, im happy.

36

The world of language learning isn’t split between LingQ and grammar books. LingQ is an environment in which processing input is made easy. That’s great, and it facilitates progress hugely. But if you’re using LingQ, by definition, you’re not starting from scratch. It’s not designed to help you start from scratch. It’s designed to help you keep going! Something can be great without being the only thing you’ll ever need.

37

The way I see it, LingQ may be suitable for all beginners, but not all beginners may be suitable for LingQ.

First off, there is the difference between a “beginner,” as in someone who is new to self-guided language learning, and a “beginner” who decides to tackle a new language from scratch, after having successfully acquired two or three languages prior.

For the first category, starting on LingQ will require a bit of an added learning curve and the right attitude. It is totally doable, of course, but in all honesty, for those people, I’d recommend they first use LingQ as a secondary tool to a good self-study course until they reach a B1 level or so, when they can truly jump to LingQ. This is mainly because most beginners I know are super prone to giving up at the first sign of hardship, and this site can be overwhelming at first if you don’t know what you’re doing.

For the second category, the experienced language learners, starting from scratch on LingQ is an EXCELLENT way to go.

As a matter of fact, just yesterday, I decided to start learning Spanish just by reading books with audio here on LingQ. I’m only one day in, but I can already tell that this will be a fun and rewarding challenge – and totally doable. Could I have done that if I didn’t have the experience of three other languages under my belt? Maybe. Would I have done it? Probably not, because I wouldn’t have known how to use this method, and it would have been overwhelming.

So, it kinda depends on whether you’re someone who is beginning to learn or someone who has already learned how to begin.

38

LingQ isn’t for beginners learning their first foreign language. I’m sorry, but to be blunt, as a beginner, I’d rather be spoon fed information than spend minutes trying to find what subject to study. I don’t want to spend time thinking about if I want to learn about physics, food, politics, or what beginners lessons to start with; I just want to learn. I feel like a lot of beginners have this sentiment. Not everyone is as intrinsically motivated like Steve is.

Learning another language from scratch at LingQ? Sure, I already know what sort of works and doesn’t work for me.

39

t_harangi Surely you are a better learner than me. But as I speak three languages at a native-like level, it seems possible that I too might know a thing or two about “how to begin.” :slight_smile: If we scratch away the cheerleading, you’re agreeing that LingQ is in fact not suited for beginners. You acknowledge that there is a category of people who can’t dive head-first into LingQ and start swimming. You can argue that this is their fault, for starting from a place of such ignorance and/or inexperience, and/or wrong attitude… that they are not equipped to join your wonderful world straight away. I don’t think it is their fault at all. I think there are stages in learning a new language, and this is just not a good place for stage 1, let alone the best place for stage 1. This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it seems to bother you. As I have said, it’s not a flaw, it’s a design feature. You seem to love this platform so much that you treat it as an end and the people using it as means to that end (some people are right for it, other people are wrong for it?!), when it should be the other way around.

40

Hi mothman84, for what it’s worth, I was aiming for a balanced opinion, but perhaps it didn’t come across that way. So let me try to clarify:

I myself did not start learning languages on LingQ, I started with Assimil, which is another brand that I’m an unapologetic cheerleader for, and I often advocate for it in my posts. For most people, MYSELF INCLUDED, a structured self-study course like that is a better first step into language learning. There was no judgment intended behind that.

Steve’s original point was that he feels – not surprisingly – that LingQ in and of itself is a suitable primary source for a beginning language learner. In my opinion, depending on the person, he could be right. I think a person could learn a language from scratch here, BUT, as I said in my post, LingQ may be better as a secondary tool for most beginners, because:

Most beginners give up. On LingQ. Or with Assimil. Or, Duolingo, Memrise, or whatever gamified app comes out next week. (This was the only part of my post with had some legitimate judgment behind it, but it has nothing to do with starting on LingQ) Most people will not get through the first half of whatever course they start with, so, that’s a point against LingQ as a beginner tool because it’s harder to ease into it than an Assimil type course. And if most people give up on Assimil, they sure as hell will give up on LingQ. But on the other hand:

Some people will be more prone to dive into LingQ type experience – again, I was not one of those people when I started. I wanted a book and a structured course, and I still advise people to start there, but some people – kids these days :slight_smile: – may not want that. For those people, LingQ is a legitimate option.

You’re right that I’m a cheerleader for LingQ, I’ve been using it every day as a tool for a hobby that I enjoy and it has helped me learn three languages so far.

I’ve also long been wanting to test the method of learning a language from scratch just by reading and listening to books, and this platform is the best way to tackle that, so that’s what I started doing with Spanish. As I mentioned in my post, I would not have done that as a beginner to language learning, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to a beginning language learner. It’s just something I decided to do – if it works, it works. What’s wrong with that?