LingQ does not necessarily endorse the learning methodology of any of the lessons offered in our Stores. We offer no opinion. These are offered as additional choice. We hope they will help the reluctant beginners. We hope they will bring in more learners, many of whom will probably graduate to our more standard LingQ lessons.
Let’s see what happens.
I have definitely not changed my outlook on language learning.
I’m not as experienced as you are Steve, but certainly more than many other people. I’m at the end of the beginning, if I could phrase it that way. I really can’t stand learning what I call ‘phrasebook language’ at the beginning of a language (as contained in Pimsleur, Linguaphone PDQ, and most courses with the exception of Assimil, Old Linguaphone, Cortina and very few others).
Perhaps this has something to do with purpose. I’m not going to visit another country soon and don’t need to really know greetings. They can be picked up at any time. Most people, never get past a few greetings. You say that most people never get out of textbooks. Not only that, they never complete them and then do nothing else! How far can you go with a few greetings and random words? hmm A start is a start, that’s true, but without a middle and an end, it’s nothing.
What happened at Lingaphone is this: a non-language learner took over the company and turned it into what it is today! (Steve, imagine if LingQ was taken over by one of those language-acquisition experts you can’t stand hehe).
If I buy the Spanish PDQ lessons for learning English… can I get a discount?
Let’s see if we can get someone from Linguaphone to explain their teaching philosophy at this Forum. It won’t be until next week though.
Berta, that’s pretty funny. 
The situation with Linguaphone is like a high end racing car company, deciding tomorrow that it will start making very low end cars, scraping its high end models, claiming that, most people don’t drive the high end cars. What about those of us who like the thrills of high speed? 
The lesson and its “teaching philosophy” speak for itself.
"I’m not as experienced as you are Steve, but certainly more than many other people. I’m at the end of the beginning, if I could phrase it that way. I really can’t stand learning what I call ‘phrasebook language’ at the beginning of a language (as contained in Pimsleur, Linguaphone PDQ, and most courses with the exception of Assimil, Old Linguaphone, Cortina and very few others).
Perhaps this has something to do with purpose. I’m not going to visit another country soon and don’t need to really know greetings. They can be picked up at any time. Most people, never get past a few greetings. You say that most people never get out of textbooks. Not only that, they never complete them and then do nothing else! How far can you go with a few greetings and random words? hmm A start is a start, that’s true, but without a middle and an end, it’s nothing. "
I find nothing to disagree with in what you said.
However, if the market is such that a majority of people prefer to get started with something that is not all that useful but easy and pleasant, and if that gets them hooked on learning a language, then it is a good thing. If a a lot of people come to LingQ and find it too much of a challenge, too difficult, not enough English etc., then those people will leave and not learn.
If you look at youtube you will see that the most popular videos are those that spend 3 minutes to explain how to say “my name is Sally” in French (or Japanese or whatever) all in English. The most popular language learning radio and TV programs are mostly in the learner’s language. People don’t learn much, but they feel that they are learning, and it is easy. My hope that some of those people can be encouraged to tackle real language learning the way we do it at LingQ, once these easy lessons have given them some confidence.
I usually recommend LingQ as the best way to learn languages, but I am having more and more difficulties on explaining what LingQ is to the newbies. Too much alternatives, too much options, too much very different lessons. I’ve had a couple of dissapointing experiences with two new learners at LingQ. They were enthusiastic but they quit soon because they just didn’t understand LingQ.
Now we have this “premium” content, which should be the best of the best and reflect the essence of LingQ. They are exactly the opposite of learning through input, getting the meaning through context and not overanalyse the language.
‘Je m’appelle Sally’ <—learned that from Assimil. (I’m not a Sally, by the way…)
Yes, I do find that rather strange. Perhaps it will give them confidence, perhaps they will remain monolingual, as they were before LingQ offered them a digital way of ‘leaving paid for materials on the shelf’ so to speak. You’re far more hopeful that me in this respect Steve!
OscarP, I don’t think that any content on LingQ should reflect the essence of LingQ. The essence of LingQ is obviously the method! If there was absolutely nothing on this site except the engine itself, with which someone could import what is interesting to them, to work on, then the site is complete in my eyes.
If someone new arrives to LingQ and looks for content in the library and sees a shelf called “LingQ Store” he may logically think that in this shelf there is the good content, the one that represents the essence of this method for learning languages and then there is the second category content, the free one.
Does this LingQ Store have this kind of lessons? The best ones, the ones that reflect the so called “the best way to learn languages”?
@Imyirtseshem: “-------do you mean beginners at language learning? Or beginners in a particular language? I don’t think that any experienced language learner could take these sources seriously”
All I can say is, when I myself was first starting Italian (which was indeed my very first foreign language experience) I made quite good use of PDQ before moving on to the ‘main’ Linguaphone Italian course.
But I think I basically agree with you here: as I said in my earlier posts, PDQ is only for square-one people; it clearly falls very far short of the older vintage of Linguaphone courses.
As regards the teaching approach of Linguaphone, it should be understood that PDQ doesn’t reflect the content of their best courses - which are basically those published in the 1960s and 1970s.
(BTW I believe that at least some of these older courses are still sold by Linguaphone…)
I think that choice is a good thing, but agree it can also confuse people.
I hear the concern from you about appearing to favour the Store content. That is not our intent.
I would be happy to get together with our key providers in each language, via Skype or email, and come up with a recommended beginner 1, beginner 2, and even Intermediate 1 series for each language. We would have to be objective and fair to all content providers. This then would be our LingQ recommend series for learners who wanted to follow the LingQ approach.
This is quite separate from offering content for sale provided by established language course publishers, who would have to justify their own pedagogical approach.
While I doubt I’d be a fan of these courses personally, if they help beginners to get into the system and keep learning then that can’t be a bad thing. At least the first two lessons are free so people can at least find out if they are going to like or dislike it prior to buying anything.
I just hope we can use the older Linguaphone courses, they would work pretty well with LingQ’s system.
I view LingQ as a collection of resources that everyone has to decide how to use. As such, I don’t really think having what I consider bad content in the library is against the flavor of the site. It’s just another thing I can choose not to take part in.
Maybe it’ll confuse beginners into thinking it’s endorsed by Steve/LingQ, but I don’t really think so.
I also think people should research something as time consuming and life changing as learning a new language and not just assume anything on a certain website is a good idea. If they don’t, well . . .
I agree with your last comment Frangipani. I think that one of Steve’s great intentions, something I also try to achieve, is getting people to be independent learners.
I was chocked by the amount of English. The old Linguaphone courses only had the target language. I don’t need a voice telling me “Marco orders a cappucino in the station cafe”, “Marco takes a taxi to his hotel” etc.
By the way, only the first lesson is free, not the first two (from what I can see).
aybee77:
“Some students want their hands held more, so let’s give them what they want, even if it’s ineffective?”
I don’t see the point in even providing the lessons - it’s strikingly similar to the local library here, full of courses with far too much Swedish/English on, or “phrase books” on CD.
Oh, the humanity.
I dont’ know how they were this Linguaphone old courses but I was surprised by the poor quality of the first lesson of this Linguaphone course in Spanish. The lesson is mostly in English, it has no structure, the few topics it covers are very bad covered, just 2 or 3 words in each… so I can’t see any advantage of having this paying lessons in the library. There are hundreds of lesssons in the Spanish library that offer much more for FREE!
As one of the main free content providers at LingQ (in Spanish) I felt really stupid after listening this lesson! I felt it was a joke to find this poor material for 3000 points (8 lessons) while there are hundreds of better lessons for free. I know it’s up to the user to pay for them, however I’m puzzled/disgusted to see that this kind of content is considered better than the rest, giving them a “premium” category! I know it might not be LingQ’s intention, but the way it’s presented in the library you are definitely giving them a different status (higher than the rest of the content) even though no one buys them.
The old Linguaphone courses are basically like this:
There are 50/30 (+ 1/2 parts of intro) texts of increasing difficulty with a theme for each lesson. They are largely like Assimil in this regard except that the texts are in their own book. There is another book of vocabulary, another with explanations of various grammatical points (indicated by numbers throughout the texts). There is also a written exercises book and on another for spoken exercises. I tend to just use the first 3 books, as that fits in well with my learning style.
Overall, there are perhaps 2000 words, a good coverage of the grammar, good audio and they are rather enjoyable to use.
These new courses don’t even compare.
I tried the french one and in my opinion this should not be allowed in the library, just like free uploaders are not allowed to create content with other than the target language in it. It simply goes against the basic principles we all came here for in the first place.