Lynx AI is OUTSTANDING. I have been using it to discuss El Alquimista in Spanish. Lynx asks the kind of questions that a teacher in a literature class would ask. They aren’t terribly difficult questions, but they are unexpected (like in a conversation) and require a little thought to answer. Challenging, but in a conversational way. I’m very impressed. I’ve found it very helpful and believe it will provide the conversational skills I want to develop. I’m hearing impaired and can’t really make use of online tutors because of that. But this is perfect.
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its a good tool, i just think there are other thinks that are more important and should be a prioraty like fixing bugs, work on a better UI and give more in lesson options instead of focusing on somthing they know most people wont even use.
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I’m not convinced that most people won’t use Lynx, it may well be transformative for many, but their unwillingness to fix serious outstanding bugs and instead hiring marketing staff is shocking and very cynical.
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I like to keep things simple when it comes to language learning. I’ve used LingQ for a couple of years, but only as a reader. I provide my own content from kindle books. I rarely see the bugs that are talked about in these forums. Not saying they don’t exist, but they don’t often bother me.
When Lynx AI was announced, I signed up for the beta, quickly tried it and decided it added to much complexity–without any structure, I didn’t really know what to do with it. Now two months later, I gave it another try and as LeifGoodwin predicted, I’m one of those who find it transformative. That was the reason for my post. LingQ always did what I want it to do, and now Lynx AI does what I didn’t know I needed!!
My new workflow is to read a chapter from my current book in LingQ, then switch to Lynx to discuss the chapter and practice writing with Lynx correcting my mistakes. Simple, no apparent bugs, challenging but fun and I’m making progress. I’m sold.
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I think people that don’t use AI too much, or don’t know how to use it, would find Lynx useful. I use ChatGPT daily, sometimes Grok or Gemini, so I never use Lynx. However, if they would tailor it with our vocabulary list, lessons engagement, preferences, goals, etc., that would be another story completely. Especially for the vocabulary database.
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I agree with you. I’m premium plus member but I don’t use Lynx. Instead of I have been using chatgpt and sometimes gemini.
It ends up being just a tool that only people at an advanced level can enjoy, there isn’t anything wrong with that, as I said before, I just wish they focused more on fixing important parts of the service that sometimes make the website/app unusable before adding new stuff.
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You might be right, I’ve used Lynx with French where I am B2+, but not with German, where I am a low B1 as there’s not a great deal of point to being an imbecile!
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It does do all that, David. When you invoke Lynx, it prompts you to click on a recent lesson so it is aware of the content of that lesson. When you or Lynx uses a new word, it appears in blue. Click on it and you have the same options to mark it as in any LingQ session. You can also convert any of your conversations with Lynx directly into a lesson that shows up in your normal feed. I haven’t checked to see if it somehow changes the other metrics like word count or study time, but I don’t care about those kind of metrics.
It seems to be prone to the same kind of “errors” as ChatGPT. For some reason it was calling “Leyenda Personal” (Personal Legend, a term used in my current book in Spanish) Ley Personal. I corrected it and it switched to the proper term, but did not apologize as ChatGPT often does. Making stuff up is in AI’s DNA so it’s expected occasionally.
Give it a try. At worst you will discover it’s not for you. In my case, it has changed my work flow for the better.
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I used it at the beginning, on my iPhone. But now, I don’t use LingQ much as I was using it before. With ChatGPT I can have a conversation on an entire PDF, which I did with a couple of PDFs just yesterday. And I have my personalized bots that have already their prompts and actions memorized. But it is ChatGPT Plus, I don’t think you can do that with the free version.
What would be useful is to have Lynx connected to our database in a way that I can ask Lynx to create stories with those words. For example, if Lynx understands all the words I have at level 3, I could ask it to create a story with 10 of those words, so I will easily reinforce them, and convert them. Just one of the strategies that could be used with that “reverse” connection.
Lynx could be very useful if I could create a few mini-Lynx with prompts already pre-personalized. With just a click of a button, I could ask to perform an action that I want, and not writing prompts all the time. On the iPhone is not so manageable.
But maybe, sometimes I will use it again, just to check if something changed. In any case, if it works for you, and you are happy about it, more power to you. Enjoy the experience. AI helps a lot, definitely!
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It’s still in the target language, so a demonstration of how hot and cold Lingq is for comprehensible input and the basic funcationality it needs. Lingq could be amazing for many people if they fix it.