Great question. I use LingQ chiefly for aided reading and keeping track of my known vocabulary in that context. I also use it some for aided listening.
Additionally, I think the community of self-motivated language learners here is really strong and this is great place for the sharing of ideas.
I use it for reading and listening to books and audiobooks, and for the review system. I like LingQ because it has nearly everything I need all in one place, and it doesn’t demand that I spend hours setting it up. I don’t have to download any programs (as I did with Anki) - it’s all online, and all in one place.
I’ve tried Anki, Language Reactor, and Duolingo, but they just didn’t work for me.
Anki is too fiddly, and I have to do too much work to get it set up. making flashcards is a chore, and all the flashcards that you can download are formatted differently, so I would spend ages reformatting them.
Language Reactor, I feel, is just not user-friendly enough, so, like Anki, it’s too difficult to set up properly. The subtitle settings are somewhat bugged, and the subtitles often don’t match what’s actually being said. Here on LingQ, we can easily fix that. On LR, we can’t.
As for Duolingo, it’s too focused on grammar, so it’s not a good source for fast learning. I could spend a year on Duolingo and at the end of it, I would know a lot of grammar, but my vocabulary would be very small, and I’d be no closer to speaking than I was when I started
I only use Calibre to convert files so they work in LingQ.
It’s an assisted reader. It allows me to read any content I want to (except for physical books…but it can do that if you have patience and time). It’s very easy to import a lot of different content, whether it’s from youtube or the web or importing e-books.
It allows me to choose from a wide variety of online dictionaries to get meanings (you aren’t stuck with a single dictionary that might give you the wrong interpretation).
Now, with whisper it can add a transcript to imported audio files. For German and Spanish this works quite well. (May not for other languages so ymmv).
Another cool new feature is the “simplify” action. I was doing something like this using chatgpt, but it’s nice to have this feature built in.
It has great stat keeping. To me, this is one of the most important features. When you feel like you’re making very little headway in the intermediate levels, your stats will show you otherwise. If you have a strong perseverance you might be able to keep forging ahead using other assisted readers, or google translate extension, but I think most people don’t have that willpower. I do somewhat often read outside of LingQ using that, if I just want to quickly peruse something, but usually I do import it.
Anki - SRS…I don’t use SRS in LingQ or other apps. Initially I did do some in Memrise for German awhile back, but my progress in LingQ has been FAR quicker.
calibre + translator - I have done this to see how it worked (albeit a few years ago). It was ok. Yes, easier on the eyes for reading I’ll agree, but as an assisted reader, LingQ is better (for me) - multiple dictionaries, stat keeping, PORTABILITY is a key one here too with the apps for phone and tablet. Can’t do that with calibre. I do most of my reading not at a computer.
language reactor - great tool. I use it for a lot of my movie/tv show watching on Netflix. On youtube I find it too clunky, but have it tried it there in awhile.
readlang plugin - haven’t tried this. i think I’ve heard some good things. If it can help record the stats in readlang itself then it sounds great. If not, why not just use google translate extension? I do hope in the future LingQ could do an extension like this that would record the words in the application (and the stats).
duolingo - I’ve used in the past and generally think it’s ok for beginner stages. It will not help you very far though. I also think you’ll progress much faster doing reading and listening.
So, the key things to me that I don’t think the other things beat is - flexibility in content choices (i get to choose from nearly anything), stats, great choices for looking up meanings, portability.
“So what do you use LingQ for”
That is good question. I have made far more rapid progress in my French comprehension using LingQ than ever before. However, that is primarily due to reading the transcript while listening to audio, which is training my brain to recognise the patterns. However, there are other tools that also allow me to do that. I am finding too many bugs in LingQ when watching a YouTube video. Plus I discovered that I cannot import a Netflix film, just the transcript, and then the audio is a robot voice which totally negates the reason for watching a Netflix film, which is to accustomise myself to ordinary french i.e. not that spoken by radio presenters and university experts which I already understand. Unfortunately the content in LingQ is not compelling, for me anyway. In German I’m struggling to find interesting A2 material, once I’ve gone through the courses.
@LeifGoodwin, we have a number of parallels.
I’m at B2-C1 French and A2.1 level German and finding materials is a limiting factor. Nicos Weg, Chill German, Deutch mit Lari are good but I’d love more.
Since I’m sure you’ve progressed at German, please feel free to offer suggestions.
Learn German with Herr Antrim is my favourite. Also Easy German, and News in Slow German. But perhaps they won’t suit you, tastes differ. It looks like we are roughly at the same level in each language. I will check out your suggestions, very useful.
I found German very hard for the first two years, it’s getting easier and more enjoyable now. Your experience would be of interest to me. Perhaps I’m just a bit dumb when it comes to languages, I have a PhD in quantum physics but I am not linguistically talented.
@LeifGoodwin I’ve seen Herr Antrim and need to return to it.
I’m finding German a terribly painful slow start after yet 18 months at it. Cases and separable verbs.
I’ve got another five or so years of career remaining. My goal by retirement is:
I don’t feel too linguistically talented myself, just stubborn.
I assume you have taken the Assimil German course? If you haven’t, I highly recommend it. The Assimil course has 2 books, one basic and one advanced. Both have audio, I think you buy the books and the audio separately but the audio is very good quality. I have done both but I would recommend the basic one.
I follow a youtube channel called let’s go! German online, you might want to check it out. Nita|Study German daily is also a good option.
For spaced repetition I use clozemaster.
Those are good goals to have. You have a very methodical approach to 3-4 languages. Are you around some native speakers locally to meet up with or just online?
I’d also first experienced Japanese in the 90’s. I lived there too. I would like to go from current C1 borderline (pre-N1) to at least C1/C2 (solid N1) in the next 5 years. Our area has a lot of Japanese here on top of my own personal family situation. The time zones are not so bad after work here is before work there and vice versa and not the middle of the night like with Europe.
My main focus on LingQ and elsewhere is Italian which is B1 now. I’d like to get it up to a solid B2. The music, movies, history, and cars of Italy are a draw. It’s a hobby but a passionate one. The one problem is the time difference of 6 hours with Italy and my work schedule no longer hybrid to fit in a lot of tutor sessions. There aren’t so many Italians here. Unfortunately group classes in times that work for me are less plentiful and I see Lingoda only has intro Italian classes but more advanced in German, Spanish, and French. I am a big fan of giallo like Dario Argento and Mario Bava’s movies, and rock progressive italiano but now modern Italian series and canzone autore/leggere are gaining ground.
I may continue in Spanish which is the old base language that’s never truly gone away but is not the same passion for me as Japanese or Italian. It depends. Maybe it will take a trip somewhere other than an auto plant in Mexico will do the trick! Definitely plenty of exposure is available at any time.
Korean is a touch and go one for me. I have a lot of reasons to learn it. I’m working for a Korean company and having been doing taekwondo for over 15 years. I had a chance to work in Korea for 7 months. I did not take advantage of that time with the language aside from hangul practice and survival phrases but did expand my cultural experience with Korea thanks to being able to travel on the weekends and during their holidays. It was during the pandemic so my experience was limited in terms of face-to-face meetings. I am not giving up, but with the focus on Italian now it is hard to see a lot of fast progress. Maybe a good phrase to try with a patient colleague a week. That’s what it seems. This past week was “how was your weekend”. I think finishing Squid Game watching with Japanese subtitles with my wife and daughter was interesting to hear even a few phrases I already know.