We have just added the Friends’ Blogs section to the Community page. If any of your friends have a blog and have their blog URL in their LingQ profile, their posts will appear here. Make sure to add your own blog URL in your profile so your friends can follow your blog!
If you don’t have a blog, we strongly recommend you get one. Blogging is a great way to practice your target language in a meaningful way. You can also, of course, submit your blog posts for correction by a tutor either before or after you post.
Some free blogging sites we recommend are Vox, WordPress and Blogger.
You will notice slight improvements to the Friends area, as well. Now only ten of your friends appear on the Community page. You can see all your friends on the new Friends page.
That’s not a bad idea. Right now the search results are listed by activity. Therefore, the most active members are listed first. This achieves a similar goal which is to identify those members who are most likely to be of interest and who are active on the site.
I just put a blog in my profile (signed up to vox)… is it supposed to appear in my profile under everything else? Or, erm… shrugs. Great great great great idea however! For some reason I find it a big step forward.
You have to put your blog address into your profile. That is all you need to do. Your friends will then see your blog. You will see your friends’ blog.
I agree that it is a great step forward, and there is more to come.
Please tell your friends and let’s build the community.
Everything looks good, Roy. Now you just have to wait for the blog feeds to be updated which happens every hour, I believe. Then your friends should be able to follow your blog posts on their Community page.
I think this is a really good idea. I’ve once thought it could be a good idea to have kind of network or something exclusive to lingQ based on blogs. That way we could practice and share our ideas about different subjects in our target languages. This way this is made possible and is more simple. We just need to go the community page.
Anyway I don’t know if I will create blog… I wouldn’t know what to post there…
I have tried adding my URL in the Blog field, but my friends tell me they cannot see my updates. I tried before with a different Blog I use, but I just can’t seem to make it work right. Mark, could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?
Ok, thank you! I will check with my friends tomorrow and see what has happened. For now I will enjoy viewing the blogs that other members wrote. It is great fun.
Thanks for fixing that, Henry! I am so glad to hear of people who can see my blog now. I’ll have to make sure I write on it regularly so that it remains interesting to look at.
Emma, I am looking forward to reading your blog, too.
I like the idea to have a blog. But in Germany there are special laws and you have to publish a “Impressum” (=imprint) at the blog which contains the full name, the full address, e-Mail and phone number. This is required by law. And I don’t want to write my full address in the internet because there a lot of spider programs which pick up addresses.
Often blogger don’t add an imprint on their side but there are high amount of fine. Consider this as an advice for German bloggers.
I think about other options.
Yes they can do that, you see. I’ve researching it.
If a German blogger blogs for Germans it is not important, where the server of the blog is.
The back door I hope is that I don’t blog for Germans. This is a little bit cheating or tricky (sorry, I don’t know a fitting English word) but I think this could work. I will do some more research.
German bloggers are not happy about this situation. We hope that the politics get a sense for the web and his possibilities.
I don’t have a blog. Instead I write emails to my friends in the United States about my life as an American retiree living in Mexico. I have thought about doing a blog, but I fear my friends would not read it, as many are afraid of new technology.
On lingq I looked for friends who are native Spanish speakers and who are studying English. For that reason it would make sense to write my blog in English and share it on lingq. Why would a member of lingq write a blog in the language he/she is studying?
In fact, for your technologically challenged friends a blog needn’t be threatening! As far as they are concerned, they will just have to go to your blog or web page and read whatever you have posted there. They don’t need to actually do anything but read. You could also set up your blog to email your posts to your friends thereby achieving what you are doing now. The advantage to the blog is that others can then read your posts as well.
As for why it makes sense to write in your target language, it is simply a great way to practice meaningful communication in your new language. In addition, native speakers will likely comment and help you with your new language. I would recommend posting in both English and Spanish so you get a bit of practice and you create interesting content for your English friends and learners. A blog will also keep all your posts in one place and ends up being your online diary.
As you can see, I highly recommend a blog. You’ll find blogging quite easy once you get used to it.
