I tried German with the dw.de content awhile back, it was horrible… They worked really hard but it just seemed like publicly funded content, 'let’s listen to the music for a couple minutes and reflect on what we’ve learned!" haha. And Mission Europe even for kids is just dumb. I pay taxes the EU (sort of) even though I’m American and I think it’s funny that this is what they go to. At least the bbc has an article/vocab/listening set up, but even that falls short…
I’d certainly prefer to pay for something I want rather than something somebody tells me I should want…
For some reason, I pay but it still says I am a free member all the time! Right now I’m not in a course (planning to be soon), but even when I am it says that I don’t pay.
When you buy a course as a Free member, you are given Basic membership access for the duration of the course but you are not, in fact, a Basic member. You should upgrade to Basic and then you will get a $10 discount on all your courses as well as being able to use the site fully while between courses. Not to mention receiving the 50% discount on additional points.
I have been using many websites and programes for language learning.
But so far I thin Lingq works the best for me. At the begining I was a free member but after a while I have decided to upgrade to a Basic member. Nowadays these 10 $ is what I can afford to pay for the content. In the future when I will try speaking in German I will consider upgrading my account.
Maybe some people think 10 $ is a lot and content should be free. I think all the tutors , administrators are doing great job and giving a lot of effort. So this amount of money can be considered as reward for their hard work.
I also must mention all member who are active and giving their opnion and creating new content of the site.
I know the lot of people are not persitent enough and they are not willing to learn the language and they will never be satisified with the level price even if it is for free. If someone want to learn he will find the way to do this. No matter if it free or not.
I just thought I should say that I like LingQ. Thats why I am still using it. I found some of the German content boring and didnt bother to look to much, since I have other resources to find content and I find it more interesting to read the newspaper and listen to the radio than reading the articles which I have found on here. People are doing a great job on adding content to LingQ, the only problem is that I find all the texts either to long or to easy. When you get past the Beginner stages there really isnt any rating on how hard the texts are and then its hard to find one which isnt to hard or to easy. (I know that it stands how many new words there is, but they arent always a good indicator of how difficukt the text is.) Thats why I find radio more convinient, while it is spoken at a more natural speed and about all kinds of topics. I also can stop reading the Norwegian newspapers and read the german ones instead and still know whats going on in the world.
I am sure the tutors are great aswell, but I havent tried them so I cant know and I have never been interested in a tutor, so then I will obviously not pay for it.
I also have to say that I really enjoy the graph thing which is showing how much I have read and listened each day. It is a great way, for me at least, to keep motivated and keep track of how much I acually have done for the past weeks.
I think a lot of content problems will be solved when we improve the Library, making it easier to find content of interest and at our level. We will also introduce a way for users to evaluate content. But all of these developments take time. We have a lot of things to do and limited resources with which to do them. Patience please.
Meanwhile, it is possible to navigate the Library, to import content, to see the % of new words in each item, to post comments in the forum about what kind of content you want to see. There are many tools there now.
I think that our German Library is one of our richest. I am amazed by the range and quality of what we have there. Of course it is not possible to satisfy everyone, but we are trying and may eventually get there.
With regard to the TSF site for Portuguese, it is truly an amazing resource, and can probably help more people learn and become fluent in Portuguese than much of what the Institut Camoes puts out.
We need transcripts. These large radio stations usually do not reply. I think we should keep trying to contact them. Maybe we need to know someone. I am going also raise this question at the Portuguese Forum.
Meanwhile I think that if we could start transcribing a few items and start up a few collections in the Library, we can then show them what we have done if we are ever able to make contact.
Remember that the provider name should include a description of the source and URL link.
Content created by members is the kind of content I enjoy the most. I don’t know if any of the members here are professional writers (or language teachers, for that matter), but I must say that I have learned a lot about the language, culture and what not.
This being said, my level of Chinese is still very low, which means I can’t fully appreciate that particular content (still to little material for Beginner I/II levels, in my opinion). But I import whatever easy lessons I have encountered in my studies “outside” LingQ, and study them in greater detail here, with the help of LingQs/phrases, the word count tool and so on.
Everyone can do the same thing, provided that one finds the tools useful. Feel free to import German horror stories, newscasts, science articles, entire audiobooks, anything you find interesting - share if it’s open source/copyright free to get points.
About the tendency for people to want things free on the internet: I was thinking maybe it is because a lot of the conditions that make barter an inefficient form of trade do not exist in the world of the internet.
Barter is inefficient because of the low probability of finding what you want, when you want it, in the hands of someone who also wants something that you can provide at a certain time.
THe internet deals in a commodity, information, which is not subject to physical depreciation. The net is very searchable, and it is vast. Therefore it is relatively easy to find what you want when you want it. Since those providing information are themsleves likely to be users of the internet, there is a kind of workable barter there. This is especially true when people are willing to sacrifice quality and security for cheapness.
I wonder if Internet Service Providers should compensate the content (web site owners) that drive people to pay for high speed internet. This would drive up the cost of internet service . But it may increase the quality of content too.
Just thoughts from a very elementary point of view.
It’s a good post dooo and as much as I want to give a detailed response this thread has gone on long enough… lol. I’ll just say I don’t think anyone should be forced to compensate anyone.
Well, I wasn’t going to say this publicly, for fear of hurting the feelings of the entire German-speaking world but since it has been raised, in my opinion the whole canon of German classical literature is fairly dull and some of the material in the German library may reflect this, shall we say, cultural ponderousness.
Dübels Geistesblitz, on the other hand, is one of the funniest podcasts I have ever heard. I would like to thank Vera for bringing it into my little world.
If anyone knows of any really scary, copyright-free German horror or ghost stories I would be very interested. Or out-of-copyright German translations of foreign horror or ghost stories. We’ll get them into the library.
Gosh, I couldn’t see it any differently. The only reason I wanted to learn German was to read Hesse and Kafka. Very generally German literature explores the condition of humanity, what it is to be human, at least what I’ve read.
I think that that’s something lacking in English language literature, most English language literature whether it’s Dickens,Shakespeare, or Hemingway are a photograph of a time period and an example of the elasticity of the language and its ‘mongrel’ roots. I 'd have to say I like English language literature better overall (of course I’m a native English speaker and I’ve read far more EL lit) but German language literature is also incredible, deep, dark… I can only imagine more so in the original.
I guess to each his own I guess. This could be a separate thread… I’ll start it…
I agree with your statement of old classical literature. It is not longer what we use today ind the daily speaking!
The sentences are too long, often a whole chapter. And then, in the German language the verb is coming on the end, you often don’t know what the sense really is. The verbs and form of expressions are strange today.
Otherwise, for a good speaker or reader, classic is interesting for his statements. When I see what Goethe has written hundred of years ago, it is actual today sometimes more then ever before.
I would like to come back to the discussion about the pay or not pay topic.
I think that it won’t be bad to start a discussion about how to make the LingQ maybe better and more intersting. You could ask the members about feedbacks andwhat the team could be better to make it more atractive for free member.
I gess that you have a statistic with the number of users and theirs preferences, expectations and interests. Most of us would like to learn a new language or improve their language skills and meet intersting people.
Everyone could share his or her expections and let us know, if these expectations are satisfied or not. if they are not satisfied, they could explain why and what they would like to have add in the topics.
you could think about how to make the lessons in the bibliotheque more intersting and add more topics.
or to ask some users to write about some topics and put them in the bibliotheque.
challenging the users could be one way to involve them in the progress of the website
the turors could also give a personal feedback about the every six mounth to their students.
i think that the bibliotheque could have more topics. I would like to find a new job. it would be helpfull for me if there were more topics about job descriptions, resumes, interview preparation and more.
Hi Aicha,
we had this topic some weeks before. I think Mark and Steve have a long “to do list” but they can do it only step by step.
We have some of these points already others come later.
In this thread we have seen how difficult it is for someone to accept a payment. It is easier to say what all has to be in another way, better or not, fulfilling different desires and requirements and so on.
For this work you have to order experts, programers. Those people do not work for nothing.
We have a content forum where you can talk about what we would like to see in the Library. You are also free to start a thread at any time on changes you would like to see at LingQ. We cannot necessarily do what you want, at least not right away, but we appreciate hearing from our users. That guides us in our development. Thanks for your contributions and keep it coming.
At the risk of dragging this discussion on too far, I am just curious to know what you mean by the statement
"I don’t think anyone should be forced to compensate anyone. "
Do you mean you can just take anything you want and not pay for it? I can understand that no one is forced to use or take anything, but surely if someone does use or take something, they have to accept the conditions set by the provider of the good or service. Otherwise you are implying that the provider has an obligation to provide the good or service for nothing. Surely you do not mean that.
My take on what Blindside said was that there should be no regulatory body forcing compensation. I read his comment in the context of my previous suggstion of having internet service providers to pay a commission to webpages that attract people to the internet.
Now that I think about it, it would not be a good idea since advertising is a less coercive system fo compensation of popular websites
but since it has been raised, in my opinion the whole canon of German classical literature is fairly dull and some of the material in the German library may reflect this, shall we say, cultural ponderousness.