Something ive noticed about my reading with LingQ is that it is becoming harder and harder to reach the daily goals i set myself. The coins are either earned from making lingq’s, finishing a lesson, or moving words to known/familiar/recognised etc. But if you already know 80% of the words on the screen, or dont need to make any more lingqs, then the only way to really earn coins is by finishing the lesson or doing the card game (which i dont use because i use anki). If you use LingQ to read a book, it might take you a week to finish a lesson, in which case youve probably lost your streak if you dont come across enough unknown words. Perhaps there is a way to reward people for reading through a page and moving to the next one, i.e. actually reward people for using the lingQ reader for what its designed to do. Reading!
I don’t believe that coins are a good measure of progress. On the contrary, they can discourage you from using better learning strategies.
One idea that occurs to me, in case it is of any use:
Set your coin goal as low as possible, as just a goal to get you onto the site/app, and then have in your head a goal of X minutes every day, and try to meet that yourself without platform support?
Determine how much time you are willing and/or able to devote to your studies and set your goals accordingly. If on some days you have the time, energy, and motivation to exceed your goals that’s just icing on the cake.
I don’t like interrupting my reading to make new LingQs, so I just brute force my personal goals by doing more reading. If I read for an hour at an advanced/intermediate level – without a lot of new words, I get around 1500 points, (I think). I shoot for 3000 points a day, but some days I do more and some days I do less, just depending on how well I’m feeling.
If I’m not feeling well I may only read for 45 minutes to an hour in my primary target language, French. I also do Spanish reading here daily on LingQ, and then grammar and vocabulary exercises on 3 other paid sites as well. Since I encounter a lot more new words in Spanish, and I’m reading at a much lower level, I don’t spend as much time doing Spanish on LingQ.
If you use LingQ to read a book, it might take you a week to finish a lesson
I’m not sure what this means. The books that I upload (“import”) to LingQ are automatically divided up into sections of about 30 minutes (6000 words?) each. What do you mean by “finish a lesson?”, that would take you a week? Do you mean that it takes you a week to finish a novel in your target language? That’s pretty normal, big fat ones can take a lot longer.
The point/coin system of tracking progress feels pretty arbitrary. Just figure out what works for you and go at your own pace. You’re doing this for your own benefit, and you can set your personal goals accordingly.
Good luck!
And what do you do with the coins? You can’t buy anything with them.
Oh, I see! Your streak is broken if you don’t reach your daily goal. So what?
I always find it strange that there are people here for whom coins and streaks seem to be more important than the language they are learning.
Just do it like this: Set a goal to study or read for a certain amount of time every day. It doesn’t matter whether you work with LingQ or with any other learning tool. It is even useful to use several different methods.
Take breaks in between, for example at the weekend or when you go on a trip or when something else is more important that day.
Believe me: If you don’t care about coins and streaks, it reduces stress. And stress is something that prevents you from learning success and from having fun while learning.