Well, I just wanted to say Thank you :).
Thanks to Lingq I learned Spanish in a year to a level where I could travel to Buenos Aires, stay in a homestay with landlords who don’t speak English, interact with natives and have a full, amazing cultural experience. All this without a need to use English at any moment and without anyone responding me back in English (not even in a situations where people definitely wouldn’t waste their time if my Spanish hadn’t been good enough - like customs, check-in counters etc.).
I started Spanish in Dec last year, working on it together with 3 other languages. For the first few months I was mostly concentrating on Russian. I started using Lingq actively in April, still, mostly for Russian. In May, unhappy with my progress in Spanish, I decided to drop everything else and concentrate on Spanish only. I was learning mostly through Lingq, by reading imported books and having conversations at least twice a week. Aside from that, I was reading grammar books and watching a lot of Spanish TV. I had to drop my language learning activity in August because it was time to concentrate on finishing my PhD thesis. Since than I’m simply just reading something in Spanish, when I have time.
I decided to go to Buenos Aires as a ‘reward’ holiday for submitting my thesis. I decided to work with a Spanish tutor 2h a day while I was there, mostly on grammar. I kind of expected to be able to speak Spanish but I still was surprised with the success. As I said, I haven’t got anyone responding me back in English, I was able to do complicated ‘business’ in Spanish (like the unnecessarily complicated procedure of activating Argentinian SIM card) and, above all, to enjoy the company of locals who had nothing to do with my language learning - friends of a girl I met in a plain. I had wonderful time dancing tango in a milonga and visiting guided tours of barrios and museums that were all in Spanish. And all this in a country that speaks an accent I’ve never paid much attention to (I even was asked for how long I’ve been living in Argentina ).
All this wouldn’t be possible without Lingq and I’m really thankful to Steve and Mark and everyone else behind this website and, of course, to my great tutors, Albert, Berta and Oscar. I think I have found a language learning method that perfectly suits my needs.
Next year I will be concentrating on Chinese Mandarin and can’t wait to see how much I can achieve in this language using Lingq :).