So, maybe you could tell me how you actually use those great lingqs?
Do you type in an explanation every time you come across a word? Do you use what google translate provides? Maybe you don’t enter a ‘hint’ at all?
You say, you link as much as possible, every ‘shaky’ word. However, I do find it annoying to add a hint to every word, I’m rather confident with but probably would never recall when I speak myself (a case that often occurs in English, in my case, but also in Japanese). The other thing is, with Japanese, I already said that my google translations are horrible. Sometimes it translates a kanji to the exact same kanji or it mixes English with German (sometimes even more languages) or the lingq just doesn’t realize where one word is ending and the next one is beginning at all, so there is no proper way of recording it.
I am that kind of person who is reading novels in one go without ever using the dictionary, as I believe, I am making progress by enjoying what I am doing and will ‘get’ some new words out of each novel as well. (I didn’t do anything else in English and although I’m not perfect, I definitely reached the level of fluency, I think) So I rather read five novels than repeating one lesson over and over again and translating it to the scratch. So all this lingqing and translating all the time seems a whole lot of (boring) work to me. I’m not sure whether it is a good system for me at all. However, as so many people here are so fond of it and saying they are making huge progress using it, I’d like to know how you do it and if it is actually fun for you to do it. (or if you found a way to make it more fun or easier)
(I’m detecting an increasing legasteny in my writing. I really wrote ‘grade’ instead of ‘great’… :-/ I hope you can still struggle through my sentences…)
(by the way: do you know the dictionary ‘wadoku.de’? Maybe it’s possible to add it additionally to the google one - I’m not sure, if it works though, because I have no idea of how computers work actually. Even though it’s not good at 独和, as it uses the same German translation for a vast amount of Japanese words, the 和独 direction is quite fine.)
When I used first Lingq, I used it about 2 weeks without knowing about the lingqs , I was just cliking “I know all button” and go to the next lesson . When I discovered the lingqs I was so amazed that some hours I coudn’t do anymore lessons … I was like Archimede when discovered that property of water :). As far as I know, our brain learns by linking new things with already known things , all these through repetition and practice. that’s why it feels so natural for me.
10$/moth = 0.33$ / day and I think it’s not a problem even for poor economy countries.
writings and speaking sesions may be expensive , but there are dozens of social networks where you can find someone to correct your writings or to speak with for free. here you have the advantage of having a fix hour, and a fix amount of time.
by the way , I didn’t hear anything about that android app for flashcards , and still the imported private collections cannot be seen:(
I know a lot of people having a pretty tight budget, who are able to invest 5 Euros a day in cigarettes (150 Euros per month!). When they eventually decide to quit smoking, they are incapable of saving these 5 Euros. All is a matter of strength of will.
$10 a month is 7 Euros worth. Do you really think it is expensive? If you know a cheaper means of learning a language (as efficient as lingQ), just tell me. I really am interested in knowing it.
@Fingerhut
I LingQ nearly everything, even verb forms I know already.
I try to translate verb forms correctly, and I add gender of nouns, adjectives, etc.
It’s a lot of manual work.
I know all of them very well. Why am I doing this? It’s repetition. During LingQ-ing, I repeat the verb and its forms. Since Sept. 2010 I lingQ-ed around 8000 terms.
And I am very accurate - I always look up the term in the PONS online dictionary plus verbs / verb forms in “Le Conjugueur”.
I very rarely use Google Translate.
To find out how good LingQ works for you and your Language learning, you must give it a try (minimum a 3 month basic account = 30 US$ – PLUS – (very important) use it daily!). If you just use only the free account, you will never know how good it is!
At the moment with Russian I am reading Terry Pratchett translations in Russian, which have a lot of idiomatic phrases. I link the whole phrase, see how Google translates it (it’s surprisingly good for Russian idiom) and either pick their translation or use the one I remember from the English version.
@Fingerhut - I’ve added Wadoku.de to the list of dictionaries. You can find it by opening the LingQ widget and clicking on “Settings” that appears next to “Dictionary”.
The membership fee for me - and shouldn’t be for anyone unless you’re on a very tight budget, which may very well be the case - is not an issue of money so much as I like the current system of providing content for free while having the option of paying for various additional features.
I haven’t really gotten into the whole LingQing thing, partly because I’ve been using this site mainly for Japanese, which has the infamous text formatting problem, somewhat lessening the ease and efficiency of creating LingQs.
Still, I do pay money occasionally for tutoring etc, going back to what I said at the beginning. I’m not very keen on the idea of having a x-week trial period as someone suggested.
As for the question of the LingQ limit, I don’t think there would be much of a difference between a 100 or 500 word limit either. If you want to try out the system fully you could always get a temporary paying membership and use that time to create LingQs like crazy.
@kokorodoko - We are not about to make all content paid. It will undoubtedly be a very small percentage of content that will be for sale.
As for your reasoning about not getting into the LingQing thing because you are studying Japanese, I don’t really buy it. In fact, LingQing in Japanese, works plenty well enough. Yes, it’s not perfect but I have no problem using it and finding it extremely useful and there are many others besides me who find it equally good. We wish it could be 100% perfect too but 95% is going to have to do.
I may not be objective but I love LingQ for Chinese and Japanese, and if I were not so busy on other languages I would use to improve my vocabulary in both languages, and to access texts that are a little difficult for me.
So all this lingqing and translating all the time seems a whole lot of (boring) work to me. I’m not sure whether it is a good system for me at all. However, as so many people here are so fond of it and saying they are making huge progress using it, I’d like to know how you do it and if it is actually fun for you to do it. (or if you found a way to make it more fun or easier)
, and still the imported private collections cannot be seen:(
Ok, now, I’m going to see the convenience of lingqing.