Trying to talk to my family about LingQ. My brother and sister-in-law strongly believe in Pimsleur, and I tried to tell them…
Too much English!
Would you be able to understand a person’s response?
sigh Just frustrated. Been trying to get them all to use LingQ and I feel like they completely ignore me. They just talk over me, say Pimsleur’s REALLY good and etc etc…
sorry, I had to just get this out of my system…
I agree fully with you there. Pimsleur sucks and there’s no redeeming it. I’d advise you to not worry about how well your brother and sister-in-law are going with their language study. Obviously, it’s not something worth getting stressed over. hehe 
Yes, you’re right Imyirtseshem.
It’s just… my father was saying, “Oh! well I would LOVE if there was a way to somehow have an instant translation of a word or a sentence…like if I didn’t know it, I could just tap on the word and there would be a translation…” and I was immediately like, “well LingQ can do this! And so can LWT and all these other great sites!!! LOOK LOOK! Check it out!”
But NOOOO!!! He had to get a kindle and all this random (blankity-blank) because my brother tells him to!
I mean, this site has given me…hope. More hope than I could of ever dreamed of. A personal wish, a personal DREAM may be fulfilled because of this site, because of what I have learned, the people I have met… Not only that, I want to prove to my family that I’m not just a screw-up and that sometimes I DO KNOW what I am talking about. Sorry…
sighs but yes you are right Imyirtseshem…just keep breathing inhale, exhale…
Hey, it’s understandable. Trying to prove yourself to others is just natural - especially family. I tried to do that for a while but then realised that all but a couple gave a damn. I do language practice with one each week now, but I’ve stopped trying to show people who barely give a damn how well I’m going with something I’m passionate with. Share it with us instead, we all appreciate!
I believe that it is important that we do what we like to do in language learning. If your father enjoys Pimsleur then that is what he should do.
I do not enjoy Pimsleur because I do not enjoy hearing my own language when I want to listen to the language I want to learn. I do not enjoy being prompted to speak. In general I am much more motivated to hear and understand the language, to get used to the language and to learn lots of new words. I am in no hurry to speak since I do not feel it will help to speak well in the long run. I am interested in the long term result, comfortable fluency, not in being able to produce a few sentences and phrases early on.
But many people like Pimsleur.
Pimsleur puts a lot of focus on speaking skills and pronunciation. However, there is a kind of drawback in having a good accent but otherwise bad skills.
Imaginary scenario: the avid student finishes all three volumes of Pimsleur, goes to the country where the language is spoken, is taken for native while greeting the hotel staff, but can’t hold a decent conversation.
A super-accent won’t help me if I don’t understand what the natives say.
From what I’ve seen, a good accent is far from assured in Pimsleur either. Several people, whose results of using it I’ve experienced first hand, are less than impressive. Of course, that is probably down to an individual thing - in that case, Pimsleur won’t help you. If you’ve got a knack for pronunciation, you won’t need Pimsleur to pick it up.
“Imaginary scenario: the avid student finishes all three volumes of Pimsleur, goes to the country where the language is spoken, is taken for native while greeting the hotel staff, but can’t hold a decent conversation.”
Wow! Jeff, that’s a problem I think many of us would like to have 
With a super accent you are well on your way!!!
It’s not as if you have to choose between having a good accent or good language skills!. If you start up with a good accent, like Maria says, you’re well on your way!
I wouldn’t mind to start with a superb accent and deceive a few people because they assume I should be very fluent in the language. I will get there!
I like Pimsleur, not as a stand alone course or the only thing you’ll ever do, of course, but it really helps you to loose the fear you may have of speaking the language.
Cloud if your family likes Pimsleur that’s great, if you attack their favourite method no wonder they don’t want to hear about your “Lingq method”. Pimsleur is easy to follow, with Lingq you have to struggle with the website’s interface to figure out how it works. I’ve just stopped recommending Lingq to people, it’s just a waste of time, nobody listens!!! 
To me Pimsleur is a “beginner’s book” in audio format. It’s an okay place to start, and as berta said it will help people to lose their fear of speaking the language, or fear of a new language and the gaping maw of the unknown. But there’s an end point to its effectiveness. It’ll be nice when the day comes though that your frustration turns to a big, smug, “I told you so” when they see what you have been able to accomplish while they couldn’t. Then you can try again.
I’m using Pimsleur to learn german and I can say for everybody this method definitely is amazing because first of all you’ll learn understand without any text and the lectures are trying explain in the more easy way.
you can learn just with pimsleur.
thank you everyone for your input and support! Means a lot. I shouldn’t be so hard on my family so mmm… just keep breathing… inhale, exhale
When it comes to pronunciation, I find that if I delay speaking until I have had a lot of input, I will have a better chance at a good accent when I start speaking.
I think Pimsleur appeals to people, and they are probably the majority, for whom language learning means learning to say something as soon as possible. Perhaps that is something that we should address better at LingQ.
LingQ reflects my own views, that learning to understand the language, and understand it well, through enjoyable listening and reading and expanding one’s vocabulary, will lead to a better foundation in the language in the long run.
I think that no system needs to be the only solution and people should seek the path that suits their needs and interests.
Berta, we are also looking at improving our navigation a little. Stay tuned.
I don’t think that using LingQ is so difficult although it is no doubt harder than using Pimsleur. Sure it’s very easy to just plug in your Pimsleur cd but your rate of learning is significantly lower. When using it you feel like you’re learning something which is why people like it. In fact, you are learning very little although, as others here have said, it is a good introduction. If you are a little nervous of your new language and this then gives you confidence to continue in the language, that’s good… On the other hand I see no reason why using Pimsleur would possibly make your accent any better than using other methods. Either you hear the accent well and can mimic it well or you don’t.
To me, the biggest problem with Pimsleur is that it’s boring to the point where I’ve never been able to start a second lesson with any course. The fact that is contains as much language as half a dozen pages of an average phrasebook, doesn’t help it either. Mistakes in it too…not much good. Also, the lack of language I’m interested in…no, I’ll never be a Pimsleur fan.
I’ve always had a good accent. Perhaps accent is something I’m just good at. Though, hopefully I’ve got some other talents for language too, that would always be nice…hehehe
That’s good news Steve! the sub-menus really need to be more easier to click, there are usability issues there; it’s really great news to hear that you’re working on that.
Mark it’s not that people are thumb (not that you’re saying that, but I sometimes wondered that myself), it’s more a matter of being lazy or not wanting to invest the time into having to figure out how the menus/site works. We’re used to Lingq and we don’t need to think where things are, but for a newcomer it’s not very straightforward.
For starters, if you mouseover the menus, you see the submenus, but if you move away your mouse… the submenu disappears. And if you want to click on any of the submenu-pages you have to move your mouse very slowly, otherwise the submenu disappears. People don’t have patience and that thing by itself can drive away people from the website, as you well know people invest a few second on every new website they visit and things like that is a good reason not to come back again (this drives me crazy too, but I love Lingq).
The 2 pages you use the most are lessons and library… and you have to “look” for them. You should tell they are the most important pages just by seeing that you can click on them at anytime, not you having to look for them inside those unfriendly submenus… etc
Berta, people who don’t understand sub-menus aren’t even here reading this. They are doing word-search puzzles (offline).
I’m with Berta on the submenus. If you guys want to make the site as appealing to newcomers as possible, I’d make buttons that go directly to Library, Profile, and My Lessons. For newcomers, these are by far the most important. But only Profile has a direct button and that’s hidden!
btw Berta, most people are thumb…takes one to know one
Thanks for the great feedback. Keep it coming!
In this ‘digital’ environment, I wonder if many notice such spelling errors kcb?