Who would like to become a LingQ method coach?

Open Forum
1

We have two important problems at LingQ and they are related.

  1. Our site is difficult for many learners to understand. There are a number of possible reasons, including the following:

Learners are uncomfortable with the computer, MP3 players, and the Internet.
The LingQ site is, for many people, difficult to understand.
LingQ has many powerful features that learners may take months to discover.
Many people do not know how best to learn with LingQ.
Most people will not read manuals, watch demos or consult Help.
Learners do not know how to learn on their own.
People think that a teacher is needed to direct their language learning.
People do not understand that they key to their success lies with themselves.
Learners do not understand the three keys, Attitude, Time and Attentiveness.

Yet unlocking their own language learning potential with LingQ is probably more useful than taking yet another language course!

  1. LingQ has too few paying members.

Our largest five markets account for over 70 % of our paid membership. These are US, UK, Japan, Canada, and Russia. ( three cheers for the top five)

We can just about count on one or two hands the paying members in the other major countries of the world, on all continents.

Probably the best way to encourage more members to join is for our existing satisfied members to refer their friends. We have set up a referral system, and we have worked to make the site easier to navigate, faster, and easier to understand. We have added some mobile apps. We will be continuing this work.

As I continue to see the low rate of successful referrals, I had an idea.

LingQ method coaches.

Would any of you be interested in teaching how to become an independent language learner using the LingQ system? This could involve face to face or online coaching sessions of two weeks or so. This is a separate activity from the tutoring activities at LingQ and could be arranged directly between the coach and the learner. LingQ could lend its name and support but need not get involved in the transaction.

I would be happy to conduct coaching sessions, free of charge, with potential coaches, to make sure we have a common set of principles. I would personally certify our LingQ coaches.

LingQ coaches could earn money for their “Learning how to learn” clinics, and in addition could attract new students to their online discussions at LingQ, and would also, of course, earn the referral points. LingQ, hopefully would add new paying members.

I would be interested in hearing your views on this idea.

1 Like
2

That sounds like a great idea, several of my students often have problems even understanding how to book conversations and also how to buy points, I would be up for this

3

I’d love to. In a previous life I was a technical trainer and technical curriculum developer, so this is right up my alley. I love helping people learn - and whether that’s computers or languages is a matter of indifference to me. :smiley:

4

The point is though that each coach will have to find his/her own people, clients, to train. Here we can discuss how to develop this project, whether to offer this in libraries or community centres or online and how to do it. I look forward to more feedback and ideas.

5

Great idea. I think this is indeed the best way to get more people to LingQ. I’m volunteering, if necessary.

6

I’m going to talk to the local paper tomorrow just to see what they think. (They still write about vandalised telephone boxes and stolen bicycles, so they might be interested or at least give me some pointers.)

7

Thank you for the enthusiasm neesh, galiana,vincent and sanne. Let’s see how far we can take this.

I am giving a talk at a local library in September on “language learning in the age of the iPad” (taking advantage of popular buzzwords).

I will give a series of talks on the same theme, obviously with reference to LingQ and other online resources in Portugal in October.

I am attending a Content and Language Integrated Learning conference (CLIL) in Eichstaet (near Munich) in late September.

I will be in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy during the fall. It would be great if we could organize some seminars during that time. Any ideas?

8

I am not an English native speaker, but I can help with it as well. I like talking to people and I know a lot about learning languages :slight_smile: and Steve’s book too since I am translating it now :slight_smile: I have already talked about how to learn languages with many people :slight_smile:

9

Steve,
I think it’s a good idea. I’m not a tutor, but I would love to help LingQ and newcomers. I’ve been trying to invite my students and friends to LingQ and I understand it’s not easy for them to understand LingQ learning system.

I believe LingQ is the best place for me and other independent language learners. And I believe to be an independent language learner is the key to achieve the goal.

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Thank you Jarda and Nobuo. Let’s see what kind of ideas we can all come up with to develop this idea.

11

I’ll do all I can to help!

12

Steve will you post some of the lectures you are giving onto youtube, it would be greatly appreciated

13

I’d like to do my best to help you, however I won’t be available from October to March because of my detachment abroad - I’m in the military. I assume the kind of coach you think of is expected to be steadily present by the side of new members for a certain amount of time. When I’m back, if this experiment is conclusive, I’ll be your man.

14

Not yet but after my holiday I can help.

15

It is a good idea. I will help with great pleasure!

16

Can I help? Of course I would like to. In fact, I often discuss Steve’s approach and LingQ with new friends. .

Steve wrote: “The point is though that each coach will have to find his/her own people, clients, to train. Here we can discuss how to develop this project.”

Pllease discuss. The most difficult is to find “the clients”. Your ideas on the importance of enjoyable input, the listenning and reading, being observant, are accepted not that bad. But when it comes downs to propoganda of the concrete system, things slows down. Perhaps the native English tutors could be more successive in the propganda. We the Russians might be already alergic to it -:slight_smile:

17

It is not a matter of promoting LingQ, but of explaining how it works, in detail. Sort of like a course on independent language learning with specific reference to the LingQ system.

I will try to develop a series of videos on the subject.

18

HELP! I’ve spoken to my local newspaper. They want me to write a little article and from that they are going to have a look at TheLinguist and LingQ. They are interested in the benefit to the local community and want a personal angle. I have thought of the following:

Personal angle: me. Local benefits: Independent learning, not tied to timetables; Gatwick airport and Brighton nearby - employees can improve their foreign language skills; autumn is the time where Brits think about enrolling at evening classes; we have a few immigrants living here who could work on their English; we have very ambitious parents who might want to encourage their children to put their ipads to better use…; we have lots of pensioners who use the U3A (university of the third age).

Do you have a press release which I could incorporate into my article?

19

Steve, I’d like to help too, even if my friend and contacts don’t seem that interested to join LingQ, and consider I have studied Translation, so many of my friends are either translators too or like languages. My best university mate had just a look at the first page of the website and the first thing he noticed was the bad Italian translation of “dramatically increase”. We had a long discussion about the possibility to learn a language at home, with him denying this possibility and saying you can only learn a language by going to the country where it’s spoken.
Many language students have their ideas about language learning and are not willing to experiment new ways. Most importantly, many of my university mates prefer focusing on few languages in order to reach a level as close as possible to bilingualism, rather than learning more languages at an intermediate-advanced level, which is my idea.
I post the referral link on Facebook almost every day, but only 8 of my friends became free members and it doesn’t look likely that any of them will become a paying member. One of them told me she doesn’t like the method. Others haven’t done anything after joining. It’s very difficult to find people who want to learn a language on their own, in a non-conventional way. So, I agree with Ilya.
Moreover, as I have written in another thread, there have been problems with the referral code: two of my friends joined but weren’t recognized as my referrals. I don’t know if other friends of mine joined without me noticing this.
Your idea is very good, Steve, but personally I don’t know what else I can do at the moment.

20

SanneT,

I think the local focus should be immigrants learning better English. It’s a hot button issue in England today and if could write an article showing that immigrants in England could significantly better their English by listening and reading things involving football,politics, or underwater basket-weaving, or whatever a particular person is interested in, it might catch some eyes.

The idea would be read and listen on lingq, practice speaking with all the English speakers around you.