It may be that Lisa/psychedelica finds Anki to be superior to the vocabulary/flashcard here (just as I do, but I’m still a paying member for other reasons), and if one reads a lot outside the system, i.e. “real” books/magazines, I’d say that LingQ itself isn’t necessary (unless one finds it extremely helpful to manually enter vocabulary, or even texts).
But I’m sure that she can speak for herself. 
I was very negative about paying at lingq because it was possible to do the same for free with anky and other similar free software. I am still negative about paying for lingq but I have to say this
I do not even use the free solutions. This way to learn vocabulary does not meet my needs and taste. I prefer to learn vocabulary audio only first like in methodes “learning in your car” or “Michel Thomas”. Maybe I will be back to the lingq methode when I will learn writing russian (in 20 years ?).
As for coaching I am a lot more interested in earning a few money than a lot of points. I just have to use the system in my native language to study it in deep.
The way to use mp3 are not the same for all machines - some start back where you put them off other no - some have no reapeat - some display text …some have command on the screen other do not have any screen.
Maybe you should change your business model - 10 usd for 11 language sounds quite interesting but very few people will learn 11 languages - it would be better to pay 1 usd for one language.
Have you consider offering a free test period with no limit use of the system in one language that user could change as often he wants during this period. Then after free access to mp3, text and community but no more free access to the lingqing.
The test period could be a number of connexion (max one by 24h) in the system so people who comes only the week-end or never the week-end would stand on the same way that those who comes every day.
Have you think selling your own mp3 readers - since you master mandarin you could make some business with the manufacturer of the world - more so with your experience in wood business -also sell cup of tea with multilingual words - I remember this Austrian hotel they put on breakfast table a pot with “fur den sauberen Fruekstucktisch” or something “To keep your breakfast table clean” “Pour tenir propre la table du petit déjeuner”…
I do not like the idea to pay every month - it makes me believe the system is made to keep me forever - I think people who pay for a while should have free access at one point.
I hope I could help if some of my ideas lead you to profit I want a part of it lol
LingQ offers a wide range of language learning functions and resources. Those who enjoy learning at LingQ, and fully understand it, might be able to coach others in how to use LingQ and get the most out of it. That was the question that I put forward in this thread.
My conclusion at this point is that it is hard to organize this in a formal way, but that individuals can provide help and guidance to newcomers. We will also be introducing new ways for members to help each other that you will be seeing over the next few weeks and months. We think we have also got some good ideas to help newcomers understand how LingQ works. So stay tuned and thanks for the comments.
Yeah exactly, I do. I really like Anki much better. But, although I’m not paying, I try to help LingQ in any other way I can
What does Anki offer that is better than LingQ flashcards? From my experience, Anki suffers compared to LingQ because it is not networked to dictionaries, it doesn’t grab a phrase, there is no convenient “Ask a tutor” option, and you have import everything manually. This is not even mentioning having the word highlighted through your libraries and and the statistical aspects. I think you can grab a sound bite in Anki for pronunciation, but isn’t that time consuming? The Anki algorithm is also nice, but it is not really based on any evidence on how people learn vocabulary.
I used Anki for a while, and my opinion is that is good, but not enough to learn a language (I also find it’s too time consuming). For me a key feature of Lingq is to see words highlighted through the libraries and whatever text you want to import. I like reading, and I usually read e-books, which I import to my private collections. For me it’s extremely useful and also it’s an excelent way to have a good time reading. I don’t use too much the flash card feauture. I prefer to come across the words I don’t know in a highlightened mode.
And of course there are other very interesting features that can justify to pay membership by itself, but it’s just an opinion.
Oh, Anki offers a lot. I recently became a huge fan.
a. More languages (including Dutch, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic).
b. option of sound for flashcards
c. Free
d. pre-made flashcards tied to texts or tests (very important for Japanese Language Proficiency Tests)
e. color-coded Chinese cards for people learning Chinese through color.
g. core words (example: 1000 essential words or over 8,000 sentences in Japanese)
LingQ offers a lot too, but it would do well to add some of these things.
I left out f. (also offers cards in other subjects plus ancient languages)
Anki is superior if you like the “endless” spaced repetition. Every item (word/phrase) will be shown, forever, unlike here where a word eventually reaches level 4 and then doesn’t appear anymore.
Any Chinese word (or phrase!) I paste is translated automatically, complete with colour coded pinyin romanization (for the various tones), classifier words for nouns. Believe me, I can add 100 words faster in Anki than here at LingQ, AND get all the extra features. The only way I can add LingQs super fast is if all the words have already been saved by other members. However, even if that would be true, the site is extremely unstable. I’ve lost count of how many times I have to re-login each day (regardless of which computer I’m using, the time of the day, what I’m doing at the site).
I haven’t explored the sound bite feature, but I only (99 times out of 100…) add vocabulary from texts I also have audio for, so I pretty much know what the words sound like.
This was my reply to Ed’s questions about Anki, except the last section beginning with “Any Chinese word…” (which I just wrote).
THanks all, I am persuaded that for Chinese and other tonal languages (obviously also since they are not offered on LingQ) Anki could have the edge over LingQ at the moment.
I am not quite sure if LingQ is so unstable. I can’t remember the last time I have had to re-login. Refresh the page, yes, from time to time, but almost never re-login.
Just curious, for regular anki users, what would think a fair price would be for using it? In other words, if they decided that they needed revenue from users and they decided to charge say $7/month, would that be acceptable? Or would you look for an alternate free or almost free service, even if it meant making your own physical flashcards.
If I’m not confused here, the initial issue lifted by Steve was whether people who do like/believe in LingQ method could do some personal coaching in order to make people understand the method and bring more users to LingQ.
I can see a major issue here is that for most LingQ lovers - who in principle would be the ideal coaches - it’s really hard to understand other people’s difficulties with it. Here is a tip from an experienced teacher: even quantum mechanics is easy after you grasped it, 
Anyway, I don’t think the problem is with the interface, which has become decently efficient to do most things we need to learn a language. The issue is more “methodological”: LingQ advocates a way of learning which is completely different to what people are used to. In a nutshell, its core features are: a) it’s highly unstructured and b) it obliges students to take real charge for their learning. In my opinion, this is the unavoidable future of education, but still, it can be quite challenging for people educated in traditional ways.
However, the great thing about LingQ is that it works. And it is fun. And it is not quantum mechanics, so you can really teach anyone to use it within a few hours. The key is to make people really go through the entire process (reading, making lingqs, putting the audios in their mp3 players, studying flashcards) a couple of times, preferably in some language they already know something about.
Right now, I don’t have access to many people, but by the middle of next year I’ll be back to classroom (I mean, as a teacher) and at a minimum I intend to introduce LingQ to my own students, in a hands-on way, (at least, they won’t be allowed to complain anymore when I ask them to study from texts in English. lol). By then, Steve, we can discuss my experiences with them and eventually, try to figure out ways to expand it to a larger and more varied audience.
Naturally, I know that a year is quite a long time, and I hope you find a lot of other ways to attract more paying members before this.
Thanks Ana, and we have some really interesting ideas in the works to make LingQ easier to understand and more enjoyable even for people who are not die hard language learners like most of us. I hope all of this will be in place before too long.
As to the issue of Anki versus LingQ, we could start a separate thread on that subject.
I think people all have their own favourite ways of learning and that should be respected. In my case I spend most of my time listening and reading and LingQing, and am not to concerned about nailing down words that do not regularly appear in my reading and listening. I am mostly driven by what I discover about a language and culture through interesting content. It does not matter to me that some words get to status 4 quickly and then I have to relearn them when I forget them and the reappear in some content. It does not bother me that there are many words that I have LingQed that I will never have a chance to review in flash cards, but I do enjoy reviewing the flash cards when I get a chance, especially on my iPod Touch. I agree that it does not matter whether we religiously review high frequency words on a SRS system since they will appear in texts often enough anyway.
I also agree that there is much we can improve at LingQ and that includes how we deal with Asian languages. We will get to these things eventually, and that includes sound on the flash cards.
One step at a time.
We certainly had speed and stability issues in the past but we have put a lot of effort into resolving these.
I agree with Ana, LingQ works and can be fun. I am a living advertisement for it. I hope that the newspaper article will raise some interest in LingQ and that I can get a few people to get to grips quickly with unstructured learning… I am going to call for some local volunteers who want to improve their language(s) or want to start a new one. I shall then spend some time with them to accompany their first steps. After that they’ll be at the mercy of the forum for more advanced help.
I don’t think the Anki vs LingQ argument is really fair, because you are comparing an apple (anki) to a fruit basket (LingQ). Anki is a flashcarding system, but that is just one aspect of LingQ. I personally like the taste of the Anki apple better than the apple contained in LingQ’s fruitbasket, but because of LingQ’s ability to export LingQs into a list format, hundreds of LingQs can easily be imported into Anki at a time, no manual intervention needed. I use LingQ to gather my vocabulary and then I use Anki to study them, because I like the interface (and the timing algorith) better, no reason they can’t work in tandem.
For doo’s question of how much I would pay for Anki if they decided to charge, I wouldn’t. I would look for an alternative, or program my own, which I understand isn’t an option for most people. Speaking of which, is that bookmarklet going to be done sometime soon? LingQing on any web page, not just within LingQ, would be a powerful tool and probably a good selling point. I might just get impatient and write my own…
If it works well, I would pay for that!
But I’ll stop talking about Anki/unrelated stuff, sorry
I just open a new thread - about using mp3 - I hope it will help.
@ PierreM Thank you for the separate thread!
A little update on my free workshop endeavour:
the local newspaper, circulation roughly 20,000, wrote a short item under News in Brief about my offering free help on how to get the best out of LingQ and how to become an independent learner in general.
The paper gets published on Thursdays, today is Monday. Guess how many enquiries I have had? (Here’s a clue: I can only hope that Mark has noticed an increase of independent visitors from my neck of the woods…)