So now I'm going to start with LingQ, or to be more accurate LingQ 2.0.
The owner of LingQ is a fellow language learning blogger called Steve Kaufmann, who has quite a reputation on YouTube.
First of all, a lot of people might ask: What is LingQ? Steve Kaufmann defines it as: "Simply the best way to learn languages" mmm... ok, I don't like when people promote something they did in that kind of way and I'm sure that you neither so I'm going to talk to you about LingQ without all the drills and exaggerations.
Ok, LingQ basically promotes itself as a website in which you can "learn languages", but I don't find that accurate. LingQ is not a guide, LingQ is not a course, LingQ is not a systematic method that will teach how to learn languages. LingQ is just a platform where you can find , read and listen to texts in other languages, that's it. Yes, you also have the video calls, professional tutors and all those things but I think you have to pay for the premium account if you want to get those. Mainly LingQ is a reading platform and a really good one if I may add. Reading a text with LingQ, is pretty much like reading a foreign text with an e-dictionary completely at your disposition. But listen to this, I don't recommend this method at all if you're just starting with a language. If you are just starting try Assimil or Pimsleur better, because in LingQ you already have to know how to read the language and a good decent chunk of basic vocabulary. Otherwise you will not understand a lot of stuff you're reading despite using an e-dictionary and you might get really frustrated because only few texts have complete translations you can look at, so you already have to know the basics.
LingQ is basically a library, a really big online library and let me tell you something: You might hate Steve Kaufmann, his attitude, the way that he promotes himself and his business but I have to admit that he has managed to create the biggest online library of foreign languages texts out there. You have hundreds of texts and books in Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, Italian... . I have never seen a library with so much content as this one and entirely free, every text has its MP3 audio which is really easy to download and the overall settings are easy to use.
For me this is the greatest aspect that LingQ has, you can find so much free material with audio. I think LingQ is the only website that I know that offers this and for "free".
But sadly there's a huge downside on this website, a huge letdown that made me stop using this site until I found a solution to it. The point of reading with LingQ is to create definitions of the words that you don't know, every time you read something you don't know, you click on that word and LingQ will tell you the definition of that word in your language. That word will be highlighted in yellow and saved in your database. That's how you learn vocabulary with this method, the more definitions you do, the better, that's the whole point. But when you're using LingQ (the free version) you only get to create 100 definitions and that's it, and believe me, when you're reading multiple texts in a foreign language 100 definitions is not enough.
You have to go to your database, erase the definitions you already have and then you can return to read. That was a complete pain in the ass for me, I was completely comfortable reading with this method and bum! you have created 100 LingQs that's your limit!, I had to return to my database, erase a few words and bum! I reached the limit again. That just made this method so annoying and uncomfortable that I stopped using it. That's the greatest flaw of this site , and that's why I don't use it anymore. Well I still use it but in another way...
Learning With Text was the solution that I found to this problem, and without any doubt LWT is the best way to use this reading method.
Learning With Text is not a website, is a software, kinda like an app. You use LWT exactly the same way that you use LingQ. But! LWT is completely free to use, and you can make as many definitions as you want to! no limits, the way it should be.
The only thing is that you have to import everything to it, when you install LWT the whole software is empty you have to import your texts and audio to it, but this is really simple (copy/paste kinda stuff) and you also can choose two online dictionaries to use. And with that, you can study and read so much comfortably without limitations, without erasing words from you database, with a proper dictionary of your choise where you can see multiple definitions, and all of the data is in your computer so you don't really need the web to use it.
The downside of Learning With Text and there's really only one: Is a little bit tricky to download, is completely free, it doesn't take a lot of time to download but the way to download it and install it is a little weird.
There are several methods to install it, you can go to http://lwt.sourceforge.net/ to see them.
This is the method I used (using Windows and EasyPHP):
- First you go to this link http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickeasyphp/files/EasyPHP/5.3.6.1/
- Click in EasyPHP-5.3.6.1-setup.exe and a program will download into your computer, install it in Program Files.
- Now go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/lwt/ and download the zip of Learning With Text.
- Once you have the zip of LWT, copy it and paste it in C:\Program Files\EasyPHP-5.3.6.1\www.
- Unzip LWT inside this www folder. You'll have a lwt folder, after that you can delete the zip if you want to.
- Open the lwt folder, you'll see a file named connect_easyphp.inc.php changed that name to connect.inc.php.
- Now go to your Windows Start Menu, you'll see an EasyPhP icon, click it to activate it.
- Now go to your browser and try these addresses: http://127.0.0.1:8887/lwt , http://127.0.0.1:8888/lwt or http://127.0.0.1:8887/lwt_v_1_4_9%20(1)/, one of them should open LWT for you, when you find it, bookmark it so you don't need to write all those weird numbers again.
- Now, when you want to open LWT again, just click in your EasyPhP icon at your windows menu and go to the address that you bookmarked and that's it.
- Another thing, if you want to import audio, just go to your lwt folder, inside create another folder called media, you'll import all your audio there.
And that's it, once you've already installed it you can use LingQ and LWT combined.
As I already told you LingQ is a big library and you should use it as such. LWT is the best way to use this reading method and you should use it as such.
Go to LingQ, pick a lesson and import it to LWT so you can study it more comfortable, with no limitations and no cash spend. You can also import to LWT whatever kind of text you want, you can import songs (which are really useful) news and all kinds of stuff.
Do this!,because this reading method really works, if you already know the basics of the language and you use this method; you can pretty much read and understand every text in that language and at the same time acquiring a lot of information, vocabulary and the overall rythm of the language.
You may also try FLTR: http://fltr.googlecode.com
ResponderEliminarIt's similar to LWT or LingQ, but needs only a Java Runtime - so it's easier to install than LWT...
Yes of course, I have used it, I was planning to talk about it too, without any doubt is so much easier to install than LWT, however I don't know how to use FLTR's features very well, for example, I don't know if I can import audio, could you help me?
ResponderEliminarYour "downside" to LingQ is only a limitation on the free accounts. A paid account is only $10 per month -- less than the cost of a textbook -- and gives you unlimited vocab words and imports. I think anyone who's serious about learning a language can justify spending $10 a month in order to do so ;)
ResponderEliminarYes, but with learning with text, that limitaion doesnt exist and you dont have to pay for anything. So, having a paid account is really not necessary at all,and you can find all the other serivices that they offer in other sites and for free. I understand your argument about your willingness to pay, but to be honest is not a language learning tool worth paying for, because is a tool that works in a really long slow and gradual way . Im not saying is bad, but is really slow and you should use it as a complementary tool and if you have the choice to use it for free go for it and save your money for more effective and quick methods.
ResponderEliminarSure, but as you said, where else can you find such an extensive library of recordings from native speakers with accompanying transcripts? For me, it's just about the convenience of not having to think -- I can just log in and start learning material without having to worry about trying to find new content (from any computer with internet access, mind you, and even my phone). I suppose if you're on a super tight budget you might seek out free alternatives, but for the price of two lattes I think its cost is completely reasonable for everything LingQ offers.
ResponderEliminarJust offering an alternative viewpoint. I think most people expect to spend some money to acquire new material when learning a language (books, movies, audio, etc), and LingQ is the best resource I've ever found.
Yes, but I’m afraid I wasn’t being very specific there, I meant languages in general, but not for one single language. If you’re focusing on one single language and applying other learning methods (as recommended) you’ll soon reach a level in which the content that you'll find in LingQ is no longer enough for you and you’ll have to search for new and more challenging content from other sources, and believe me, that happens really fast. Of course if you find new material you can import it to LingQ (although I prefer LWT) and you don’t need a paid add for that, but the search of new and more challenging material is inevitable. Now if you’re someone who likes to read different languages, as a hobby, curiosity or just as a way to chill out, of course go ahead. Everything depends in your goals, I use LWT because is really editable: I can create as many definitions as I want to, using the dictionaries that I want to, I can add as many lessons I want, I can access it whether I’m online or not and for free and what LingQ is offering in its basic $10 paid account is not really far from that, I’m afraid.
ResponderEliminarThanks for the interesting review. I have used both of these systems and think they are both very good.
ResponderEliminarI used LWT for a short time and then switched to the paid version of LingQ for one very specific reason. The LingQ reading interface has a feature not included in LWT and that is the user hints. On both LWT and LingQ, one can at a click (actually two clicks in the case of LingQ) search one of a range of online dictionaries for the translation of a word, and then type that word in to save the definition. Overall, I think this is slightly easier and quicker to do with LWT then with LingQ, but the difference is minimal. However, on both systems, this takes quite a lot of time (10 seconds or more) and effort (waiting and typing), and one might typically need to do this hundreds of times in one document. LingQ has a good solution to this, and that is their database of previously saved user hints which appear instantly when a word is selected, and can be saved with a single click. Admittedly, the quality of these hints varies, but 99% of the time, they are good. I would be very interested to hear your opinion on this difference.
On the money issue, I really don't think LingQ is expensive, especially when compared with Assimil and Pimsleur.
Indeed, they have small differences and by this: LWT has its pros and cons and LingQ too. When it comes to the quality of the user hints, that was something that I didn't particullary like. A lot of times they were nice, however there are also a lot of times when a word has multiple meanings or various expressions and a user hint cannot express this properly; leading to confusion in the most complex terms. I like to go straight to a dictionary that'll tell all of the meanings that a word could have. By this I conclude that user hints are Ok when you're just beginning and you don't know a lot of words, however if you're in this position, I wouldn't recommend you to use LingQ or LWT in the first place. Try Assimil and Pimsleur first to learn the most common words and expressions, after this, you can start reading simple texts with the help of a dictionary.
ResponderEliminarOn the money issue, you cannot really compare LingQ with Assimil or LingQ with Pimsleur. Assimil and Pimsleur are both completely designed courses, that follow a well-thought-out methodology created and designed by linguists. LingQ on the other hand, is not a designed course, LingQ is a library of texts with reading and translating tools. So, you cannot really compare them.
Right now, I'm taking a course on translation, and the tools that LingQ and LWT offer are perfect for a translator to use, it's basically what a translator needs to do his first draft.
Thanks for the reply. I won't mention the money issue again since that was never really my reason for posting.
ResponderEliminarRegarding the quality of the user hints, I probably overestimated their reliability when I wrote that 99% of the time they are good. Probably they are good 90% of the time. This is good, but if I am looking up 500 words in a document, getting 50 bad definitions is quite a lot. However, usually the bad definitions are not really bad, and I get the meaning from the hint anyway. You are right about the various meanings of words. I have only a couple of times noticed a user hint being completely wrong, but often they are incorrect in the context that a word applied. Also the massive variations in the format of the hints annoyed me when I first started with LingQ.
I think we have different preferences here. When I was a beginner, I really wanted the much more rigid and accurate translations of words that I got from a dictionary, but now as I am progressing (in German), I am finding that I pay less attention to the translations and mostly try to get the definitions of words from context, and so don't require such high quality translations.
I started learning Chinese a few weeks ago, and I found the LingQ user hints to be almost useless to me. In fact, I found the entire system to be really difficult to use for Chinese. I will probably return to it when I am at a more advanced stage, but for now I will not be using it (other than as a good place to get audio and transcripts). You will be glad to know that I decided to use primarily Assimil and Pimsleur instead. Assimil is great, and Pimsleur is ok for a bit of an introduction (I also used it a lot for German).
"I really don’t think LingQ is expensive, especially when compared with Assimil and Pimsleur."
ResponderEliminarI don't know the price of Assimil courses where you live, but I've got five of them for ~35€ each (brand new),. Pimsleur is a different beast, though.
Regarding the cost of using LingQ vs. Assimil & Pimsleur:
ResponderEliminarActually, if you use LingQ for a number of years, say four years, the cost definitely outweighs Assimil and Pimsleur put together. 4yrs x $120.00 = $480.00. It all adds up, especially if you keep adding languages to study. :)
I like using LingQ for the very reason listed above a wealth of “library content.” Also, I like that there are many tutors available for a given language. Having access to tutors who must work with a modicum of professionalism is necessary for a serious “hobbyist” like me.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel. I have been using LWT for awhile and it's a great piece of software, especially for being free. However, it does have some limitations.
ResponderEliminarI recently started using lingQ and it offers a superior experience in nearly every way. The community driven stuff like the hints for words, the fact that it keeps track of how many words you know, all the different ways to test your knowledge of words, and a ton of other little features just make it a much more polished and enjoyable experience overall.
In an attempt to save money I was actually robbing myself of a better experience. I also notice that I spend less time fiddling with things in lingQ because the features are more powerful and more useful. I spent a lot more time always copying texts, editing terms and finding definitions in LWT than I do with lingQ simply because the community hints are most often accurate, the library has so much content and I don't feel the need to copy texts over nearly as often and the overall layout and features are just more polished and efficient in lingQ.
Time is money as they say. I lose a lot of time with LWT getting things set up and creating definitions for terms-- time that could be better spent actually learning languages.
To me, $10 a month is well worth the better experience and the time saved. That said, if you truly are on an extremely limited budget and can't afford the $10 I do recommend LWT as a great free alternative. Readlang is also a fantastic reading-based language learning tool that anybody on a tight budget should check out.
That's true, but you spend hundreds of dollars on Pimsleur courses (like I did for their Japanese course) and it only covers that one language. You would have to spend several hundred for each language you are learning. A lot of the language is also stilted or somewhat out of date.
ResponderEliminarMore importantly, the entire Pimsleur course won't teach you anywhere near the number of words you will learn using lingQ consistently over several years.
The major downside of LWT is it's installation process, but now I've found out that FLTR is probably the best reading/dictionary tool, superior than LingQ and LWT. The problem with LingQ is than once you move forward with a language you'll find the content of the LingQ library extremely limiting and uninteresting (just a bunch of public domain novels and a few posts of other users here and there) so sooner or later you will have to upload your own content.
ResponderEliminarNow, think this through, you have to produce your own study material, you have to upload it yourself and still you have to pay 10 dollars to use a reading tool that you're able to use in other places for free? It’s like going to a school that doesn’t offer books or teachers (you need to find them on your own) it only offers an empty room for you to study and you have to pay for it.
When you have to produce your own content, when you’re offering that content to the LingQ library and you still have to pay them, that’s when you realize that LingQ is not a good viable studying product at all. You’re doing all the work and you still have to pay, you’re basically working for them for free AND paying them.
Maybe you don’t see this now, but as you move forward with a language you’ll realize this.
There are other powerful language communities such as the wordreference forum, lang-8 and other forums used by professional translators.
Creating your own definitions is of extreme importance and advantageous because words are polysemantic and you have to research them 2, 3 or even more times to find out what they really mean in different situations, one definition made by someone else is never going to cut it.
It's NOT about the content alone, it's not only about words, it's about the methodology. Pimsleur has a well designed methodoly that trains you to speak the language by using space repetition, systematic translation and overlearning.
ResponderEliminarPimsleur puts you on the spot and trains you for speaking situations with a strict, researched methodology.
Even if the vocabulary is outdated, Pimsleur makes you create that special mindset with the language that will allow you to react quickly when you need to speak it.
LingQ offers no methodology at all and it doesn't train you to speak, it's a useful reading tool but it has no methodology behind it.
The methodology is what really matters.
I used FLTR and I found it quite inferior to both LingQ and LWT. It has fewer useful features, it looks uglier, dictionaries pop up in a separate window and it is less intuitive to use. I don't use it at all anymore. It basically had no advantage over LWT (other than the easier installation) and quite a few disadvantages. If I was going to use a free system I would use LWT. -
ResponderEliminarAs to your continuing claim that the content in LingQ is unsuitable for advanced learners, well, I simply can't agree. I am an advanced learner of Spanish (and high intermediate learner of Japanese) and I still find huge amounts of content that contains plenty of new words and more advanced grammatical structures. Furthermore, the database is always expanding. It would take years for me to get through all the material on the site --especially since I will be importing a few of my own selected readings-- and by the time that could ever happen there will have been more content added to the site.
Also, I don't understand why you are so dismissive of LingQ and the fact that you have to pay $10 a month to really take advantage of it. Do you think that it is free to develop, build, maintain and improve such a site? Do you realize that such a massive database costs money to maintain on servers? Do the people who created it and maintain it not also deserve to be rewarded for the fruits of their labor? I'm really saddened by the mentality of some people that apparently think that everything should be free.
I don't understand how you can say that LingQ isn't a system for learning language. It most certainly is! In fact, it is the best system I have ever found for learning languages. I have been studying languages for over 20 years and I gradually came to some of the same conclusions as Steve Krashen and Steve Kaufmann (although in more of a vague sense) that exposure to authentic content --books, movies, articles, music, podcasts, etc.-- was by far the best way to acquire a language.
A system like LingQ offers the best way I have found to be exposed to "comprehensible input", as Krashen calls it. Content is graded for difficulty and you can easily see how many words an articles has that are unknown to you.
Moreover, the fact that you are using LingQ (and LWT) proves that it is indeed a useful system to you for learning languages.
A person can spend their language-learning time however they want, but if I had it all to do over again I would have used an approach similar to LingQ's to learn my languages. In fact, I have begun to learn Italian on LingQ and I find that I am learning it many times faster than I do when using traditional methods. I have also used methods like Pimsleur, LiveMocha, and Duolingo, and while there are a few nice things about such systems I still find them to be an inferior way to spend my language learning time.
Actually, for an absolute beginner learning a second language I do think that something like Pimsleur, along with a decent basic grammar book, are useful tools to get off the ground. But I would only use those for something like a month or two before moving on to real-world content.
I guarantee you will acquire vastly more words, expressions, and grammar constructions by using something like LingQ or LWT for 3 months than you would using Pimsleur or Assimil for the same period of time.
ResponderEliminarYou seem to have this idea that traditional structured language courses are superior. Well, I couldn't disagree more. They might be "structured", but that doesn't make them superior systems for learning a language. LingQ has graded content and word count information to guide you in finding suitable content, and that is all you need.
I don't know, I'm sure some people like having their hand held and being told which words and expressions to learn, but I don't think it is the most effective way to learn a language. I've gone through all of Pimsleur's Japanese and Spanish courses and I do think that, as far as structured pure audio courses go, they are quite good. I DID learn some things from them. But, again, if I had it all to do over again I would have chosen to use my language-learning time elsewhere, with real-world content of my choosing.
@Colin
ResponderEliminarSorry, I wasn't responding to you, I was responding to the comment above yours.
I haven't really used LingQ to study my Japanese since I'm focusing on my Spanish and Italian right now, but I can see how it might be harder to use for Japanese and Chinese due to the Kanji and the way the writing system works. Still, I know people that are using it for those languages so it must work decently well.
Anyway, I do think Assimil and Pimsleur are useful, especially in the beginning stages of learning a language, I just think it is a good idea to jump into real-world content as soon as possible.
I agree with you about the user hints in LingQ. I find them extremely useful, and they are one of the biggest reasons I prefer LingQ over LWT. They save me so much time. They are nearly always accurate enough to give me the info I need to understand the word in context. I guess that's why they are called hints.
In reality, the hints are definitions that other users have already saved for the given words. I virtually always find at least one of the listed hints to be accurate and to carry the correct sense of the word for the context at hand. And even if the sense of the word is not right for the context I am reading, it usually gives me enough of an idea of the word's meaning to understand it in the new context. Usually, though, I find that there are several user hints and it's super common for there to be multiple meanings of the word on one hint line. And if all that fails (which it doesn't 99% of the time) I can always look in the dictionaries and supply my own definition.
LWT makes you do the later step with EVERY single new word. And for that reason I find it much more time consuming to read with LWT. Not to mention having to import texts and audio all the time for everything you read and listen to.
I also like the fact that simply by hovering over an unknown word in LingQ you can see the hints, as well as hear the pronunciation of the word. I don't have to click on the word or go to a separate panel and click on anything else.
To hear the pronunciation of a word in LWT you have to click on the word, which opens a dialogue box, then you click on "Look up Sentence: GTr", which opens up a separate window, and after the window opens and you re-size it to access the buttons, you can hear the pronunciation of the entire sentence, (even though you only wanted to hear the pronunciation of the word you clicked on). I find that whole process much more cumbersome and time consuming.
It IS about the words (and the expressions and grammatical structures). A "method" is only as good as the results it produces.
ResponderEliminarI've used Pimsleur for Spanish and Japanese. For Japanese I didn't learn a very large number of words, expressions, or grammatical structures, while for Spanish it was mostly too far below my level to be very useful. With the Japanese course I certainly didn't learn enough words to carry on any kind of real conversation or read much real-world content (even if I had sufficient knowledge of Kanji to do so).
Even going through all three levels of the Pimsleur Japanese series I still didn't have as much vocabulary as I would have had if I had spent that time learning from authentic content. I do think it does a good job of getting you used to speaking and generally forming the sounds of the language, and that is what I think it is best used for.
I'm not saying that I didn't learn anything with Pimsleur Japanese, because I certainly did. It helped me hone the reproduction of the language's sounds and acquire a decent amount of vocabulary and a sense for basic grammatical structure. But I don't think it offers the best return on the time invested. I think it is best used as an ancillary method for improving pronunciation (although there are other ways to do that as well) and for getting used to responding to questions fairly quickly.
As far as LingQ supposedly having no "methodology", I really don't think that is accurate at all. The methodology of LingQ is choosing content of your choosing, at a level you can handle, reading through the texts while listening to the audio, seeing the words you are already learning highlighted in yellow, clicking on new words you don't know, creating or choosing definitions (LingQs) for those words, having those words be saved to a database which you can later review using the built-in SRS flashcard system (or several other testing methods), and over time seeing your vocabulary dramatically increase and your intuitive grasp of the language's structure improve by leaps and bounds.
For me it's the most effective methodology that I have found. Sure, it gives you more control of the language learning process and the content you learn from, but that is a GOOD thing.
Agreed! At first I resisted until I realized how useful it is I paid $100/year. Come on people, how much do you spend on coffee!
ResponderEliminar