not trying to be disrespectful or anthing i’m not attacking the system i was just wondering does this system work to learn languages anybody have real success learning a language this way?
I’m not really far enough along to really say for sure (judging by your numbers, you’re doing as well as I am), but I seem to be learning Polish at a pretty good clip. Personally, though, I think it’s a mistake to approach LingQ as your sole source of language learning. The point of LingQ is to get you in touch with other speakers of your language, and to provide you with lots of reading/listening material. I actually have some of my own grammar books, access to other Polish speakers, and some additional reading/listening material. For me, LingQ is just one tool among many to master a language.
Seems to be working, but I’ve only been at it for a few weeks. I’ll tell you for sure in a year.
We’ve had quite a few success stories over the years, and many of them are scattered across the forum. Here’s a short one that someone wrote in October: Improved My Spanish In A Fraction Of The Time - Language ...
It looks like you’ve been on the site now for a few months, but haven’t actually saved any words to review. This is one of the main benefits of the site, and I’d encourage you to learn a bit more about how to save LingQs. Just click the “Academy” link above and watch the videos called “LingQs” and “Vocabulary”.
Works for me. You are best to think of “the system” as a subset of Steve’s “seven secrets”, with an emphasis placed on the importance of input. Cultivating your motivations, and cultivating your ability to sustain your attention and really notice the nuance of the language, are key things. Being able to improve and sustain full attention (for example; go from 5 mins-10 mins, to 30-40 mins full sustained attention) is an under rated aspect, that will flow over to many other parts of your life. Any result you get will be directly related to number of hours awashed in the language, as natives use it. A trick is to maintain interest and motivation over those hours. If you engage with this community long enough, you will notice many people having lots of success, and their tips and support will rub off.
Yes, it does work, either as your main means of study or just as a one component of your study. Regular use, repeated listening and reading of texts, does yield results. I’m certainly finding it useful to improved my listening and reading comprehension. Due to the more unstructured nature of study, it seems to work slowly at first but once you get going it’s very effective. It’s kind of like a large ship or truck, it takes a little while for the speed of learning to ramp up, but once it does it delivers a lot of good stuff!
1 Like
Your last point reminds of a quote from the book “Make it Stick” on interleaved learning versus massed practice ; “The learning from interleaved practice feels slower than learning from massed practice. Teachers and students sense the difference. They can see that their grasp of each element is coming more slowly, and the compensating long-term advantage is not apparent to them. As a result, interleaving is unpopular and seldom used. Teachers dislike it because it feels sluggish. Students find it confusing…but the research shows unequivocally that mastery and long term retention are much better if you interleave practice than if you mass it.”
Absolutely. This is the perfect beginner tool. I learnt my first 1500 words of german on here, and then started watching soap operas in german on youtube (watch about 20 episodes before you get any ideas of quitting, and just try to understand the story rather than understanding every single word or you’ll go nuts).
I still use LingQ for german as there’s great material on here, but I don’t count words anymore. I just listen to the tv & radio and learn the language like any kid learns their first language - listening and imitating. listen listen listen, then you’ll find you naturally get words popping into your head after a while.
Put it this way, I wish I’d found lingQ earlier. It was the difference maker. I’m doing the same with french now. Now that I know where the finish line is, I know the exact task ahead of me is, and it’s easy.
In about a month I’ve gone from not being able to read anything in Russian to being able to read (like a kid). I’ve got a long way to go, but I can see that this system is a good fit for me. I want to participate in conversations too. I think that will also help.
If really does! I’d echo Alex’s comment about saving words and starting to make LingQs. There are of course many ways of using this site, but the thing that really helped me was makings lots (and lots and lots!) of LingQs which helped me notice all the patterns and made the vocabulary really stick.