How do I learn with this? Very confused

Can someone explain to me the point of this system? I just registered and decided to try out a Chinese beginner course. I see that there is a basic dialogue with audio. All very well. After an hour of confusion and playing around with the panel, I figure out how to add words from the dialogue to my flashcard stack. I try to memorise the flashcards, then I see that I need to customise them – I need to set the flashcard ‘hint’ as the front. However, the back can be only ‘term’, ‘phrase’ and/or ‘hint’. The term is the answer in Chinese characters, the phrase is the phrase that the word belongs to in Chinese characters. How do I add English transliteration? I guess I’d have to copy and past over the ‘phrase’ part since any changes I make to the term are not displayed in the flashcard. It’s a lot of work and customisation and I don’t understand why this isn’t automatic. On top of that, the system uses Google Translate which can’t be trusted and it’s not possible to add phrases from the dialogue (e.g. good morning), only individual words (‘good’ and ‘morning’), which is an over-simplification of how a language is learnt. As for the cloze activity, I wouldn’t know where to start. Have I completely misunderstood how this thing is supposed to work or is it totally worthless for learning an exotic language from scratch?

Hi Nestor,

If I remember well, I think that you’ve contacted us through email too. :slight_smile:
As I answered you there, head to the Academy page (Login - LingQ), where you can find several helpful videos that will help explain how to use the site. You can also visit the Help section (Help) to find additional answers to your questions.

I can’t submit my coupon for 6mts to learn basic french very confused

Your code is now applied manually, and your account is on 6 Month Premium membership. Happy Learning!

That’s brill thank you

Hi, yes, that’s right. Don’t know why I didn’t notice that academy link but the videos seem to clear things up so far. Thanks.

I’m learning french, so I am not sure if chinese poses significantly different issues because of the characters. LinQ can initially feel awkward and not intuitive, but if you continue to review the flashcards as they are sent to you on a day to day basis, you begin to get the feel for the system. I especially like it because of the dictation section–learning spelling and accents, which are very important in french–putting reading, listening and writing all together on one site is for me very effective.

I attended a french language social meeting a few weeks after joining LinQ, and was pleasantly surprised how much french I was able to speak, less how much I was able to understand (I have studied inconsistently for decades, and gain and lose the language many times.)

Stick with it…I think it’s a good program. But if it doesn’t work for you, keep looking!

Good luck.

Patricia