Hey Guys… I am new to LingQ. Trying the free account. For a year I have used Du-L-ngo, R-s-tta St-ne, and B-bbel with ‘‘ok’’ results. I’m tired of paying for things that don’t yield results. Is buying the LingQ Premium subscription worth it?
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Been a premium user for over 6 years now. I’ve gotten more from lingq than all the textbooks I’ve ever bought combined. Obviously it depends on the user, but for me it has been a goldmine.
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As far as I’m concerned LingQ isn’t really usable without subscribing. Honestly I wish I discovered the site sooner, its easily more effective than basically every other learning material I’ve tried.
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Totally agree. I’ll say the same also for language classes I took in high school and college. They yielded very slow, inefficient results for me until I discovered LingQ. However, I know a very few of my classmates who were successful with just language classes alone. So it may or may not work for you efficiently, however I do know in my experience that you learn words exponentially faster using LingQ.
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No, LingQ premium isn’t worth it if you’re not committed to using it seriously. Getting LingQ can be just like purchasing a gym membership but never using it or subscribing to an educational website like Lynda.com but not consuming the educational content. That is a waste of money.
The internet really helps us learn languages in a self-directed way, so the question of value more so should be directed to you, CalebB. Do you have reading goals for your target language? Do you believe that using software to help you read faster in your target language will help you in your reading goals? Will increased comprehension in your target language with real world material be a benefit that you’re desiring? Are you willing to put in time and effort on a consistent basis to make that happen?
In addition, have you heard about the input hypothesis to learn a language? Instead of only learning a language itself, have you spent time learning how to learn a language so that you can determine the best method to help you be a successful language learner? If you’ve done some of these things, it makes the decision of whether or not to go with LingQ easier.
Though there are other factors to consider, I personally define the time commitment required to learn a language as at least 1,000 hours. If you put in 5 minutes a day, 6 days a week, you’ll get to 1,000 hours in 36.46 years. However, if you put in 1 hour a day, 6 days a week, it’ll take you just a little over 3 years. I use a variety of things to help me learn Spanish, and I personally highly recommend LingQ.
So yes, LingQ premium is worth it if you come onto this platform with actual goals and are committed over the long haul to use LingQ in a serious manner. Sometimes people spend MUCH more money traveling to a foreign country to learn a language only to find out that even in that country they have to still put in real time and effort to be proficient in a language. The internet helps give us the opportunity of learning a language in our home country, without having to spend costly travel expenses. LingQ is an extremely helpful tool in that realm–if it’s used. I personally use LingQ to read things I want to read that are created for native Spanish speakers. I’ve read over 600,000 words with LingQ so far, and it has definitely helped me.
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Great answer.
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I have been using lingQ for a while now, and it completely blows Duolingo and Babbel out of the water. Nothing I have tried gave me results like LingQ has. For me its LingQ or nothing.
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Duolingo and LingQ have different goals.
According to Duolingo’s official documentation, the Duolingo Spanish and French trees are created to get people up to a high beginner level (A2). (Forum - Duolingo) I personally believe Duolingo is great to start with, and it was helpful to jumpstart my Spanish journey. I (finally) completed the Duolingo Spanish tree in April 2017, and that marked the point in my life where I have considered myself a serious Spanish learner. However, I knew that if I wanted to continue learning Spanish, I had to ween myself off of Duolingo and start learning Spanish via a real world context. Unfortunately, what it seems happens many times for people in the Duolingo community is that they start off with a desire to learn a language, but that desire gets transferred into just getting XPs in Duolingo or maintaining a Duolingo streak. Whether or not you have a Duolingo streak doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily getting to a high level in the language, and if the Spanish and French courses are designed to get people to an A2 level, can you expect to get to a B2 level or higher in Spanish or French (and probably many of the other Duolingo courses) if you maintain a 1,000 day Duolingo streak?
LingQ, on the other hand, helps me read things created for native Spanish speakers. I important content I want to read into LingQ. I get to first challenge myself to read the words in Spanish first before I use the dictionary. I’ve experimented with importing audio of chapters of book I’m reading as well, so, it has even helped with my listening comprehension (although I’ve focused more on reading in LingQ…I’ve used YouTube and etc for watching/listening to native Spanish speakers)…Anyways, I’ve experienced that reading by itself helps prepare that way for increased listening comprehension. LingQ is for the person who wants to be able to understand a language in a real world context with native level material… Understanding–not speaking-- is the foundation of conversation in my opinion. The more you understand, the more the language is familiar to you, the easier it is listen to others and speak as well. That is how we learned our first language, right? 
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Thanks ampo567! 
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This is AWESOME. Thank you.
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Thanks so much guys. These answers are truly helpful!
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Fantastic answers, First1000Hours!
In the last three months I have joined both Duolingo and LingQ for the first time. I have found that Duolingo was helpful to quickly revive my college French (taken a long time ago) before a quick trip to France. It also looks useful for dipping my toes into Chinese, which I have absolutely no experience with and which is so different from my native English. But for Greek, which I’ve been learning painfully slowly on and off my entire life, LingQ has been fantastic. The Mini Stories and other Beginner material are somewhat elementary for me but I am still getting a lot out of them. Recently, I’ve imported Ted Talks spoken in Greek, along with the Greek closed caption subtitles, and that has increased my listening comprehension many-fold. So, I think my experience is a bit like yours: Duolingo can be helpful in the very early stages, but LingQ is awesome for, as you say, " for the person who wants to be able to understand a language in a real world context with native level material… "
Happy language learning to all!
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In my opinion, yes, it is going to be the best tool you can use. I’ll echo that I wish I had found Lingq earlier. I think you will learn vocabulary much quicker through reading and listening than you will in any other way. However…it still will require a lot of work and dedication. Also, Lingq doesn’t exactly handhold you. Granted it’s a lot better now in that there are some helpful videos on the site on how to do things (import and other features). However there is a lot of content on the site, but not always the best organized. So you may need to do some filtering and sifting to get to stuff appropriate for a learning level. The mini stories are a good start and depending on the language there is a lot of good content that others have provided.
You can also import your own material. In some cases it may take a bit of work to gather in what you want and obviously discovering new sources of content that you can import…especially with audio…but Lingq is making a lot of that easier now with being able to import youtube content and netflix content.
What language are you wanting to learn?
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LingQ is worth more than the price they ask for Go get it and don’t even ask!
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I’m learning German.
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Given that I paid for Duo, I might not be the best responder, but I find the ability to create my own lessons to be one of the most valuable features of LingQ. For that reason I find the premium account essential.
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yes!
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Sure. That’s a great instrument to learn a language – no doubt about it.
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If you’re actually going to use it, YES!
Sign up and never look back and except to wow yourself at your own progress!
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It is 100% worth it. You can tell that the owners and developers actually use LingQ which is great ! You can always unsubscribe when ever you want with no issue. I really can’t recommend LingQ enough.
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