LingQ dominant on reading/listening but not speaking

Although I’m finding LingQ to be exceedingly useful, my only complaint is that it’s reliant mostly on reading and listening exercises and as far as I can see, lacks any real speaking or guided imitation style features, which would actually get us vocalizing our target language and thus, more deeply imbed the new vocabulary in our memories. I mean, I can read the lessons out loud, but that doesn’t necessarily encourage me to structure my own unique sentences and learn organically as a child would.

Reading, listening and vocabulary acquisition are the core activities at LingQ and the core activities required to get you to a proficient level in your target language. Of course, the goal of most learners is to be able to speak in their new language, which means you do have to practice your output. You can do this both in the Community, Writing Exchange section or by submitting writing and signing up to practice speaking with our Tutors.

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Hi Naguib-Al-Aswani,

What would be your preferable activity on LingQ that made you practice speaking?
I’ve seen different types on different web sites. But I’m interested in your opinion because I don’t know what people prefer.

It could be, for example:

  • reading out loud and record your voice to compare with the original audio
  • repeat out loud the audio without looking at the text and record yourself to compare with the original audio
  • participate in the real-time meetings with several people discussing particular topics
  • have possibility to schedule a call with tutor to have 1-1 conversation
  • ability to record and post the audio (e.g. short “podcast”) so others could comment on it and give you their feedback
  • have possibility to schedule a call with tutor to have 1-1 conversationa
  • have an “audio chat/forum” where instead of typing you post your audio comments (the same way as you leave audio comments on What’sApp)
  • something else

Thank you very much in advance and sorry if I’m too curious. I’m very interested in this topic because I was thinking about it myself.

I’m not sure what your point is. Is that the LingQ should necessarily have a more prominent option for that matter or is that you personally need more practice?
What’s the trouble to google some apps for language exchange then. There is no lack of them, that’s for sure. And you can easily, as an English speaker, find a lot of language exchange partners for free. It’s me, who should have complaints, because the whole situation with language exchange apps is that it is nothing but international dating services, where only men learn Russian (for some reason, he-he) and if there is a choice, you’re not gonna compete with blonde Slavic userpics in their inbox :smiley:

As long as you’re a native speaker of the international language, it’s a piece of cake to get some practice. Actually, when I was trying to find a language partner for practicing English, the most of those who inboxed me were Arabic native speakers.

Well, if money is no issue, having conversation lessons on italki is a good alternative. No time is wasted in searching out for a conversation partner on language exchange apps.

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That is what LingQ is and that is what the people at LingQ say it is. You should use LingQ to learn to “know” the language, even write it to a degree, but then find people to converse with to be completely able to “use” the language. You can actually do that to some degree through LingQ, by booking speaking sessions with the tutors here, but it will end up costing some money.

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I already “know” the language, however I posted this after watching the founder of the app’s video explaining how he’s been learning Arabic from LingQ but can’t seem to articulate Arabic speech as easily in conversation, which is why I suggested that LingQ perhaps expand into that territory to accommodate for that need, as it will inevitably get bigger in the coming years anyway. It just seems logical to be able to address all areas of language learning under one roof, rather than having to subscribe to multiple different methods offered by different developers.

Speech is always going to be more difficult in my opinion. Also Steve has said many times in the past he likes to do a lot of reading and listening before delving into speech much so it makes sense that he’s “behind” in speech.

What are you expecting from an app that would target speech more? The only ways in my mind are simply to do it…book with a tutor (which LingQ does), listen more (to help with how you should sound–which LingQ does), you can vocalize as your reading (which you can do with most resources), writing (which LingQ has a writing exchange), find someone to dialogue with (nothing at LingQ for this unless you can find someone on the message boards willing to do it).

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The 4 parts of language learning are all distinct skills. They don’t exactly translate. That’s why you can run into people who can read a language at university level but can neither understand the spoken language nor speak.

To learn speaking some people swear by “shadowing”. There is also an app called glossika. Or do it the old fashioned way and get a language exchange partner.