Testimonios

Ayer estuve en Barnes and Noble y esta pobre muchacha que hubiera necesitado un carrito para llevar todos los libros de verbos y vocabulario en español que estaba a punto de comprar. Le pregunté si estaba empezando a aprender español. Pensé que tal vez era maestra y estaba comprando todos esos libros para sus estudiantes. Ella dijo que iba a estudiar español por primera vez, así que intercedí. Le dije que regresara todos esos libros y tomara un pedazo de papel y escribiera www.LingQ.com, le dije que yo hablaba español con fluidez pero desafortunadamente aprendido del modo en que eslla esta a punto de hacerlo.

también le compartí que usé tu sistema para aprender francés y chino y que hice más progresos que en 10 años de clases formales de español. Ella regresó todos los libros y camino emocionada a usar LingQ. Me hizo sonreír porque pasó de la a ansiedad con montón de libros al empoderamieto a medida que compartía con ella la manera natural de aprender un idioma. Ciertamente no quiero sacar a Barnes and Noble del mercado pero menos quería que ella se frustrara con la forma en que los idiomas han sido enseñados. ¡Pensé que lo disfrutarías! 

primero que nada, quiero agradecer a la gente que creo el sistema LingQ. muchas veces he tratado de reanudar mis estudios de inglés, pero la única manera que sabía era estudiar vocabulario y gramática y siempre terminaba en fracaso. Era aburrido, me daba cuenta que no reforzaba el idioma y no veía efectos positivos en mi nivel de conocimiento general en inglés.

también he tratado de escuchar películas o noticias en inglés por la TV, pero no fue muy útil tampoco. No podía entender todo el contexto y lo que no podía entender se quedaba igual. Cuando conocí el método de estudios de inglés de LingQ, se volvió una fascinación para mi. Ahora disfruto estudiar inglés y no quiero guardarlo sólo para mí, trabaja genial y lo quiero compartir con mis amigos.  

Actually, I am a junior in high school here in America (in my third year of Spanish) and had not been able to speak Spanish what-so-ever. I began to start seriously using LingQ about 4 months ago. Now I am able to converse (not entirely fluent, but very proficiently) with my friends (I live in south texas so there are many spanish speakers to talk and listen to).

I find it amusing how I have been in Spanish at school for two and a half years and never progressed (i have a 97 semester average in it) and yet from just 4 months of lingq i have progressed enormously!!!

Therefore, I do believe that the homeschooling method does work MUCH better, for me at least. (Too bad they don’t have a lingq class at school). LingQ has made me enjoy language learning, as opposed to at school where I couldn’t stand it. I plan on learning more languages with lingq in the future. I can’t praise your system enough!!!!

P.S.Thank you for making LingQ!  

Desde que hablé contigo hace dos meses, ¡he conseguido que 6 de mis amigos y mi padre se registren en LingQ! Están impresionados por el sitio y han vuelto a fortalecer su pasión por los idiomas después de que 7 años de escuela la extinguieran con ejercicios monótonos de comprensión y programas tediosos. Acabo de terminar de leer tu libro The Way of the Linguist y dedo decir que es muy inspirador. Personalmente estoy muy interesado en entrar en el Servicio Diplomático(Británico), así que la parte del Servicio Diplomático Canadiense fue muy interesante. La parte final "en el camino a aprender idiomas" ha re definido mi enfoque sobre aprender idiomas, y ya he notado los resultados después de sólo aproximadamente una semana de usar tu método. Muchas gracias por todo lo que has hecho, por volver a animar a los estudiantes de idiomas como yo.  :

Otra nota más que prueba que el sistema LingQ funciona, es que yo actualmente estoy tomando una clase intensiva de portugués en mi universidad (UC Berkeley). Es un curso avanzado de portugués para la gente que sabe otras lenguas romances pero hay principiantes de portugués, así que te mueve rápido y es conocido por ser muy difícil. Muchos estudiantes están en aprietos en el curso, pero como yo aprendí mucho portugués por mi mismo durante el verano en LingQ, he estado haciendo muy bien los exámenes mientras Pongo poco tiempo a las tareas y ejercicios sin sentido que ellos quieren que hagamos. Sólo me familiarizo con el idioma, así que puedo hacerlo bien en dicha clase ¡sin ni siquiera estudiar! Es un buen plan para mi promedio en este momento, pero en general, pienso que esto prueba que ¡las clases son innecesarias!  

No estoy seguro a quién más escribirle, pero tengo que decirte lo maravilloso que es este sitio. LingQ es increíble. He estudiado idiomas por un mucho tiempo y usado diferentes métodos, pero este es el mejor.  

¡Sólo quiero decirte que amo tu programa! Descubrí LingQ mediante el sitio web Youswoop. Ofrecían una promoción por un precio reducido para un nivel superior por 6 meses . Antes de comprarlo, decidí explorar el sitio web. ¡Estaba muy sorprendida de que el sitio fuera gratis! Siempre tuve problemas en aprender un nuevo idioma y pronto perdía el interés o la paciencia. Después de un día de usar el programa, estaba enganchado con él! Lo disfruté tanto que seguí entrando al sitio. Instantáneamente volví a Youswoop y compré el nivel. Me encantaron las múltiples herramientas de estudio y la aplicación para android, ¡podía practicar a donde quiera que fuera! Actualmente estudio español, y ¡no puedo esperar para aprender más idiomas! Sigan con el excelente trabajo ¡espero con interés la gran calidad y futuras mejoras! ¡Gracias!

Honestamente incluso después de vivir en Japón por muchos años, traté de todo. Fue LingQ quien realmente me dio las aptitudes y la seguridad que necesitaba para tener seguridad en mis habilidades. Incluso terminé trabajando en una compañía japonesa donde nadie hablaba inglés. ¡Así que puedes hacerlo!

Muchas gracias por el maravilloso sitio web. Realmente disfruto cada lección. Puedo mejorar muy rápido mi habilidad de hablar. Todos deberían saber sobre ustedes. Le envíe la liga a mi hermano y lo animé a unirse. El es principiante. Pero creo que su inglés va a mejorar pronto.  

He sido maestra en ESL por un año, he estudiado coreano los últimos 6 meses y debo admitir que después de buscar en todas partes y tratar cosas diferentes, como otros, he encontrado que LingQ es la mejor herramienta para ayudar en la adquisición de un idioma. Ser capaz de escoger tu propio contenido e importar tu propio contenido es una enorme ventaja sobre cualquier otro sistema de aprendizaje de idiomas que exista. Ponen las opciones en las manos del estudiante. También, de la imagen del progreso personal es de donde obtuve mucha motivación. Me gusta ver mis esadisticas y compararlas con otros usuarios que estudian en LingQ. Me impulsa a hacerlo mejor, así como llevar mi seguimiento de aprendizaje (me ilumino cuando veo que he pasado las metas o por otro lado, saber cuando he estado holgazaneando y necesito acelerar más el ritmo) Al final del día, sé que LingQ funciona porque puedo ver mi progreso a través del aumento del conteo de palabras y de lingq.  

I spend about 80% of my study time just listening to content from the LingQ library, while cooking. The rest of the time I spend at the site, reading and reviewing words. In one year my TEOIC score improved from 500 to 800 points

Seven years ago, I took Toeic for the first time. Because my husband's company encourages all the employees to learn something that interests them, he chose to study English. After finished his course, he took Toeic to make sure how much his English improved. I don't remember his result, but my score was somewhere around 550. ( My major was English in college.)

Two years ago, after giving birth to my second baby, I felt like studying English again. I started to buy magazines for English learners. It was helpful to increase vocabulary but I forgot most of them before long. Then I searched on the Internet better ways to learn English. I wanted to listen to real conversations between native speakers, not news. Then I came across the Linguist (now LingQ) and decided to join. Since then, I enjoy English every day. There are various kinds of contents in the Library section. I just pick up a content which interests me. It is fun to look up new words in the dictionary because I choose it and want to understand what the speakers are talking about. It really makes me feel satisfied when I have gotten all the meaning of new words. After that, I listen to the same content many times while cooking and doing household chores. Sometimes I am mumbling some phrases in the kitchen, so it looks weird.

This year, I took Toeic for the first time in seven years. My score was 800. It was amazing. I didn't expect that much. I like English but I don't want to study English for exams. I didn't do anything for Toeic this time. I believe the LingQ will lead me to 900 points of Toeic.  

In Brazil we have 7 years of English, twice a week in schools (from 11 to 17 years old). From 13 to 17 I had another English course in parallel to the school one, with 3 more hours a week. I’ve been always considered an excelent student, and my grades were around 90-100%. I liked English, and I’ve been always fascinated by the idea that some day I would be able to understand a movie, read a book or speak fluently. But it never happened… my English was barely enough to read technical papers that I needed for my professional developement. And even though, the first time my undergraduate advisor asked me to read a 5 page technical paper, I spent almost one month to be able to give him an answer about it. The worst thing is not spending 6 to 10 years studying. The most terrifying fact is that in the end of all this, you can’t do almost anything real with the language. Last year, I angrily decided I would study English alone every single day until I became fluent. I was always searching for material in the Internet, but I didn’t know exactly how to use them. Then, two months after I made my decision I found the LingQ site, started to use it and learned more in 10 months then in the 25 years before that. Now I write tech papers, and not only have them accepted for publishing, but praised because they are well-written. So, I have no doubt that Steve has found the right method for language learning and that the most majority of language teachers simply don’t know what they are doing. Although I feel I’m not done with English yet, I’m very happy with my development, but very outraged too, when I think people are still being submitted to such useless old methods, when there are so many evidences that they simply don’t work at all.

Yesterday I had my interview. Despite of my flu and the terrible sound quality on the phone, I did it. I talked a lot (40 minutes!), about my work, my personal life, my plans for the future, my professional goals (thanks, Helen!!), leadership and role models.

What an experience! Although I don't know if the interviewer liked my answers, I'm sure she could understand them, despite of the minor mistakes I'm sure I made. I ended the interview very happy and proud of myself. So, I would like to thank you all for your conversations and encouragement last week. A special "thank you" for you, Steve, who is the responsible for bringing this wonderful learning tool called LingQ into reality!  

Hi Steve,

I am allowing myself to write you in French since I heard your radio interview and your French is impeccable! I discovered your blog and I congratulate you on your initiative. Your blog and the LingQ method are inestimable resources. You leave the beaten path, you are an innovator (which is not always easy in the very traditional world of language learning ...). My hat's off! I intend to buy your book. I am fascinated by your findings!

I am coach of French as a second language in Montreal: www.enjoyspeakingfrench.com. I rarely teach grammar as such. (I had to find another word for teacher or tutor to describe what I do). I adapt to my clients, their needs, their problems (most of my clients have studied for several years in traditional schools before coming to me. They are rarely beginners, but they are literally blocked). I create dynamic learning plans with them and I recommend resources and activities appropriate to their learning style, their objectives, way of life. I discover what is blocking their learning and I help them to no longer fear speaking French. (It's a real fear for many people who have been terrorized by the study of grammar.) I help them forgot about perfection and take small risks in their communication each day and to believe in their potential. My mission is to unlock people's potential to speak French !

In Montreal, there are many people who take french courses for years, but never really learn to speak, to integrate the knowledge gained into their everyday life (on my website you will find an article about this in the News section). The content of your video blogs are very inspiring (my experience and my personal observations led me to the same conclusions regarding language learning). I will be speaking about + you and warmly recommending your approach to all my clients. I will soon upload a series of videos on Youtube, and I will be encouraging people to visit your blog and use LingQ, if you do not mind!

Thank you for your efforts. You really do superb work, Steve. That is admirable. Thank you very much!  

He estado enrolado en el sitio desde finales de julio con el fin de dominar el inglés, mi prioridad. Esto es muy fácil por el casi ilimitado contenido que se encuentra en LingQ. En resumen, el sitio es fantástico. Gané seguridad en mí mismo y mejoro cada día. Considerando que solía pensar que "yo y el inglés" éramos causa perdida. Bueno, ¡será mejor que vuelva a ello!  

Como fanático de los idiomas, he invertido mucho tiempo y dinero en material para aprender idiomas durante los últimos diez años, y para mí, ningún sistema es tan completo como LingQ. Un curso completo puede costar mas de US$900 (por idioma) y deja al estudiante con un vocabulario limitado. LingQ, sin embargo, genuinamente ofrece la oportunidad para el usuario de DOMINAR hasta 10 idiomas. El sitio ofrece una gama de contenido, una traducción directa de palabras nuevas, acceso a tutores, ayuda con escritos y con el habla y una red de apoyo entre estudiantes de idiomas. Lo mejor del sistema LingQ es que hay una gama de contenido, así que siempre puedes trabajar con contenido que te interese y te motive.  

From the standpoint of someone “in the business” (I’ve been a college professor of German for 20 years), I’m afraid that Steven Krashen’s ideas, while being received initially with some enthusiasm, have been largely ignored (or at best given lip service) both by textbook publishers and writers and by those of us engaged in the classroom. As a foreign language teacher who appreciates these ideas (and uses them – I’m learning Russian with LinqQ and have taught myself other languages, pre-LingQ, following a similar learning philosophy and method – I’ve been deeply impressed at how Steve (Kaufmann) has appropriated these somewhat theoretical ideas into this website to a far greater extent than it has been done in the profession. As a teacher, I am now constantly challenged to remake my classroom in order to do the same. About 7 years ago, I realized that if I were someone wanting to learn German, I’d never take my own class, and since then I’ve been experimenting.  

By the way, I thought you might like to hear that I have recently started doing pretty much all of my Spanish studies through LingQ simply because it works so well for me. It completely minimises the faffing about of writing stuff on cards or in vocabulary books and makes it easy for me to learn and remember words, without any pretence of special gimics or memory aids that don't work in the long term.

It was interesting for me to realise that it is an extremely valuable thing to have a system that completely saves me organising my studies (apart from uploading my own content which I can do with minimal effort) thus giving me maximum contact with the language when I study without distractions and without having to think where I should put what flashcard where, which book, CD or MP3 I should listen to and where I put it. It is simple, but for the studies I want to do, I don't need anything else. Well done.  

For some years now I’ve been looking for and experimenting with different methods with high school students (ages 14-19), probably for much the same reasons. Being dissatisfied with predominant so-called communicative methods that actually weren’t anything else but old grammar and translation based drills combined with ineffective dialogues on CDs and not really interesting textbook content, I searched the internet and came up with numerous articles by Greg Thomson on the www.sil.org, in which I was introduced to Stephen Krashen’s ideas.

Providing students with a lot of comprehensible input was a big challenge, especially for French. The main problem proved to be the “remaking” of the classroom and motivating the students, who actually didn’t expect anything better than what they had been getting so far, to take more responsibility for their learning. Thanks to Steve Kaufmann’s blogposts and my own working with LingQ I’ve become much more efficient in convincing at least part of my students of how effective listening and reading can be at any stage in the learning process.

Previously I had come across “passive learning” in Vera Birkenbihl’s books. She worked out her own methodology of language learning (among other learning fields) in the late 1980s. She actuallY advocates word-for-word translation with active listening (very similar to the LingQ method) as a first step. She calls this “decoding”. She is against formal vocabulary and grammar learning. The next step is “passive listening”(without reading along) and only after full comprehension/acquisition of the material does she suggest production (speaking or writing) according to the learner’s requirements.

Ms Birkenbihl’s method is great as soon as you have the “decoded” texts and recordings. I experimented with this method for some time, but then came across Assimil courses, which were easier to use, because there was no need to do the word-for-word translation myself. On the other hand, I didn’t find the content of Assimil courses so interesting. Stll, I have benefited a lot from both approaches. However, all of this proved to be difficult to use in the classroom.

With the LingQ methodology I have found something like a “missing link”. Interesting content and mp3 files, flashcards (which I had been using on and off in paper form) together with the possibility of communicating with other learners and a tutor.

My latest experiment of learning some Swedish with “the power of the linguist” has been a very rewarding experience. I’m using LingQ mainly for Russian and French, but I’m trying to continue Swedish as well.  

Tomé el TOEIC a finales del mes pasado después de algunos meses de intensiva lectura y escucha en el sistema LingQ. Fue mi séptimo TOEIC en los últimos 16 años. Normalmente se me acababa el tiempo en la parte de la lectura y la gramática, pero esta vez sentí que era más fácil que nunca y tuve más de 10 minutos de sobra cuando terminé de responder mi hoja. Hubo algunas preguntas para las que necesité tiempo para pensarlo, pero para el resto, solamente seguí las respuestas correctas que me dictaba mi intuición. Creo que esto es porque intensivamente me expuse a un ingles natural que no está arreglado para la presentación de exámenes. Claro que necesité revisar algunos puntos de gramática antes del examen, pero la mayoría de el tiempo sólo disfrutaba de mi lectura, Esta experiencia realmente me ayuda a mantener mi motivación. Espero con interés ver mi puntaje del TOEIC que se me enviará al final de este mes.

Gracias.  

In using the LingQ system over the past several months, I have found the whole system to be an incredibly simple, user-friendly and pleasant means of studying and acquiring a language. Not only this, it also allows you to immerse yourself in the language from day one and become quickly acquainted with it; something traditional language education by and large tends not to provide anywhere near as effectively, or cost-efficiently. And fortunately this whole process actually requires very little effort.

Because of this natural, essentially effortless approach to language-learning, as well as its world-wide accessibility through the virtual world of the Internet, LingQ offers an attractive, appealing product with the potential to do well in countries such as New Zealand, where knowledge of a foreign language is not the norm. I am fortunate and grateful to have discovered LingQ and recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in foreign languages!  

I'm sure you get a thousand of these a day but I would just like to say I really appreciate your knowledge and passion for languages. LingQ is absolutely brilliant and is something I feel that is extremely unique. You are truly doing something amazing for all language learners. Thank you for your time, and once again thank you for all that you have done for the language learning community.

Here is how I use LingQ. I first download various audio clips then proceed to save the text that came along with the audio. I print out the text and add the audio to an mp3 player and that way I have the LingQ system everywhere I go! People ask me all the time how I could possibly study a language without school and all I need to do is pull out the text and mp3 and give them a little demonstration. I tell people that you will pick words and phrases without meaning to just by simply listening and reading the text a view times. It is truly an amazing thing when you are learning effortlessly and efficiently at the same time. I encourage people to try LingQ due to the effectiveness and that the man behind the scenes is truly original and absolutely passionate about proper language learning. Simply follow the basic instructions on LingQ and you will be learning in no time.

I'll never stop using LingQ haha!  

Hola, soy Frances de Filipinas. Me acabo de registrar en LingQ para aprender francés. Gracias por crear este sitio. Realmente ayudará mucho a todos aquellos que intentan aprender lenguas extranjeras. ¡Muchas gracias y sigue con el buen trabajo! 

Sólo por diversión, el otro día en una librería tomé un libro de estudio para la prueba de aprovechamiento de francés aquí en Japón. Fui capaz de contestar la mayoría de las preguntas sin ningún estudio de gramática en absoluto. He estudiado sólo aquí en lingQ.  

...si LingQ hubiera estado ahí cuando empecé a aprender, hubiera estado mucho más adelante de donde estoy ahora. Sin embargo, no me puedo quejar, porque ahora que lo he descubierto, siento que aprenderé mucho más con mayor rapidez y eficiencia...  

¡Hola Jill, Steve y Mark! Me gustan mucho sus podcasts y realmente disfruto escucharlos. Es gracioso. Ustedes se están riendo y no es aburrido para nada. Así que ¡gracias por eso! :)  

Solo quería darte una breve retroalimentación de tu podcast que escuché esta mañana a las 6 am mientras caminaba con mi perro en la oscuridad, por un bosque suizo!! ¡Me encantó! y empecé directamente a ejercitar mi inglés (Con Anne de las tejas verdes, agradable). Subiré de categoría tan pronto como tenga suficiente tiempo - Realmente quiero mejorar mi ingles y tu manera es realmente buena - muchas gracias. Feliz Navidad y lo mejor para este 2008 (suena raro en ingles; en alemán es: vom Moglichen das Beste!)  

Gracias por el excelente artículo sobre organizar una presentación. He usado LingQ por varias semanas y estoy muy contento con el progreso que estoy teniendo. Nunca tuve este progreso antes. Tengo a LingQ en mis herramientas del navegador y lo he incluido en mi rutina matutina, leo mis correos electrónicos y las noticias. Le he recomendado tu programa a muchas personas. Tambien disfruto tus blogs que me ayudan a mantenerme motivado. El otro día, le dije a mi hijo que Steve Kaufman es mi nuevo guía espiritual. Muchas gracias. > 

I took a few years of French at high-school, which of course did not take me anywhere. Despite getting a ‘B’ in GCSE, I could not even conduct a basic conversation in French. I had not touched the language for almost 15 years, until the summer of 2006, when I decided to pick it up again. It was tough for me because there were not many Francophones in my area, and that I could only spend a portion of my spare-time learning. I joined LingQ in the summer of 2007, and I found significant improvement after only a few months, especially in my reading and listening.

Last weekend, I went to visit Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, the first time since I started to pick up French again. I was amazed that I could understand a lot of conversations spoken around me. I was also very happy to find myself being able to exchange a few lines with the Francophones over there. What I found most astonishing was that I did not achieve this by memorising the lines from some phrase books, but the conversations came out quite naturally from my mouth.  

Esta semana es mi primer aniversario en mi aprendizaje de inglés en LingQ. ¡Desde finales de junio de 2009 he importado y compartido 850 lecciones, creado 11380 LingQs, leído cerca de 2,370,000 palabras y escuchado contenido en inglés por 385 horas! ¡Wow! Mi resumen de progreso lo demuestra también. Había disfrutado aprender inglés, pero nunca había enfocado mi aprendizaje en vocabulario ni había leído tantos textos. Disfruto prender en LingQ y ver mi resumen de progreso cada día. Este resumen de progreso, el sistema LingQ y la comunidad LingQ me da la motivación de aprender inglés. ¡Gracias LingQ!  

Hello, I’m Seghir from Algeria ; I’ve learned English at school for 11 years but I haven’t made big progress but now with LingQ it is totally different, I used the system for only three months and I can understand write and even speak English much better. LingQ’s methods are very efficient so thank you very much Steve, Jill, Mark and all the tutors and also Henry because now I’m learning French and I really like the new French podcasts good luck and keep up the good work.  

A few days ago a friend of mine told me she is learning Spanish. The first idea to come to my mind was if I could find any audio books to learn the language too. So i found one and after 8 hours of listening I already had some basic understanding of the Spanish language structure. (A very very useful audio book to start learning Spanish with, by Michele Thomas, he shows the structure of the language, and not just some common phrases as usually such "teachers" do). The next day I spent a couple of hours trying various language learning software, when I came to lingq.com. I've now spent some 30 hours here in total and I can already read wikipedia, news and other articles in Spanish almost without any use of dictionary (well, I look up about 1 word in 50 when reading articles I import to LingQ's workdesk). I find LingQ very handy, it really saves tons of time and makes me feel more confident knowing I have everything I need to learn (i.e. articles I have read/plan to read, vocabulary, dictionary, flashcards, etc.) at hand.

I just wanted to write a thank you letter to the LingQ team :-) Great idea and great job you guys made! Keep going ;-)  

Fui programador por 20 años y realmente aprecio un software bien diseñado.  :

I just wanted to say I love this program. I think that if you found a way to develope it in the way that Rosetta Stone is commercially sold, you would really have something amazing. I'm also learning Russian, and I wanted to tell you that I would really love to see you "explain your website" in Russian. Спасибо. Пока!  

What a wonderful job all you have done regarding the Lingq design. Today, I spent more than 3 hours at the LingQ updating my flashcards(hint/phrases) and was great! The time just went by so fast. It was easy, fast, enjoyable. Everything was at the reach of my hand. No question, "The best language learning system ever". And I can tell you that I have spent a considerable amount of time searching the Internet, trying to get a look at what is going on regarding to online language learning systems. Congratulations!