Best way to use Lingq?

Hi all,

I’ve been LingQing properly for about a month now - I finished my Assimil Russian course and considered LingQ to be the natural progression from that in terms of input learning.

I just wanted to gauge whether I have been using LingQ to its maximum potential. At the moment I listen to a lesson’s dialogue without looking at the text, then I go through and LingQ the lesson, then listen to it once more and try to repeat the words as they’re being said.

I then translate the lesson into English on microsoft word.

Finally, I listen to the dialogue again, and by this point hopefully I understand it all without needing to refer to the translations or to read it whilst I’m listening to it. I do one lesson a night, and spend the rest of my study time either listening to Glossika or procrastinating about which other methods might help me improve my learning efficiency!

My question is this - is my current method an effective way of using LingQ? I haven’t noticed many obvious improvements in my Russian capabilities, but I guess that such a method encourages sub-concious learning. I am keen to increase my output level, and to this end I was wondering whether I should be trying to re-translate my English translation of the lessons back to Russian a few days later as per the Luca method?

His method intrigues me and it does seem a good way of improving output capabilities, but before I start trying to do it, how do all of you use LingQ, and have you found a really effective method that helps you learn the language quicker than most, or certainly quicker than my current method.

Many thanks

1 Like

The method you describe sounds really effective and if you keep it up, you will certainly improve quickly and efficiently.

Personally, I don’t favour having a set method. By ‘set method’, I mean a list of steps that I will go through for each lesson. I don’t think that it is a bad thing to have, but in the end, I always find that my attempts to have a set method break down very quickly and I am left feeling guilty and demotivated. I mostly just try to do what I want. This keeps me interested and motivated. However, I know that sometimes doing something more set and something that I don’t want is also necessary.

For Russian, I have just recently picked it up again after more than a year of inactivity (mostly due to working very hard at work). I am currently working through material at LingQ pretty aimlessly and am learning a lot of vocabulary and taking 1 hour lessons once per week. I find this quite effective, but I am sure there are more effective methods that I could use without putting in more effort (which I don’t plan to do). The problem with the more effective methods is that I have no idea what they are and they are not likely to be much more effective anyway.

Everyone has to find their own path. I don’t translate. Once past the first few months with beginner or learner content, I just immerse myself in to interesting content. I prefer to go for massive input, LingQing furiously. I don’t worry if I don’t fully understand a lesson. I just move on to the next, wherever my interest takes me, confident that the more exposure to the language, the better I will learn. Seeing all those yellow LingQs in new contexts is what helps my vocabulary and sense of the language to grow. I don’t worry about output, I know that it will develop in time, when I get the opportunity to use the language. I know this from experience.

I see that you have created a lot of LingQs. Great. I hope you are listening often to what you are reading.

But everyone has to find their own path, one that is enjoyable.

1 Like

Is it an effective way to use lingq? Sure.

But I don’t think you’ve given us enough information about your study plan/level to suggest changes in your method. As the others have said, there is no universally accepted best way to use lingq. Imo it’s all about personal preferences, goals, and what role your want lingq to play in your study plan. For example, your way is more intensive and less extensive than mine, but that doesn’t make it worse.

I’m also interested in Luca’s method, because it has clearly produced one of the world’s most impressive polyglots. But I think if you really want to follow it, you should follow it completely in order to improve your chances of getting similar results. In other words, instead of asking “how would Luca use lingq?”, you should ask “what is everything Luca does at every step in his language plan?”

Incidentally, I tried to use Luca’s method for Assimil Russian, and found it to be poorly suited for it. Although I finished Assimil, I stopped doing translations after 60 something lessons because it was too hard. I also found Assimil Russian to be pretty poor. I assume both assimil and Luca’s methods are better suited for “easier” languages. He almost certainly did things differently for Russian, but good luck finding out what.

I think the exact method you use is of secondary importance. I think the two important parameters are how much time you spend learning and how efficient you spend this time. When you don’t have any kind of strong outside motivation, the first of these is most likely to depend strongly on how much you enjoy what you are doing; we are all lazy animals and most of us will not be motivated to do something we hate doing regularly for a long time. The second of these is mostly dependent on how much you enjoy what you are doing; we concentrate on and absorb learning material much better when we are engaged in it and not just bored and waiting for the learning session to end. This for me is the reason why I think we should do as Steve suggests and find interesting content and use it for as long as it is interesting. The moment it stops being interesting is the moment we should move onto the next interesting thing.

Thanks everyone for your very helpful comments on this topic! It certainly makes me more confident in what I’m doing, and that I’m not ‘wasting’ my learning time :slight_smile: I know that it is an enjoyable method for me, and it keeps me motivated to spend an hour learning each night - Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone and loads of other courses and methods haven’t done that for me, so I guess that’s pretty much the most important thing.

@Steve - At the moment I only tend to listen to the dialogues I use on LingQ whilst in my dedicated study time in the evenings. Other listening activities include listening to Glossika’s spaced repetition training files and maybe an hour or two of Russian radio per day whilst at work (if I can get away with it!)

I think it may be more productive for me to place my Lingq lessons onto my iPod and listen to those in my spare time rather than Russian radio - since I don’t understand most of it. I would then be really reinforcing what I learnt the night before - thank-you for the tips!

@Wulfgar My level on LingQ is now quite close to the Intermediate 1 mark, although i am currently working through Beginner 2 content

1 Like

I’ll try to be more specific. What are your approximate CEFR levels in each skill (conversation, writing, listening, reading, vocabulary, grammar & pronunciation)? What are your goals? How much time do you study every day? What is your language plan? What have you completes so far? etc