How is your experience with this program?

Ive been looking around for an adequate program to help me learn a new language, but everything is either too expensive or rated horribly. Ive played with the free version of this for a little while and it seems very useful. Worth $55 for 6 months?

I am a Premium Plus member. The good thing about this site is that there are many friendly, highly competent members. Whether the services are worth the money or not depends on how you use this site.

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If you have the time to spend at least an hour or so per day, I think it will be beneficial for you. Iā€™ve used other programs to learn Spanish, but I really do think that this site has helped me the most. I was a Premium Plus member for six months and am now just a Premium member, but I find the resources here to be very helpful. I also think that it is reasonably priced compared to some of the alternatives.

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Its like buying runningshoes. You still have to run the miles, no matter how good the gadget is.
I like LingQ and recommend it, especially if itĀ“s seems very useful to you!
Good luck with your language(s).

works for me

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works for me too

I am a new user. I find LingQ as a steep learning curve. It is intended for serious language learners and seems to be enjoyed the most by people who have already learned a second language and are on their third, fourth, fifth, etc. What materials are available and how many users to discuss matters with depends on which language you want to learn.

I am a novice self learner. I would not find LingQ to be adequate as my sole resource to learn a language. However, I do believe the $10/month is worth it for the people you meet on the discussion boards here. The flexibility of creating your own lessons suits me (although the effort to create lessons takes away from time that could be spent studying).

I do not personally find the LingQā€™s flash cards, emails, and tests to be useful to me. I could never get them to work the way I wanted, and I have eventually given up on using LingQ as my spaced repetition flashcard system. That doesnā€™t mean you wonā€™t like them. LingQ is a tool box. Take the tools you need, leave the rest. What you build with those tools is up to you.

Many, many people love LingQ. Rave reviews. It is worth trying for 6 months to see if you will become one of those people.

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@jreidy: I am not sure what you mean by ā€œserious language learnersā€. I think most of us just enjoy the process of getting into a new language. I donā€™t think many of us are concerned with passing exams and tests, we simply want to interact with a new language or two. This process can become addictive! Your advice to give it a go for 6 months seems like a great idea to me. Thatā€™s what I did first up.

For learning German, LingQ has been really, really useful to me. There are so many excellent lessons to choose from!

I have had more of a problem using LingQ for Chinese, though now that I understand some words and constructions, LingQ is working much better for me.

I donā€™t use flash cards, emails or tests either. I donā€™t use any spaced repetition system because I find that the best way to learn vocabulary is to see and hear it in action in material I can understand. To more or less quote someone from another learning site, our brains thrive on context. When we understand what sentences mean, we automatically start to learn the meaning of the words in the sentences, and we start to learn how the grammar system of the language works.

Iā€™ve been studying English with LingQ also, and although, as many others said, itā€™s not my only resource for learning, but it helped me in a huge way. The flexibility and freedom that the website provides to you to learn is outstanding.

Iā€™m also not using flash cards or tests, since they seem boring to me, but I love the flexibility to import outside content to your private session of the website and studying that using the tools that LingQ provides. I also like the highlighted words that appears in the other lessons youā€™re studying, it helps a lot to keep noticing them.

Iā€™m a premium member and I can say that really worths each cent spent here. The website and the idea of LingQ is different from others resources you can find in the Internet, because the team here have made with the goal to help people to learn languages and not mainly because the money, we can feel that since the very first start using the website and itā€™s what made me attracted to try here.

I think one of the best ways to make good use of Lingq is to get a book of your choice in a PDF format and import its lessons together with audio files.

The software (flashcards, cloze test etc. or/and smartphone application) gives you the opportunity to revise the vocabulary and the book may help if you have problems with grammar.

Some people like it and some people donā€™t. I think it depends on lots of things, like the kind of learner you are, the amount of time you can put in, the level youā€™re at and the language you want to learn (as the human support and number of lessons available vary from language to language). Other unpaid options are arriving on the net that use a similar approach to LingQ without the social element. Having tried a couple of them, I still prefer LingQ for the social aspect.

Itā€™s not much money to invest, and you can always export your vocabulary and cancel if you donā€™t find itā€™s for you. Come on, jump in!

@nex_us
At this moment Iā€™m working in my English just like you said, using books and the audio from those books and exporting both to LingQ.

@zbrntt
I think thatā€™s the good thing about LingQ, itā€™s very versatile. Whether you want more social interaction or study in a more reserved way, whether youā€™re beginner, intermediate or advanced learner, LingQ can provide all kinds of environment. It all depends of the style of the learner and how he/she wants to use LingQ.

To be honest, I am not using lingQ right now but I do like reading about the way people study and asking questions on the forum, when i did use lingq I did not like looking for a new lesson to study, I think some lessons are better than others and my other ā€˜complaintā€™ is that I just prefer using the hard copy of a book to study and read through a book, there is so much audio on lingq also which is great so no complaints there, the other thing that I did not like about lingq was that in the articles there are no notes to go with the audio and text, lingq is good is you like it, i always change the way i study anyway so if you like listening and studying on lingq keep doing it

I just started using LingQ about a week ago, not counting using the free version for a little while a long time ago. So I donā€™t have a lot of experience with LingQ, or learning a new language from scratch for LingQ (I am using it for Spanish vocab, although Iā€™ll probably start with Portuguese seriously soon). That being said, I have used a lot of language learning services for Spanish, Russian, and French. So I think I can give a good comparative view. Iā€™ve experimented with Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, Fluenz, Michel Thomas, Verbling, Lang8, LiveMocha, and probably some other stuff that I canā€™t think of.

The thing that LingQ does by far better than any other service I have used is vocabulary acquisition. This is by far my biggest weak spot in my Spanish. Marking unknown words and reviewing them later is extremely easy with LingQ. It also has plenty of full speed conversations with transcripts that allow you to focus on the words and their pronunciation at natural speeds, which is more effective than just listening to the radio and missing certain words. Lesson imports are awesome. Iā€™m taking classes in Ecuador right now, and importing my required readings is amazing. Rather than bouncing back and forth between the pdf reader and google translate, and then making a flash card, I can just make a LingQ and keep going. There is also a lot of content on here, at least for Spanish.

A couple of downsides though is that in my opinion, tutoring is expensive for only 15 minutes. However I havenā€™t tried it (I will when I go back to the states and have better internet), so I wonā€™t completely knock it. I imagine the reports you get are useful, assuming they are done well by the tutor. One of the more frustrating things is that when I hang out with my friends here in Ecuador, nobody corrects me, which makes it harder to improve. Writing correction is also fairly expensive, but I have been using Lang-8 for that, which is free (although you have to correct other peopleā€™s writing).

When I compare it to my experiences with other language learning programs and services, it is certainly worth the money, although it is probably well complemented by a more structured course like Michel Thomas or Duolingo. It is a system that absolutely excels at maximizing language exposure and vocabulary acquisition, but I donā€™t know if I would call it a one stop shop.

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