Let me begin by saying, I do understand this is a business and the site owners need to recover their costs.
But, I had the impression that it could be used for free, and one only needed to upgrade to “Premium” (or better) to get additional features.
However, now that I have “lingqued” 20 words, it appears that the site is essentially unusable. I can’t even mark the words I already know. When I click on one to do so, I just get the upsale panel on the right instead of the one that lets me mark it as known.
So, I guess I can still listen to and read the lessons, which is cool, but I can’t actually make use of the known-words list (and highlighting of words I don’t know) without upgrading. Is that right? Or is there some other way to do it that I’m missing?
You’re right. I used Lingq for a long time without upgrading, and it was useful to me, even without being able to save any more words. I decided that it was a worthwhile investment, though, and still think it is. Give it a try for a couple of months to see if it works for you.
I have a free account and I “create” lingqs by writing them down in a separate notebook and leaving the words in blue until i know them. It works just as well for me. If you get a free account and try and only link words you absolutely need, and keep your lingqs under 20 at all times, then it is very useful, even if it is not premium, or whatever.
Ah! I get it. You get your LingQ’s down below 20, and then you get the standard panel instead of the upsale one, allowing you to mark words as known. Why didn’t I think of that?!?
As a free user of LingQ you only have 20 LingQs to use and that’s a hard limit. For example I don’t use the LingQing at all and I look up unknown words in my paper dictionary and write the translation of unknown words in my paper vocabulary book. If such usage as an example is not an option for you, you should indeed upgrade to a payed version.
You seem to have misunderstood. That is not at all what I was implying. I said that they could make a new account now so they can get their lingqs back, then write out their lingqs and, therefore, keeping the free account available for use. It does not require making new accounts all the time. For example, this is my only account, and it is free. I write out my lingqs in a notebook so I don’t have to create lingqs on the site and run out of “usage” on my account.
You are missing a bit, but on the whole you are right. The missing bit, however, can make a difference!
As far as I know, apart from benefiting from the free reading and listening, you can still earn points by providing either interesting content, tutoring or activities on the Exchange or from referrals which turn into paying memberships. With these points you could use the tutoring services provided by some members.
As you have demonstrated, free members can also participate (and are listened to) on the various fora (ok, forums).
Yes, it appears that even if you delete Lingqs so that you’re now below 20, it doesn’t matter — the Vocab page still says “You have reached your LingQs limit,” and I still get the upsale panel when I click on any word (even with the intention of marking it known). The site has become essentially unusable for me. I give up.
That’s exactly what I mean with “the hard limit” of 20 LingQs. The system here doesn’t forget your once made LingQs, so it doesn’t help you to delete any of them.
I know you would be losing your progress but I think it would be worth it