Thread: Anyone tried LingQ?

I have just discovered the LingQ site at http://www.lingq.com/learn/ru/ and it looks rather interesting, I wonder what others think of it?

It is a site for people learning a number of foreign languages, including English and Russian. It offers free mp3 files with transcripts, plus you can create flashcards of the new vocabulary to help you learn it. If you want to pay money you can work with a tutor, but you can access materials and forums for free.

It can be a little clunky in places, I gather they are working on that.

Hi there,
I tried LingQ after you wrote this message.
I think it's a good idea, but not for complete beginners, since one has to know at least alphabet and cases to be able to read only the first and simplest text. It's great to learn vocabulary, but one won't learn grammar there.
The site is quite basic and could be developped a bit more (esp. to follow one's progress, and flashcards only work one way, which makes them only half efficient) but the free mp3's sure are a great advantage.
Once again, it seems a good site to use in addition to a good grammar learning method...

Well, I've been using it for a month now and I have to say it's the breakthrough I've been looking for. I've been teaching myself Russian for two years, I understand about perfectives, verbal adjectives and the like but I didn't have the confidence to speak or write a single sentence or Russian. With LingQ I have learned 300 new words in context (i.e. I can use them in a sentence correctly), plus I can now use all the words I only learned from textbooks and didn't know how to pronounce. It doesn't teach grammar, but my mother didn't teach me grammar either and I still learned to speak good English. There are lots of books that you can read on grammar, when you are confided that you can speak not-very-grammatical Russian fluently. And you can use any text you can get hold of as learning materials.

I certainly wouldn't go back to Pimsleur or textbooks as my main form of learning now. They are dull after lingQ.

And I'm not being paid to say so! I'm not connected with LingQ, except as a student.

Well if you've been studying russian for 2 years, I bet (and hope) you are well over Pimsleur's now!
You already know the alphabet and the basics of grammar; I still think you couldn't have really used Lingq, had you been a real beginner.

Anyway, have you been reading "The Power of the Linguist"? It is written there are 26 episodes of it, but I can find only 19 of them. Any idea where the last ones are, or if they should appear later?

The Power of the Linguist story is supposed to be titled "Who Is She?" For some reason, the first 19 episodes have this alternative title. It puzzled me for a while, too.

I have been studying Russian from a book for two years. As a result I was pretty good on grammar but poor on pronunciation.

The idea of LingQ is that you listen to all the material many times. If you are a complete beginner the idea is that you start with the simplest material and listen over and over and over until you absorb the sound and structure. I have no experience of using it as a complete beginner, but Steve Kaufmann has taught himself 10 languages including Russian that way, so it works for him.