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Lingq Review

Lingq is a language learning service that uses translators, media, and flashcards to facilitate vocabulary building. It has a few regular promotions. One promotion is in December for $100 for a year of service. I decided to try since I felt that I'd figured out OCR.

Day 1: 

It was difficult to find the right content. A great way to start would include an assessment of your vocabulary and reading comprehension level. I finally found a useful lesson provided by a user from the Suomen Mestari text. It's a shame that Lingq makes money from using uploads of others' content. It would be good if Lingq partnered with content providers.

Also, the service provides zero instruction. I had to find a YouTube video by a user to explain. I still don't know what the red (47%) means on the lesson.




Day 2: 
whoa, a new feature. Somehow the app started including word reviews between lesson pages. That's a huge improvement over what I was seeing before. [Turns out you press the green arrow to get the review.]




Day 5: 
Today is the first day I used the audio in the review cards. It is very difficult to understand the speech to text voice. The computer is harder to understand. I couldn't tell if it said aivan or päivän. That's probably useful, since the words are two that sound more alike to a native English ear than to a Finnish ear.

I haven't used the audio for reading yet. Usually I am not alone in a space, and I don't usually have earphones.

Since I am learning Finnish, and it's a beta language for Lingq, there's not a lot of content. I am using reading segments built from Suomen Mestari textbooks. They are quite good, using words that I know and actually find useful. I can comprehend about 70% of the sentences. The problem is that there are misspellings, either from OCR or hand transcription. One user has noted for some words that are misspelled but not all.

If I were to take it to the next level, I would write a summary of what I read in my own (Finnish) words. I don't have the energy for that right now, but reading comprehension tests would be a helpful addition to Lingq.

I can't decide if I like the way that Lingq tracks words. Let's say that I know the word ravintola very very well. Never forget it, and Lingq knows I know that word. I also know that adding the suffix -ssa to a known means "in the". Well, when ravintolassa shows up, it's marked as a new word. So every conjugation, declension or new form of a word is marked as unknown. This results in lessons having high numbers of "new" words that I actually know. It's annoying when it's something easy like ravintolassa, but useful when it's a word with a less obvious stem.

Day 6:
Lingq is growing on me. I could see myself using it to import news articles every day once I have a larger vocabulary. Unfortunately, that would require sitting at a computer where I can use the browser extension. The mobile app doesn't have an import function as far as I can tell. [update: Readlang  is a bit better for web pages and news]
I switched the flash cards to diction only. Requiring me to write the word I hear in Finnish reduces the amount of English I see, though I'm still internally translating.
It's not intuitive to find lessons in the list. The app creates a reverse chronological list of the lessons based on last access. So, my unfinished lesson is sandwiched between lots of finished lessons.

Day 7: 
Nothing new to report. I have found my preferred set up. The graded conversations from Suomen Mestari are great for building vocabulary and repeating vocabulary in new write ups. I am glad that I switch to the diction flash cards. I actually learn the words better in the target language and start to recognize my listening blind spots, for example double vowels or consonants in Finnish that English speakers aren't trained to hear.
I wish the app had more functionality to import content. Otherwise, glad I bought it. I would recommend it to anyone who is fairly self disciplined in learning a language, enjoys reading and can get the right content. I am curious how much better it is for a popular language. Content is key here. I suggest using the free mode to explore content.

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