The Only Language Learning App You Want to Use

Disclaimer:

I do not work for LingQ, and I don’t get paid to publish this post. I made this post only for sharing useful information regarding language learning. I started using LingQ around 9 months ago and saw the tangible impacts this service has made on my language learning journey. That is why I want to spread the word, hopefully this helps your language learning journey as well.

What is LingQ?

LingQ is a language learning platform for everyone. It currently offers roughly 30 ‘popular’ languages, and many more are coming (now in beta mode) in the future. You can access it via the web interface or by using its mobile app, which is available via Google Play and the Apple Store. One of the founders of LingQ is Steve Kaufmann. He is a famous polyglot teaching people how to learn languages on YouTube.

You can use the service/app for free, but then the functionalities are quite limited. Check out its pricing options on this page and decide for yourself.

Why am I using it?

Around one and a half years ago, I started learning Dutch seriously by myself. I’ve tried consuming all kinds of language learning content. At first, I spent a lot of time listening to Dutch content, including podcasts, YouTube videos, online courses, Dutch TV programs, etc. Then I started reading as well. The reading materials were local newspapers and kids’ books at the beginning and, later, books (for adults) that interested me.

According to my experience, effective language learning happens when I am exposed to lots of content (inputs) in the target language. Contents that have meaningful contexts. Good quality, interesting content keeps you motivated.

Reading and listening materials are the language inputs I have easy access to. But to find high-quality content that matches your language level and interests needs a bit of searching and patience. In addition, for the listening materials, I also found that, at least at the beginner to early intermediate level, I need transcripts or texts from the content I listen to to be able to pick up vocabularies more quickly and effectively. I also need a systematic way of keeping track of all the vocabularies I have learned so far and reviewing them from time to time.

As mentioned, I consumed a lot of learning materials on YouTube. One day, I came across the contents from Steve and learned about his LingQ app. I liked how Steve approached language learning: both the mentality and the methodology are rather sensible for language learners like me. That is why I got curious about the LingQ app. However, I used other language learning apps before, including Duolingo. With Duolingo, I felt I couldn’t progress much further after I had reached some basic language proficiency in a target language; therefore, I was also skeptical about the effectiveness of LingQ at first.

Even so, I decided to try the free version anyway and see how it goes. In the free version, it already offered me lots of interesting audio/video content with (auto-generated) transcripts. In the app, it introduced many more Dutch language content sources/creators that I otherwise would not know. In addition, the audio/video content are categorized under different subjects, for example, history, entertainment, culture, travel, technology, health, news, you name it. This gets me exposed to vocabularies in different areas that I normally would not touch.

Moreover, one feature I liked a lot in the free version is that it lets you import audio/video contents you’re interested in from many different sources. That means I could import YouTube videos into LingQ and use LingQ to manage/keep track of all the content that I have learned before. However, the free version only allows limited number of imports (like, only 20?). Anyhow, I also got a sneak peek into the features like quizzes and saving words and phrases for review, which are part of the built-in ‘Spaced Repetition Software (SRS)’.

All in all, I had a good impression of LingQ because it seemed tailor-made to my needs. Subsequently, I purchased the premium version.

Now, let me elaborate more about the (premium) app features that stood out for me:

The Features To Improve Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing Skills

LingQ helps you improve in ALL 4 skills — reading, listening, speaking and writing — and it accomplishes those by

1. Offering diverse varieties of interesting listening contents: you can import YouTube, Netflix, podcasts, etc. And that’s already more than enough for me. Most content are reasonably long enough and of good quality.
2. Automatically generating transcripts for those imported contents. As for ‘built-in’ contents, they have transcripts too! This helps further at consolidating my listening skills, especially when I was in the intermediate level or below. Needless to say, reading the transcripts is also improving reading skills.
3. Offering sentence view for audio/video contents; this helps my speaking skills. Because I can simply repeat/mimic how the native speaker speaks word by word, then sentence by sentence. If you practice that consistently, the sentences commonly used by native speakers wll naturally be internalized in you. In my opinion, this is partly how you could improve speaking dramatically.
4. Offering a reviewing mechanism. We are human beings; we forget. Repetition is the mother of all learning. That’s part of the learning process. Quizzes with SRS in LingQ improve knowledge retention. Then you do not need a separate app (like a flashcard app) to help you memorize vocabularies.
5. Offering a platform for people who are learning to write and people who are willing to correct texts (you write something and someone will correct it for you) to work together!

Other Features I Found Useful

• I need a way of managing all the words I have learned. LingQ stores my vocabularies and their states: a word is either new, recognized, familiar, or learned.
• Grammar guides are available: LingQ provides high-level grammar guides for a language in case you need to reference it from time to time. Amazing!
• You can pay to hire a private language tutor in the app to further improve speaking skills; or upgrade to premium plus to use this feature.

Results After Using The App

Before using the app, my Dutch language level was A2. And after continuously and consistenly using the app for 9 months (using the app roughly 5 times a week; each time around 20 minutes), I can now confidently say that I reached B1 level and am much more confident in speaking Dutch in daily conversation with native Dutch speakers. My ultimate goal is to be able to speak Dutch at at least the B2 level.

Happy language learning.