LingQ Review

Learning by listening to interesting podcasts, reading good books, or watching movies we like is fun and effective. However, it is not easy to find resources that are both understandable and interesting. Easy material for beginners is usually boring, but interesting, authentic content is often too difficult. LingQ is a language learning app designed to provide you with interesting content at your level and help you understand what you are reading and listening to. It promises fast, fun and effective learning by consuming content you love. Does it deliver? Let's find out!

The concept

LingQ is based on the language learning philosophy developed by polyglot Steve Kaufman. He encourages learners to immerse themselves in content of interest and gradually build their language skills, focusing on understanding and effective communication rather than linguistic perfection. In this approach, learning is seen as a process of familiarizing oneself with the language through immersion rather than theoretical study. Kaufman's way of learning is based on the assumption that we acquire a new language by being exposed to content that we can at least partially understand (comprehensible input).

LingQ provides engaging and accessible content tailored to your language level and interests. You learn by reading and listening to stories, podcasts, songs, books, or any other type of content that comes in the form of text or audio files. The app helps you find material at the optimal level of difficulty, translate the parts you don't understand, and track your progress.

Overview

You can use LingQ both in your web browser and and as a mobile app. This pretty complex system combines several tools.

Base of content is the most basic component of LingQ. It contains many lessons at different language levels. Each lesson consists of a text and its audio version, so you can read and listen at the same time. In the content base you will find materials designed specifically for learners, such as simple stories and dialogues. It also includes authentic books, podcasts and songs originally created for native speakers. You can also import content from other sources and turn it into a lesson.

Playlists collect the audio files from your lessons in one place. Whenever you finish reading the text in a lesson, its audio file is automatically added to your basic playlist. You can return to your recordings stored in playlists and listen to them again and again while commuting, cooking, jogging, cleaning, or doing anything else that doesn't require your full attention.

A translation tool is essential for making difficult parts of text understandable. On LingQ, you can easily check the meaning of a word or phrase by highlighting or clicking on the part of the text you don't understand. You will be presented with a list of possible translations. You can choose one or more of them to save in your vocabulary bank. If you do, you will see these translations whenever you encounter the same word or phrase in other texts.

The vocabulary bank stores all the words and phrases you've encountered in the texts on LingQ. It stores your vocabulary in 5 categories: New, Recognized, Familiar, Learned, Known. If you simply skip over a word without translating it, it will be saved as a familiar word. If you look up the meaning of a word or phrase you don't understand, it will be saved as new. When you encounter them while reading other texts or scrolling through your vocabulary list, you can change the category of any word from "New" to "Recognized", "Familiar", "Learned", or "Known". Words in each category are highlighted differently in texts. The vocabulary bank keeps track of your progress, offers exercises to review words and phrases, and highlights words you have already encountered in texts as you read them.

Gamification features make the language learning experience more entertaining. Incorporating elements of games, such as scoring or character development, adds fun and excitement to learning. The point is to increase motivation and engagement. LingQ contains such game-like elements. When you open the app, you see a counter of known words. Seeing that number go up every time you go through new lessons motivates you to keep going. The app also tracks your streak - how many days in a row you have used the app. Users also have access to more detailed statistics, such as new words, words learned, hours listened to, words read. The app visualizes your progress in the form of graphs showing these statistics over a selected period of time (e.g. one week, one month, six months). Another gamification feature is earning badges for completing monthly or 90-day challenges that set a specific goal. Finally, you can earn "coins" for being active on LingQ. Coins can be used to purchase new items for your avatar. The app provides you with a variety of little motivators to make your learning experience more enjoyable and to support your motivation to learn.

Community of LingQ's users has access to several features that add a social element to the learning experience. There is a forum where you can participate in discussions. You can follow other learners, compare your progress with theirs, and communicate with them via text messages. You can also submit a text you have written to be corrected by other users and help others by correcting texts they have sent. If you want to approach learning Norwegian as a social thing, LingQ will enable you to connect with other learners.

Pros

LingQ is a digital environment that supports language learning through comprehensible input - text and audio content you can partially understand. The combination of listening and reading is extremely effective. LingQ creates this synergy by providing text and audio content that matches your current level. You can easily find resources at the optimal difficulty level, where you understand most of the text but find some new parts of the language.

LingQ works very well as a scaffolding to help you understand content that would otherwise be too difficult. Whether you want to use texts where most of the vocabulary is familiar to you, or you want to work more intensively with difficult material, you will find resources that meet your expectations. If you don't know a word in a text, you can easily translate it in the app, so you don't have to waste time opening Google Translate and typing words letter by letter. This little thing saves a lot of time and allows you to comfortably read difficult texts with many new words. LingQ makes incomprehensible content comprehensible, and that helps a lot.

LingQ allows you to learn from content that is not only comprehensible Many lessons are made up of authentic songs, articles, podcasts and books. There are good resources on Norwegian culture, society and history, so you can learn about the country while you learn the language. LingQ is like one stone killing two birds.

Thanks to playlists, LingQ can be used not only during focused study sessions, but also while you are driving, walking or doing your daily chores, when your body is busy but your mind is free. This simple tool allows you to make time for learning without adding more activities to your schedule. You can read a text during your focused study session and later listen to its audio recording over and over again while doing something else. This highly effective learning strategy is fully supported by LingQ.

LingQ is also very helpful in keeping you motivated and engaged. The vocabulary counter, daily streaks, and activity statistics give you feedback that boosts your sense of competence. Gamification adds fun to the learning experience and makes it easier to keep going.

Cons

LingQ is not flawless. The small number and low variety of Norwegian lessons is a significant drawback. There are some resources for beginners and interesting materials for intermediate learners, but there is almost nothing for advanced learners. Norwegian is a "beta" language, which means that the content base is not as rich as in fully supported languages. Lessons cover a narrow range of topics. If you use LingQ to learn popular languages such as French or Spanish, you have access to lessons on many different topics, ranging from food to Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, the Norwegian content base is rather small compared to these major languages. You can find good resources for beginners, Norwegian news, interesting materials about Norway, its culture and history, but there are few resources on other topics. However, you can get around this limitation by importing your own content.

The translation tool has some limitations. LingQ's translations of Bokmål are usually correct, but sometimes they are incorrect and misleading, so you should take them with a pinch of salt. It works much worse for Nynorsk, so you will need an external translator or dictionary for some texts.

LingQ provides learning materials, but offers little guidance on how to use them. On the one hand, the freedom to choose the resources you like enhances your autonomy and makes learning more interesting. On the other hand, the lack of clear structure is confusing. This is particularly problematic for beginners. When you are starting to learn a new language from scratch and have no idea where to begin, it's much easier to have a clear course that walks you through the basics. Unfortunately, LingQ doesn't provide that kind of guidance.

Navigating between the different resources and tools on LingQ is quite difficult. The interface is complicated and counterintuitive. Sometimes you wonder where to find a particular lesson or tool. For example, user activity statistics are part of a "My Profile" page that is hidden in a "Community" submenu. This doesn't make sense to me. There are other features hidden in places most people wouldn't expect. LingQ is the most difficult language learning application I have ever used. It is not user friendly.

Verdict

I think LingQ is one of the best language learning apps on the market, despite its limitations. I think so because it provides the most important elements for learning any language - text and audio material with tools to make it understandable. In addition, LingQ allows you to choose from a variety of lessons and find resources that match not only your language level, but also your interests. There is less Norwegian content than you might expect, but enough to make significant progress. We acquire a new language by filling our brains with comprehensible input, and LingQ does just that.

LingQ is a very good language learning app, but it is not the most optimal tool for complete beginners. The freedom to choose from many resources on different topics makes learning more enjoyable, but it is confusing at the beginning of your journey with Norwegian. This is when it is good to have step-by-step guidance, which you will not find on LingQ. At this stage you should look for something more structured.

LingQ is ideal for learners who have some knowledge of Norwegian, find beginner resources easy, but are unable to understand most authentic content or communicate fluently with others. This stage of language learning is often very frustrating. Your progress slows down, but you are still not competent enough to use the language freely. This is when you need a lot of exposure to the language in a form that you understand, and LingQ is designed to do just that. This app will help you move from beginner level material to authentic content created for native speakers.

LingQ has a free version, but it is very limited. You need a premium to get all the essential features. Functions such as vocabulary and translations will stop working after the first 20 words. You will get 100 extra words if you sign up through this link. If you have already learned some basics and want to go further with Norwegian, you should give this app a try!