Lingvist promises to teach you English or French in 200 hours
I like to learn new languages and whenever a new application or service is released, I'm excited to give it a try to find out how useful it is.
Lingvist promises to teach you French or English in only 200 hours using nothing but the apps the service provides for Android and iOS. According to the makers, 200 hours should be sufficient to reach B2 level proficiency in the language which should be enough to "understand texts, have casual conversations and watch movies".
It uses a different approach than the majority of learning applications.It puts its focus on the statistical importance of words to improve how you learn a language.
When you first start you are asked to pick the language you want to learn. Please note that you need to speak French or Russian if you want to learn English, or English if you want to learn French. The company promises to integrate support for additional languages with updates.
Once you have made the selection you need to register an account by providing your email address and a password.
There is no verification involved and you are thrown right into the first lesson afterwards. The first memorizing lesson should feel weird in the beginning as you are asked to enter the French (or English) translation of a word shown to you.
Since you don't speak the desired language yet, you may feel lost at first. What you need to do is swipe to the right so that the word is displayed to you and pronounced at the same time.
Words that you did not get right the first time may be repeated during the memorization session. Since you are likely going to swipe a lot in the beginning to display word translations, you will get words repeated frequently during sessions.
The program offers two additional modes besides memorization.
- Read provides access to different text types such as dialogues, jokes, articles or literature. It is basically a selection of texts that you can read to find out how well you understand the language already. The app highlights the percentage of words that you know for each text on the front which helps with the selection process.
- Listen on the other hand offers audio conversations that you can listen to. The percentage of known words is displayed by the module as well.
A dashboard is provided that highlights your progress. The same menu lists the words you have learned so far including the times it appeared in the memorization module.
Last but not least, there is also a section with grammar tips.
Lingvist concentrates on words, spellings and pronunciations. The app itself is easy to use and the concept seems to work well from what I can tell as you make progress quickly using it.
While there is a grammar tips section, it is presented as a long list of information. This means that you may have to look elsewhere for detailed grammar instructions as the app does not seem to provide those at the time of writing.
You do learn basics during memorization though, for instance when to use le and la and les in French.
The service is free while it is in beta. No information have been provided yet on pricing after the beta.
Closing Words
Lingvist is an interesting application that works well if you want to learn words quickly to improve your vocabulary.While you may be able to learn enough words in 200 hours to reach B2 level, you may need to use additional resources to get a better understanding of the language's grammar.
The app lacks options to set your current proficiency level which means that you have to go through the beginner lessons even if you have a solid foundation already.
Interested language learners find application download links on the official website.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?