Lingvist German now in beta

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Lingvist German now in beta

Postby crush » Tue Jan 03, 2017 5:10 pm

The German from English course is now in beta at Lingvist, i just noticed it today by accident and then got an e-mail not that long after. It seems not everything has audio yet, but it seems pretty nice so far.
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby Stefan » Tue Jan 03, 2017 7:56 pm

Requested this one and a half year ago so I'm glad it happened.

I went through 151 cards and Lingvist estimated that I knew about 870 words out of 5000. They claim it's 63% of any text. Somewhat absurd but their solution to every problem is to create a new account. The test estimated your level wrong? Create a new account. Want to reset your progress? Create a new account.

Quick notes
- The audio on some things seems a bit off.
- I noticed that it accepts synonyms which is good.
- Listening/reading still isn't available for German.
- They now have a forum.

I'm tempted to give it a go this year. In contrast to other courses I assume it learns what you know rather quickly so you spend most of your time actually learning and not repeating known words independent of your level.
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 03, 2017 8:23 pm

It got my level all sorts of wrong but for me it's not totally the end of the world. I know there are some easier words, naimly particles, that I have trouble with so I'm going to go with the flow and see how it goes. I agree that their solutions are a mess. It's either, "email us and we'll deal with it" or "create a new account". Why they think it's not worth their time to say, let people restart or delete courses from their account by themselves as opposed to with an administrator's help is beyond my comprehension.

Either way I'll give this ago. My written output is worse than my input and I like Lingvist for the vocab tool it is. It'll likely be more useful for me with French but I do need to fill vocab gaps with German. The listening/reading bit isn't really the end of the world for me if only because there are a plethora of resources at my disposal. That said hopefully they'll add that bit in at some point.

More notes:
At the moment they don't specify the gender or number (singular or plural) of the nouns nor the tenses of the verbs
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby WalkingAlone13 » Tue Jan 03, 2017 9:07 pm

So I gave it a go for 30 minutes to see what it's like with German, I tried previously with French but my French has never been good, so I figure it is probably more useful for my German.

I agree that the level it estimates at is a little odd. For example It estimated that I already know 1700 out of 5000 words, but as soon as the "testing my knowledge" section was over, I'd get a new word such as "red"...which, I also knew. So clearly the estimation is not really all that accurate, but I would not expect it to be dead on, that would be impressive.

However, I seem to have had a slightly different experience to the above two posters, as I was not given synonyms. It is possible that they are accepted only for certain words and the words I was using a synonym for just happened to be those that had not had any added yet.

And, it definitely did tell me the gender of words and whether they were plural or not (though, the plural would rarely be a problem as you have the sentence to determine this) - it's stated to the left, underneath.

All in all, it looks quite good so far. One of the main reasons I liked this when I used it a long time back, was that it never really felt like it had a start and finish, so sometimes I could just carried away and spend a lot of time on it without really feeling drained or anything. I feel that once they add the reading aspects that Stefan mentioned it currently lacks, it will be a great resource. So, thanks Crush for alerting me to this, I'm hoping to add it to my routine now.
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 03, 2017 9:32 pm

WalkingAlone13 wrote:However, I seem to have had a slightly different experience to the above two posters, as I was not given synonyms. It is possible that they are accepted only for certain words and the words I was using a synonym for just happened to be those that had not had any added yet.

And, it definitely did tell me the gender of words and whether they were plural or not (though, the plural would rarely be a problem as you have the sentence to determine this) - it's stated to the left, underneath.

All in all, it looks quite good so far. One of the main reasons I liked this when I used it a long time back, was that it never really felt like it had a start and finish, so sometimes I could just carried away and spend a lot of time on it without really feeling drained or anything. I feel that once they add the reading aspects that Stefan mentioned it currently lacks, it will be a great resource. So, thanks Crush for alerting me to this, I'm hoping to add it to my routine now.


That's interesting. I wonder if they're rolling out some of the features (plural and gender) to some members and not others (not totally unlogical). I just checked and as of 1:28pm PST it still isn't showing the various attributes of words (gender, tense, etc) to me. It also doesn't let me use synonyms.

I also agree with you in terms of the main reason you liked Lingvist a while back. I feel and felt similarly - it feels like playing a game as opposed to studying. I remember when I was using it for French I would procrastinate with it in a similar way to how I procrastinate with German TV shows. That is definitely not a bad thing. It isn't draining to me in the same way Anki is.
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Henkkles
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby Henkkles » Tue Jan 03, 2017 10:17 pm

Last time I tried Lingvist it was just fill in the blank, which got old in approximately two minutes. Is there anything else to it?
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby aokoye » Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:42 pm

Henkkles wrote:Last time I tried Lingvist it was just fill in the blank, which got old in approximately two minutes. Is there anything else to it?


No - it is essentially a different SRS application and is primarily focused on vocabulary. I think they're pretty transparent about that if you read more than just the front page. From one of their earlier blog posts:

What is the secret formula for reaching a B2 level vocabulary in just 200 hours AKA how to get the most out of Lingvist?


From another post:
At the moment, you can expect to learn up to 5000 words on our English-French module, making it roughly equivalent to a B2 level speaker.


In short, if you don't want a tool to focus on vocab then don't even glance at this. Thankfully there are a number of other tools that you can use which hopefully you won't find boring or ineffective (some of those tools are likely ones that get old to me quickly).
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby crush » Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:47 am

Unlike other sentence/vocab methods they do offer pretty nice grammar guides, albeit it's not the most convenient to use. But i think it is a nice overview of the language.

Also, in the e-mail they stated that it is still in beta and things are still being added and fixed. If you find it too incomplete, i'd suggest waiting a month or so for it to be a bit more mature and coming back. I'm already really satisfied with it, though. The accomplishments are a really silly idea, but work surprisingly well on me. "Well, i've only got 20 more cards left until the next accomplishment, so..."
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby Cainntear » Wed Jan 04, 2017 11:34 am

I wasn't getting number or gender either, except when the word in the gap was an article.

It also crashed while it was supposed to be assessing my level.
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Re: Lingvist German now in beta

Postby Soclydeza » Fri Jan 06, 2017 8:17 pm

I've been waiting for this. I messed around with it for a bit, it'll be a nice addition to downtime vocab learning. I remember they used to have a reading/listening section for the French version when I used to use it but I can't find it for German, was ist los?
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