Draft:LingQ

LingQ is a web and mobile language learning app and community available on the web, iOS, and Android platforms.

Steve and Mark Kaufmann originally developed thelinguist.com in 2002 and rebranded it as LingQ in 2007.

History
Steve Kaufmann learned about a Chinese immigrant who lost his savings at the Vancouver airport. He wanted to offer him a job, help him adjust to his new life, and possibly hire him for their software team that worked with lumber companies.

However, there was a problem: the immigrant had good test scores in English, but he had trouble speaking it. Mark and Steve noticed that many skilled immigrants faced the same issue - not being fluent in English made it hard for them to find good jobs in English-speaking places. So, they decided to create a program to help the immigrant improve his English.

Concept
LingQ's approach to language learning is based on acquiring language through reading and listening using content that's published for native speakers. Users can look up words and phrases and save their meanings, also known as creating a "LingQ."

LingQ tracks user interactions with all words they encounter. It uses machine learning to help users learn new words and discover new content based on their interests.

In 2017, LingQ released its import extension, allowing users to import content from the web into their LingQ library.

In 2022, LingQ 5.0 was launched with improvements to previous features and the addition of new ones.

In 2023, LingQ released a new integration with Whisper, allowing users to generate text from any audio file.

Academic Research
In 2023, researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine conducted a study on the effectiveness of LingQ, focusing on learning Spanish. The results indicated that 12.6 hours of study on LingQ met the requirements for a first-semester college Spanish course.