Thanks to VeraI for yet another first place this month. Also, emma00, jyoushikousei, liszeth, and leie92 for their continued strong showing. They have been awarded big points for the popularity of their content submissions. See the points awards for June, 2008 for details on how the points are awarded. You, too, can profit and keep LingQ as the best place to learn languages!
Dilemme is our new winner of the Honour Roll! Dilemme had been in and around the top ten since February. Finally he has made it to number one with a peak performance of over 7000 points. We look forward to seeing him continue at the top in the future. Meanwhile, peterlaunonen came from nowhere to take 11th place with about 2000 points. Nice! Cakypa is also back into the top ten after some absence. Alleray has moved up nicely. And last but certainly not least, Jeff_lindqvist has taken consistency to new heights as he spends his umpteenth month in the top ten..
This is the season for taking it easy and enjoying the sunshine (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). No one feels motivated. However in today's global economy, you must always have a competitve edge. I propose you get a jump on the competition whether it be getting into better physical shape, doing better financially, or improving your mind. LingQ definitely will improve your mind. And, it will probably help you get a better job too. And if you listen to your LingQ podcasts while you exercise, who knows, it might help you get fit! Keep LingQing!
Here is the manual for aspiring tutors.Download LingQ_Tutor_s_Manual
If you would like to tutor in a language at LingQ please contact me at steve at lingq.com.
Goran our creative designer has come up with three designs for our certificates. Please vote on the one you like the best. All comments on this idea are welcome.
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The idea is that a learner who wants a certificate after a certain period of time at LingQ will have to sign up for a 4 week course, or request his/her tutor to offer a 4 week course.
The lessons for the course can be up to the tutor or at the suggestion of the learner.
The cost of a course is exclusively for the writing correction and online interaction with the tutor. The lessons, (content items) are, in fact, free. We need to make sure that a learner has at least 4 online discussions and 4 writing submissions in order to enable the tutor to evaluate the learner.
The certificate shows the total cumulative achievements of the learner.
The tutor will evaluate the level of the learner.
The certificate can be emailed by the tutor, or for a handling fee we could print it at our head office and mail it to the learner.
We recently switched to PayPal as our payment processor here at LingQ. For a number of reasons it made sense for us. Most importantly it provides more payment options than our previous processor Moneris did. Moneris only accepted Visa, Mastercard and Amex while Paypal accepts all credit cards and payment by bank account, PayPal account, echeck and various debit card systems around the world. Also, since make many payments out of PayPal to other service providers, it is more convenient to receive payments in the same account.
Today, I phoned Moneris to cancel our account there. Moneris is owned by two of the biggest 5 Canadian banks, Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada. It turns out that it's going to cost us to break our contract with them which runs through to sometime in 2011. When I asked how I could have a contract until 2011, I was told that I signed an initial 3 year contract in 2005 which renewed automatically in 2008. All of which is undoubtedly true and I'm sure was in the fine print during the signup process.
That doesn't make it any less shady in my opinion. There is absolutely no reason for there to even be a contract, as far as I can tell. I certainly don't have a contract with PayPal. It's those types of business practices that you can get away with when you're so big and the only game in town, which they were when they launched way back when. But today, through the power of the internet, there are lots of payment providers and once the word gets out that Moneris operates like this, you would hope that they would suffer the consequences.
We certainly paid to break our contract with Moneris and considered ourselves lucky to have escaped their clutches.
Thanks to VeraI for her first place this month. Also, a big thank you goes out to jyoshikousei16 and flexaJ for their huge improvement in May. They have been awarded big points for the popularity of their content submissions. See the points awards for June, 2008 for details on how the points are awarded. You, too, can profit and keep LingQ as the best place to learn languages!
The top ten in the Honour Roll has remained consistent with last month's. There has, however, been some movement. Robg has come from nowhere to take over tenth place. Carsten has put in a big effort to move up to third place from ninth last month. And noriss stays in top spot largely through her writing efforts.
Summer is starting to get into swing for the Northern Hemisphere. It is tempting to find a nice book and go find some water and sun to enjoy. But what about our language goals? Well, we think language learning is, above all, fun here at LingQ. So take along a good paperback in your target language, underline the keywords that you want to know, and import them to LingQ once the sun goes down!
Congratulations VeraI on another successful month. Enjoy the tutoring and writing correction your points will get you!
We are happy to honour the contributors whose efforts have resulted in the most downloads at LingQ. The following points distribution is a small way of showing our gratitude. See the points awards for June, 2008 for details on how the points are awarded. Thank you all for the great contributions you have made to our community and keep sharing!
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