Interested to get a gauge on how many of you primarily stick to consuming content on lingQ with sentence mode. Especially on mobile I find it is the most comfortable way to go through a lesson (especially YouTube videos) I find myself more and more sticking to it almost exclusively.
I wonder how far you could get in learning a language if you were just stick with sentence mode, maybe also listening to content passively on the side. I can’t imagine you would really be missing out on much except for reading spread lagging behind? Maybe it could become a crutch? Like being afraid to ride a bike without training wheels even though you probably could.
I’ve tried that in the past, but I prefer to only go into sentence mode to get a better understanding of a sentence via the translation. For me it felt like having an entire page of a book for just one sentence.
In the early stages of learning German, I relied heavily on sentence mode to understand what I was reading because my knowledge of grammar was still quite limited. Although it didn’t teach me much German grammar directly, it made my initial exposure to the language much more enjoyable and manageable.
I read roughly three million words with bilingual translations as a support—not necessarily in sentence mode, but often through DeepL, where I could read three or four German sentences alongside their translations. At that point, I worked through a grammar book, which clarified many of the patterns I had noticed and answered questions that had come up during my reading.
Once I had studied German grammar, I no longer needed to rely on bilingual translations. I could read German directly because I understood how the sentences were structured and how the different elements worked together. Eventually, I stopped using sentence mode altogether, but it had been an enormous help in the beginning.
Similar here.
For low level languages I use mostly sentence mode. I listen to the sentences a few times and repeat them. [But I have the “already-there” sentence translation switched off.]
From around Intermediate 1 or 2 on I use page mode.
I almost only use sentence mode, unless I am reading and listening to entire lesson that I have already read before or am already proficient in the language.
If the audio lined up to the transcription I would use it…
Instead I either use page mode and wish it paged to keep synched to the audio, or I use the scrolling marquee mode and wish there were a way to click on individual words.
I use it almost exclusively still, even with 35,000 words in German. Possibly it is mostly just out of habit, but I always prefer to bring up sentence translation, before I ever click on words I don’t know.
Anyone not using sentence mode at lower levels is really doing a disservice to themselves imo. Understanding the words as a whole within the sentence or phrase is super important…maybe especially so in German with separable prefixes. Other languages it’s going to be important as well though as certain words go with others, and highlighting that, rather than the individual word is more important.
I do reading outside of LingQ as well. There even, with deepl or google translate browser extensions will often highlight the sentence or phrase to get a better understanding. I do more individual word checks more often as it is an easy double click.
So just my preference. I think it’s better, but don’t have any proof that it is. =)
I only use sentence mode after years of learning Greek. Mainly it’s because Greek is hard. with French, I may us reading mode at some point.
Lingq should have a setting to always use Sentence Mode. I’ve probbaly clicked on it 1000s of times. Not a great user experience.
I have been learning Indonesian since 3 years and usually approach my LingQ content in sentence mode. I have a lot of audio content generated with NoteBookLM and usually I have the sentence mode set in a way that the voice is automatically played when I move sentence to sentence, then I first try to understand the Indonesian voice, if I dont understand the voice I read the Indonesian sentence and if I still do not understand the Indonesian sentence, I will then read the sentence translated to english.
It’s only when I got control and understanding of all sentences, I will move to page mode.
Sentence mode is still my favorite approach.
I find it less stressful to have just one sentence to figure out over a whole page in front of me.
Also I use LingQ exclusively for intensive study, not extensive. To me extensive reading is what physical books are for. My Spanish is advanced and it’s become basically extensive because I can read sentences so quickly. All I do in Spanish is read transcripts of shows and occasional podcasts.
My German is intermediate and I read a book line by line and shows line by line.
For my purposes the strength in LingQ is not just being a “reader” as there are many other apps that do the same thing these days, but having a mode where audio and visual are combined with a sentence, so I can intensely study a piece of media and then just immerse and speak out side of LingQ
Interesting. So basically you only use lingQ for intensive study ‘sentence mode’ and any other kind of freeflow listening you just do that outside of lingQ. Have you don’t that throughout the majority of your journey with both Spanish and German?
I have suggested previously that I would find page mode more useful (vs sentence mode) if it were possible to set a user-defined delay between reading sentences. At my present (limited!) state of comprehension of Vietnamese, my brain seems to need several seconds of thinking time to properly parse and understand each sentence before moving on to the next.
I don’t want to slow down the speech because I want to get tuned in to natural speech speed and rhythms, but I do need more processing time between sentences. I guess such a feature could also be used in sentence mode if the next sentence were to follow automatically after a user-defined delay.
Have to say also that I have started using Pimsleur in parallel with LingQ. LingQ is great for improving reading comprehension and vocabulary, but personally I find the Pimsleur focus on speaking much more helpful to improve my spoken Vietnamese. (But what a daunting task that is! )
I use sentence mode almost exclusively, because I add books to the library to share, and want to ensure that the audio is aligned properly with the text. (I always work through a book myself before sharing to make sure everything’s good.)
Keyboard shortcuts. You press a key on your keyboard to trigger a specific behaviour.
1, 2, 3 and 4 to set the word level, applying the currently selected definition if the word is blue
up and down arrow keys to select definitions
k to set a word to known
left and right arrow keys to jump from on unknown word to another
b key to jump to the next blue word
shift+left/right to move to the next or previous page
s for text-to-speech of currently selected word or phrase
x to delete a definition and/or set a word to ignore.
There may be more I am not aware of. LingQ has the tendency to hide these things for you to discover them on your own.
When there are shortcuts (web version), you van set up (with extra hardware or software) ways to move to the next sentence, show the translation and delay audio.
You can have keys together when the shortcuts have them apart.
You can have the options of the statistics and screens on the web version by using different windows tabs - this lets you move across languages far better than in the app.
ok, thanks. So I am guessing that keyboard shortcuts alone cannot do this (ie introduce delays between sentence readback).
But if Shift+right arrow is used in a separate macro program that allows time-based flow control then this could work? I have never used it, but maybe the iOS app called Shortcuts might perhaps do the trick, assuming it implements this feature.
Yes, for me LingQ is only for intensive study. I spend 5-15 minutes reading a transcript of something for my Spanish. And 15-40 minutes with my German. For German I’m reading YA book line by line and occasionally listening to audio with it (I used to listen to audio for every sentence but I have internalized most German sounds by now so I’m in a more reading stage), an Easy German youtube video and or a transcript of a German show or dubbed anime in German.
I’ll occasionally use Anki and the LingQ SRS but those are a strategic supplement. Intensive use of LingQ is the the core of my study. Then I just immerse and speak alot
(I always work through a book myself before sharing to make sure everything’s good.)