I have 88485 known Russian words. Despite this I have found a course of 4 lessons which have 88 (25%), 66 (22%), 90 (23%) and 93 (21%) unknown words. The 1st lesson has just 8 names of all 88 unknown words, all other words are Russian meaningful words.
I still have lessons with more than 25% unknown words in German, despite my 69635 known German words.
I remember a Russian course with interesting topics recorded on radio. Each lesson there was 40+ minutes long and had hundreds unknown words, despite I marked hundreds as known every previous lesson of the course.
So, this is where it gets interesting, because LingQ calculates the percentage of unknown words in a lesson differently than the academic readability studies do. If you have a lesson of a total of 2,000 words, it’s not calculating the unknown % against the 2,000 but against the unique words within the 2,000, so if it says 88 (25%), that means that there were 352 unique words in the 2,000 running words. (88= 25% 88 x 4=100% =352)
BUT, academic readability is calculated against running words, so 88 = 4.399% of 2,000 – and if you take out the 8 names you end up with a clean 4%, meaning you had a 96% readability of that lesson, and with German, my bet would be some of those will be easily understood compound words, getting you closer to the 98% readability mark.
There are of course many reasons and benefits to continuing with LingQ past the Advanced stages, but I’ve always been interested in the number crunching aspects of it. And my main goal has always been reaching the unassisted reading levels.
Congrats!
As a beginner in German this thread really motivates me. Looks like the OP has really Increased his word count since this was posted almost a year ago. I might as well bump it up since it’s so motivating. 
Good job! I wonder what content he has read over the course of learning German. A little bit insight when it comes to reading fiction, non fiction books, newspapers would be awesome.
Now I read
Der Tägliche Stoiker - Ryan Holiday
Das Parfum - Patrick Süskind
Books read:
Konzentriert Arbeiten - Cal Newport
Der kleine Prinz - Saint-Exupéry
Alle sieben Wellen - Daniel Glattauer
Gut gegen Nordwind - Daniel Glattauer
Der Vorleser - Bernard Schlink
Arc de Triomphe - Remarque
Farm der Tiere - Orwell
Liebe deinen Nächsten - Remarque
Karlsson vom Dach - Lindgren
Karlsson fliegt wieder - Lindgren
Die Bücherdiebin - Markus Zusak
Die Nacht von Lissabon - Remarque
Emil und die Detektive - Erich Kästner
Blogs, News, Podcasts:
die Tagesschau
Easy German Podcast
Sternengeschichten
Die alte Schule
Finanzfluss
Funkkreis. Podcast der Bundeswehr
YT channels:
Dinge Erklärt - Kurzgesagt
MrWissen2Go - Geschichte
VisualPolitik DE
Tim Schaefer
During Covid and average of 4000-5000 words per month was possible, not I am too busy working and learning other languages, so I get maybe 1200-1800 words/month. I am mostly in maintenance mode, I do not want to rush anymore.
I have a follow-up question if you do not mind answering it. For books read:
How did you get your reading done for the most part? Purely performed in the German language without using any native translations in Russian or foreign language like in English? or solely read them in a sentence mode? or a combination of reading+audio?
And, time frame as well usually how long did it take you to go through a book roughly?
Any feedback regarding your reading strategy will be very much appreciated by us. Thanks
For the books I never use audio. Reading and listening to Podcasts and YT is enough.
For Die Nacht von Lissabon and Die Bücherdiebin I read a chapter in German, then a chapter in Russian, because I could not understand a lot, then I reread a chapter in German again. I read these 2 books when I had 15.000-25.000 words.
All the other books I’ve just read once.
I never use sentence mode - it is too slow.
The reading speed was as low as 3-5 pages/hour, now I get 15 pages/hour while LingQing and looking up words.
That is very useful.
From time to time I study few lessons in a sentence mode as it is supposed to be slow because we are doing an intensive reading, not extensive reading since we are also looking at grammar structures as well. I guess the purpose is different.
I do not know where you stand as far as your speaking goes. With such massive input, I suppose, it should be smooth less for you, right now? Any feedback on this?
I wonder just doing the extensive reading will take care of everything - speaking as well as writing and no need to read in a sentence mode?
I always read intensively checking all the unknown words even if not in sentence mode. It’s better to look at a page of text, because the meaning is hidden in nearby sentences and it helps understanding.
Reading solves reading and general comprehension. It does not solve speaking automatically, it helps, but you still need to practice.
My ratios are:
Reading : Listening : Speaking : Writing
50 : 25 : 5 : 1
I am a B2 speaker with all the mistakes and hick-ups of a person who payed little attention to grammar. After about 75.000 words I started to feel that grammar is the bottleneck, before it was always comprehension and vocabulary.
My approach is slightly different than yours: L: 75 R:25(Reading+audio). No writing. No speaking. Technically speaking, it is L:100% – I have my own reasons for following this approach.
Not paying attention to grammar is because of doing reading intensively and your main goal was going for the overall gist of the text?
So, how are you going to overcome this bottleneck? What will be your strategy?
I was under the impression that you will absorb grammar subconsciously through sheer reading?
I edited the initial post after reaching 100 000 known words.
Wow, thanks for the update. Definitely inspiring. I know I should do a lot more on German, I hope to be able to train myself to do so.
Hey Chief,
I didn’t notice this a year ago, but you wrote:
“But I feel that for reading books, which is what I’m primarily concerned with, there is an actual benefit to switching over to unassisted reading at a certain threshold. (Much like turning off subtitles on movies.)”
I could probably figure it out and it would make sense, but I was hoping you could elaborate on this a little more. I was able to watch Netflix shows without the Spanish subtitles but I usually keep them on regardless becuase hey, why not? More reading and listening. After all I often even have the closed captioning on for American shows too.
Thanks for the update! Great job!
Did you like “Die Bücherdiebin” This has always been a favorite of mine!
Awesome! You are a great inspiration to all of us!
Yes, it is really good. The German version is the one to read. I’ve read it also in Russian, because at the time my German was too weak and I had to make follow up reading after each chapter. I saw that the Russian translation from the English original is shallower and cannot precisely describe the situation and the atmosphere of the time.
I’m starting to notice the increased velocity in known words as well, and I just hit 3100 known words in Norwegian. I was plodding along, wondering how people were getting to 10k+ seemingly faster, but with a certain critical mass of vocabulary and unlocking a bit richer content, I will likely hit 10k known words in a few months.
Reading through your post for the first time, I’m somewhat bolstered by the fact that I do many of the things you’ve outlined – sped-up audio where appropriate (sadly LingQ doesn’t have 1.2x speed it seems), re-reading for breadcrumbs, getting in language time with all of the dead time during the average day (sometimes it can be a context switch, which costs a bit of time, but if you learn to not care it’s fine), never doing exercises (though I will admit to zoning-out on clozemaster every once in awhile when my brain has already had enough for the day), reading out loud, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how the next 3 - 4 months go, in terms of if my experience will differ from yours.
Great continual update post!