I’m sure this is probably quite a common topic here but anyway… I’m relatively new to the site and have been finding it to be very helpful, but I am still figuring out the best way to use it.
At first I forced myself to listen to lessons many times and to study the flashcards of every lingq I’d created afterwards. I have since given up on that rigid approach in favour of doing more listening and not much flashcarding at all!
How do other people use the site? How many new lessons do you aim to listen to each day/week? Do you create lingqs on your first listen or let it run through first regardless of unknown words? I’ve seen that some people have known word counts in the tens and twenties of thousands; how is that possible!!?
What other habits do people have? I’m very curious about this.
People have their own preferred ways to use the site. I can only speak of how I use the site.
As a beginner in a language I download a series of beginner lessons to listen to on my iPod. I read through each lesson saving words and phrases. Sometimes I do the phrases on the second pass. As a beginner I listen to the same lesson often, and read the same text often.
After a few months I usually am on to authentic material, and already I am listening less often to each lesson. I create lots of LingQs. I sometimes review flash cards, but randomly. I will do them before and after a lesson. I will often tag words and phrases for grammatical features and review these tagged lists in the Vocabulary section.
I don’t aim to go through any set number of lessons. I just keep reading, listening and LingQing. I usually exceed my targets at LingQ. I find that after a while, the language is clearer, and the words and phrases start to stick. I believe the yellow highlights are particularly important to my progress. You will note that I create lots of LingQs when I am active. I have not been active this last month since I have been traveling.
" I’ve seen that some people have known word counts in the tens and twenties of thousands; how is that possible!!?"
Ahem. Well, you read book after book after book, news article after news article, whatever takes your fancy. You create lingqs for dictionary forms of new words as you come across them (nominative masculine singular, infinitives of verbs etc). Mark all names and non-words as “ignore”. Then mark all the rest (plurals etc) as “known words” because, sooner or later, they will be.
Don’t worry about flashcarding because, if you read and listen voraciously, the words will stick in time. As you read a text, skim over the yellow words. Some, you will realise, you now know. Put them to status 4 “learned”.
I like to read books and listen to the audiobook in parallel. I stick to books I’ve already read in English, so I’m not struggling too hard with following the plot. I’m on “War and Peace” at the moment. I aim to read it in Russian, French, German and Japanese
Good luck with your studies!
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ps I also tag words “verb”, “noun” etc because it helps me to remember grammar points. At some point I may pull up all the words tagged “verb” and sort them into “perfective” and “imperfective”. I used to also tag by topic, but I don’t bother any more.
