… should then click and mark as 1, 2, 3, 4, known, or ignored as you click on them to look up the meaning. Setting to 1, 2, 3, 4 will mark them as some shade of yellow. You are still learning these.
EDIT: just some added comments to your excellent overview.
Mark “k” for known and also 4 counts as known. The difference is, that with 4 you are not completely sure, but you think you managed to learn. In other words in the count for known words, 4 is counted. Also, 4 is shaded like 1, 2 and 3 and the arrow pointer lands on any 4-word too. When you are confident, you can always move to “k”. The known count though will remain the same (or should remain the same).
Also reversing from known to 4 or less, is not shame. I do that especially often where words have different meanings in differing context. And of course one could easily forget if a word only appears in certain content areas. The other areas will then often not use this word, so you forget.
FWIW I agree with @LeifGoodwin. At one point, LingQ have asked me to review the German mini stories and I found them to be quite awkward and unnatural - not at all representative of the German I know. In addition they don’t seem to be particularly didactic. New words and grammar structures are introduced haphazardly. And there seems to be an emphasis on rare verb tenses like Futur and Plusquamperfekt. Personally, I find it much more natural to express the future using the present tense, e.g. “Morgen wird Tobias seine Hausaufgaben machen.” → “Morgen macht Tobias seine Hausaufgaben.”
What I would like to see in beginner content:
only a limited set of vocabulary is introduced, then shown in multiple different contexts with lots of repetition
one grammar concept is introduced at a time (i+1), e.g. introduce the present tense and stay with it
the language should be conversational rather than abstract or academic, the idea being that one can actually start using it in early conversations thus activate the language
Unfortunately I have found LingQ’s beginner content to be consistently frustrating in this regard. For example the “Patterns” courses tend to introduce quite advanced grammar very early on and LingQ 101 mainly tries to teach the hypothetical future which I find hardly useful as beginner. Ultimately, I believe this is mainly of problem of translation, since the translators are expected to stick as closely to English as possible. Interestingly, this is by and large not a problem in Chinese languages, possibly because those languages lack the equivalent grammar concepts entirely (e.g. verb tenses).
The courses “Who is She” and “Eating out” are much closer to what I would expect in the Beginner 1 category.
Another positive example is the content created by Evugeny40 in the Russian library. In my opinion this is basically how beginner content should work. He’s not afraid to stick to basic concepts and give them ample room, allowing for plenty of repetition. Tons of examples for basic patterns, basic grammar etc. Highly recommended, the audio quality certainly isn’t Hi-Fi though.
Good points @gbonnema, I definitely have no shame or concern of dropping a 5 back down into the “yellow levels”. I would like also to add, that one can use the various levels in many different ways that may suit them. I’ve even changed how I utilize them many times. Currently I don’t use 4 at all. If I understand a word in context I mark it 5 (does not mean I could use it in my ow output, or even that I would understand in isolation). If I don’t know the word in context, I mark it 1…next time I see it (different day, or different lesson) and I still don’t know, then 2. Next time I see it and still don’t know, 3. Then it stays 3 until I finally hopefully know it somewhere down the road. If I come across a known word that I don’t know anymore in a given context, then I drop it back to 3.
I totally agree @bamboozled. The wording in the mini stories is very awkward. I think it can certainly help with learning the words, but one would never really use the sentences in this same structure when outputting (nor would they see them in this way).
Evgueny40 and Vera as well have great content. Unfortunately, since Lingq 5.0 their courses have gotten buried or even obliterated altogether. I’ve expressed concerns about their courses being impossible to find now (they used to be more prominently featured in guided courses in the old version). I know LingQ is concerned about the quality of the audio on some of these, but frankly, the audio is not bad. It’s clearly spoken and the content itself is much better imo than any of the other LingQ content so i wish they’d reverse their opinion on these. I think both are actual German language teachers so it’s a shame.
"putting forward Krashen’s approach, which is hardly controversial these days"
Well, a “pure comprehensible input” approach is still controversial - even in this forum (just check the discussions with Michilini).
And there are good reasons for this criticism…
Moreover, we have nowadays more advanced (scientific) tools to deconstruct the input-output / sender - model of communication, which is one of the basis of Krashen.
Nevertheless, reading / listening are still awesome activities. And every learner should rely on them - if possible.
I find you downright offensive. Rather than discuss material suitable for learners, you instead engage in ad hominem attacks by attributing to me characteristics that do not apply. I’ve asked you not to continue with derogatory personal remarks, and yet you continue to do so.
It’s great you took a look at the stories, I’m sure you are much more qualified than I to judge these matters. I don’t know anything about grammar, the little bit I picked up in school is long forgotten. So, I would never go so far and say there was anything ungrammatical in there.
I did send a list o gripes to LingQ and I know they worked with a contractor at the time to improve the stories, so maybe my information is outdated.
If LingQ ever have doubts about their German content again again, I will recommend your name. (Are you on Slack btw?)
As for something being unnatural, this is of course highly subjective and comes down to my intuition and it’s surely misleading me here. There is nothing objective I can give you, it’s just what I feel. It probably comes down to me and you having different backgrounds and influences that shaped us / our intuitions.
Anyways, the next lesson on your list (36) is a great example for what I consider awkward and unnatural, while possibly correct, I’ve never heard or used such language in my life:
Summary
36 - Philipps große Familie
Unser Nachbar Philipp hatte eine große Familie gehabt, als er jung war.
Er hatte eine Ehefrau und drei Kinder gehabt.
Er hatte zwei Söhne und eine Tochter gehabt.
Er hatte auch einen Bruder und eine Schwester gehabt.
Aber Philipp hatte seit langer Zeit nicht mit seinem Bruder gesprochen.
Sie hatten zu weit voneinander entfernt gelebt, nachdem Philipp umzog.
Philipps Bruder war vorher ein Arzt gewesen.
Philipps Schwester war eine Zahnärztin gewesen.
Philipp war ein Schauspieler im Kino und im Fernsehen.
Er unterschied sich sehr von seinem Bruder und seiner Schwester.
Hm, what do you think is off about it? Is it just past perfect tense that feels unnatural? I would agree with that, German doesn’t usually use it for narratives like this – but of course, the point of this particular Mini Story is to display how the past perfect is formed…
As I said, it’s just a feeling. I just have a consistently negative feeling when I read these stories. I don’t have anything objective and I’m happy to defer to other native speakers, especially those who have a background in language. I’m probably the one who is off here. Just a shame that LingQ asked me to take a look and I wrote them a scathing critique…
Btw. the passage in story 46 seems to be an example of: Doppeltes Perfekt – Wikipedia and I’m sure it’s fine, it’s just not something I have ever used.
I’ve given my opinion as a native English speaker, but of course I can’t speak for most English speaking beginners in German. LingQ has classifed the short stories as A2 which seems reasonable, again just in my opinion, German in many respects departs very far from English, and French:
a) The vocabulary is very different, and I initially found it very hard to learn. I don’t know if that’s a common issue. As you progress it starts to make sense, as it’s not so hard to guess the meaning of der Vorteil given vor and der Teil, or even das Unternehmen from its components.
b) It introduces a case structure, which modifies not just articles, but adjectives and even verbs. Few English speakers study Latin at school, so this is a completely new beast.
c) Word order is very different.
d) There are some very strange features such as separable verbs. Yes English has a bit of this which helps.
e) Prepositions are very confusing. French in contrast seems so simple.
I know Dutch shares many of these features, but is a bit easier. Some people far more experienced than me in language learning have suggested first getting a learners book to understand some of the basic principles e.g. introduce cases. I’ve heard it said that German is initially much harder than French, but gets easier as you progress as it is logical.
I have no experience with teaching German and don’t really know what the most common pitfalls are. You didn’t explicitly ask for it, but if I had to give some recommendations for learning German, it would be something like this:
As a language, learner my favorite gateway into a language has always been Assimil, maybe check out their German course. I would say their courses are somewhere in between a highly structured grammar first approach as used in courses for university / college and immersion / no-grammar approaches like LingQ’s content. Maybe this can be a supplement to the comprehensible input content.
I’m guessing you are already familiar with this list of resources:
As for the grammar, I know there are people who claim to have mastered grammar purely by immersion and with minimal study. But I these people only seem to exist online, unfortunately I have never met someone like that IRL. So, my personal recommendation would still be to seek out a grammar book with lots of exercises. Or to make an effort to transform text and sentences you already understand into a different tense, person, plural etc. Similar to what they do in the mini stories.
Of course, as our friend Peter mentions, ChatGPT does know German, it’s not at the level of its English but makes virtually no mistakes when generating German text. Although I’m not sure if it could be used for specific questions and corrections. When I ask it if the opening “double Plusquamperfekt” sentence from story 46 is correct German, it assures me it is… That doesn’t instill confidence tbh. Imho it should at least point out that this is non-standard or a regional (I’m guessing East German) variety.
English has been abandoning its mood system for centuries and we’ve been replacing it with a complicated tense system powered by auxiliary verbs!
One fun thought experiment I have had for awhile is going on Reddit and using the present participle in German as though I was speaking English. Maybe I should start with ChatGPT.
Morgen werde ich gehend zum Supermarkt, möchtest du etwas?