It seems that every single word is counted as a separate word, which is good because in the language I’m learning - Russian - , words are sometimes inflected beyond recognition. I still think I should also be informed of the number of unique words in each lesson in order to have a pretty accurate idea of my progress. If I am averaging 3-5 words a day ( 1000-1500 words a year ) I would be doing well. On the other hand, If I have only acquired 500 unique words by the end of the year, I will not have made any appreciable progress, because I would then need about 15 years to reach the required amount of words to read authentic native texts, which is around 8000 words.
Thoughts?
oh and memorizing lists of words devoid of any kind of context is a very poor way to learn vocabulary…so I don’t use spaced repetition software.
“If I have only acquired 500 unique words by the end of the year, I will not have made any appreciable progress, because I would then need about 15 years to reach the required amount of words to read authentic native texts, which is around 8000 words.”
It just doesn´t work that way. Every word you learn makes learning new words easier. (because of roots, compound words, better listening comprehension, more familiarity with the Russian alphabet and whatnot)
What´s your definition of “word” by the way? And why do you think that you need 8000 words to read an “authentic text”?
And what´s “authentic”? Tolstoi? A speech by Putin? The lyrics of a rap song?
I think that calculation is nonsense. Wait! It´s worse than nonsense. It´s logical sounding, discouraging nonsense.
“oh and memorizing lists of words devoid of any kind of context is a very poor way to learn vocabulary…so I don’t use spaced repetition software.”
Type a sentence instead of a single word. Problem solved.
PS: This post might sound a little bit harsh, but I wrote it to help you
I agree with Paule. Don’t get overly concerned about statistics. If you LingQ a lot of words you will see them again and again and learn them. You will learn an even larger number of words incidentally because you will see them as forms of words you know, or because they will be clear from the context or whatever. Just trust the process and create a lot of LingQs. Create the LingQs without worrying about learning them, or how many you learn per day. They will just click in at some point, usually when you least expect it. In language learning, you are better to be casual rather than deliberate about your learning, but you have to put in the time.
There is a lot of research out there that says that 8000-10000 words are enough to read most native texts ( things like newspaper articles and internet blogs ). Obviously, literary and philosophical texts will remain beyond one who only knows that many words. I AM enjoying myself with Russian, but there really should be a clear destination at which I will have comprehensively learned the language. For that to happen within a realistic time frame ( 6-8 years ) , there should be an X number of words acquired per year.
I don’t move words I know into the known words column, that’s why there are no numbers next to my Russian language flag. I guess I will just keep reading and see what happens. I’m having a good time after all.
