Will Lingq automatically update the status of my lingqs while reading, i.e if I come across a lingq X days after creating it, and I do not look up the lingq but page-to-known instead, while Lingq move the word up in status on its own?
No, in that case, LingQs status wonât change.
The status of a LingQ will automatically increase by 1 point only when you get it right twice in a row or decrease by 1 point when you get it wrong twice in a row during a Review session.
You may also edit the status of your LingQ by manually editing it on the Flashcard.
The status is automatically updated if you use the flashcards, but personally I donât like that. I manually updated all my words. I mainly do this while reading. I click on the word, then move the status up one, if I get knew the word at that particular time, or move it down one, if I didnât know the word and had to look at the definition. Really, itâs a little more grey than that, but in most cases, thatâs it.
How exactly Iâm grading words is changing a little over time, as my confidence grows in the language. At the very beginning, I was very conservative in moving it up (cause it wouldâve been annoying moving it up and down all the time, cause I would constantly forget the word), but now (as a natural progression in the language) you learn words faster (i.e. as opposed to 50x encounters and look-ups to learn a word as a complete beginner, itâs now 20x, and as I get better, itâll drop down to 3x or sometimes 1x, when you are B2+).
I care about manually changing the status of the word because it gives me confidence in my âknown wordsâ total. Watching my total âknown wordsâ grow is motivating for me, because it feels like all my time and effort is resulting in progress. If I were to do the LingQ flashcards, I would have less confidence in my âknown wordsâ total, because, as I mentioned, itâs a little grey on whether or not I move up or down a level. This is just how I do it.
(Side note: Even when moving up a word one level, I also look at the definition of the word, to remind myself of the other definitions of the word and to check them. So really Iâm further engraining my knowledge of the word by checking the definition.)
The second way I manually update the status of my words is using a method I learnt from one of Steveâs videos the other month (and he mentioned it in his most recent video too on How to Review Vocabulary). You go through the list of your vocabulary (filtered for 2-4) and essentially test yourself on all the words (+1 status when you get it correct, -1 if you get it wrong). There are two reasons for this too:
- You are learning and further engraining these words by recalling them.
- The status of the words is not up-to-date and you are updating them. This is because you learn words from lots of listening practice (or activities outside of LingQ), but you just havenât enountered the word again in a text, so you are yet to update it. So you update it, to get up your âknown wordsâ, which keeps you motivated.
To be honest, the going through the list is pretty tedious (cause you have thousands of words to go through), but I know it does help my knowledge of the word (itâs essentially using a flashcard) and increasing my total âknown wordsâ is motivating to me. Because of this, I really only do this technique once per month or so. Itâs just not worth it to do it more often.
Hope this helps.
This is very helpful. After a week of using the site Iâm already finding doing daily reviews according to the SRS algorithm tedious and de-motivating, but at the same time I donât want to interrupt my reading flow to manually change the status of every LingQ I see.
I think that instead of letting the SRS algorithm tell me what to review, Iâm going to review by lesson / course whenever I feel like it, let that process move the LingQs over to known, give the lesson / course one more listen, and remove it from my playlist and find some new content. That might make the âknown wordsâ number less accurate in some sense, but itâs just a heuristic to measure progress anyway, and I donât really care if I end up re-LingQing words over and over again until I learn them.
Youâll probably get quicker with the updating of status while readingâŚI would suggest though, in general, to wait until having read the entire sentence before updating, that way it doesnât disrupt the flow too much. Although I do tend to go ahead and quickly look up the blue words that I donât know while in the middle of the sentence.