I’ve been using LingQ for almost six years come this Summer.
For my Spanish, I had massive success with much trial and error until I mastered in the ins and outs of LingQ.
But I always read on LingQ very intensely and with effort to understand each sentence before moving on.
The problem is the brain can’t always easily make automatic meaning out of the language. Especially at the more beginner and intermediate stages.
With my German I’m wondering about doing my reading and listening but not trying too hard. Like I used to listen (in my past 6 years of Spanish) to the sentence clip in sentence mode over and over and read the sentence over and over until the meaning clicked. So I wouldn’t consume that many sentences in one sitting until I hit a more advanced stages.
I think I’m realizing it’s okay to let sentences go that you can’t diving the meaning from even with intensive reading and listening as it takes time for the brain to make sense of the grammar of the language.
Depending on your tolerance, some level of repeat readings I think is helpful. Back in the beginner and early intermediate stages, on very short content (like less than 5 minute read) I would repeat reading a few times over the coarse of 24 hours, separated out). I would make improvements, but after that few times I would move on. My reasoning was that I already knew the story by heart in my native language and it wouldn’t help me to try to keep learning the words that didn’t stick. There will be words like that that will take seemingly forever to learn. Don’t let those hold you back because there will be plenty of words that stick very easily.
You’ll learn more words quicker and the ones that just won’t stick may just require seeing it in many different contexts and situations.
Others have said they never repeat a thing. So both are viable.
Once past the beginner stages and in to longer content, my Lingq process is just to go sentence by sentence. I read it, try to understand the sentence as a whole, and any blue/yellow words from context. If I don’t understand from context. I translate the sentence. I look at the individual words meaning as well and add them or adjust the # on them. I then re-read the sentence with the newfound knowledge. Then I move on. Generally not repeating anything. But my tolerance to repeat readings is low. Still it would be better to maybe read once more all the way through.
This process keeps things moving along, similar to what you’re describing. I think it is probably better as you’re encountering more words, and like I said before, a lot of words will stick easily. You’ll encounter the others again so there’s no need to sit there on the same text trying to cement your knowledge of these words as if they will never be seen again. This “intenseness” likely isn’t able to help the non sticky words anyway. You’ll need many more encounters in different contexts to get them to stick.
Most of my reading in LingQ is made of imported (news) web articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts, typically 1000-3000 words long. I’m learning Spanish and there are tons of cognates from French.
I mark words as “known” if I understand them accurately, not if I can produce them.
I don’t practice page- or lesson-review.
How I (currently) use LingQ:
After importing a web article, video, or transcribing a podcast, I do multiple passes through the text:
Pass 1: cleanup the blue words and promote underlined words
I rapidly visit all the pages to
delete all proper nouns or non-words (ex: URLs, acronyms, ..), and
review level 4/underlined words and convert them to level 5 if I consider I no longer need to review them.
Pass 2: intensive reading
Next, I read the text intensively, switching between page- and sentence-mode when needed.
I either manually mark blue words to known, or leave them be for mass conversion to known at the end of the lesson.
New lingqs are all created at level 1.
Existing lingqs I fully - passively - know are moved to level 5, or..
Level 4 is used for words I now understand but still deserve some attention. (Ex: false friends, cognates with multiple meanings, ..)
Pass 3: re-read all the words in the 2 lists
At the end of the lesson, we are presented with 2 lists.
I review every new known word, sometimes using the TTS first and repeating it.
I review every new lingq
I end the lesson and change the read words multiplier to 2.0 (see pass 5 below)
Pass 4: scan the yellows
I then go back to page 1 and rapidly scan the text for the yellow lingqs. If needed, I re-read their translations. In this pass I notice the non-sticking words, and may give them extra attention.
Pass 5: extensive reading of the source in the browser
For imported articles (not for videos or podcasts), I usually directly, or after a short break, go back to their source in the browser and re-read all the text. I find the original formatting, structure, and illustrations add an extra dimension to the contents that makes for an efficient and valuable second reading. I sometimes need to switch back to LingQ for some non-sticking word translation.
Pass 6: scan the yellows (2.8 days later)
A few days later, I revisit interesting lessons and only scan the yellows (Pass 4). If appropriate, I may promote some to level 4 or 5 (see above).
This last pass is my motivation behind the feature request:
I am in a similar position to you, but with French instead of Spanish.
I feel that learning German is in many respects quite different from learning a romance language, and requires a different approach. With French I could routinely guess the meaning of words. That is much harder with German. So I find I need to study more, reread lessons more often, and analyse word structure which I not do with French. Part of the problem is that German is, or at least seems, so alien in terms of idiom, unlike French.
I am starting to realise the benefits of some rote learning. Research has shown that children have many techniques for learning their mother tongue, including memorising words and phrases. When they memorise phrases, they then play around with them to create new phrases. Thus the cat sat on the mat, and the milk sat on the table are related constructions. The second language learner can benefit from rote learning phrases. Firstly it teaches a useful phrase. Secondly such phrases are easily tweaked to create new phrases. And thirdly they teach grammar by . Thus Ich mag die grünen Autos. provides a verb in the present first person, a plural noun, and the accusative plural form of a definite article and adjective.
To add to the above, not all phrases can be analysed. Thus Wha’ ye on wi’, or What are you on with simply means What are you doing in dialect. I’m not convinced the meaning can be deduced. Similarly He’s doing my head in means something like He’s annoying me and again I’m not convinced the meaning can be deduced. I suspect that we just learn such phrases in our L1 and deduce the meaning from the context.
So in short, I also memorise phrases. In fact this is a better way to memorise verbs, as they are often abstract concepts and unlike nouns the meaning is often strongly dependent on context.
I agree totally. It can sometimes be counterproductive to try too hard when one’s mind isn’t ready for the task. Like trying to jump 2m in high jump without any prior training, it’s not something you can do by sheer force of will; it won’t happen anyways.
I tackle the problem by dividing up my reading into different categories, in which I am more or less severe against myself. Most/all of my Lingq reading ends up in the very severe pile, and much of my physical books reading in the I’ll give myself some leeway bunch. One problem, that sometimes happens and it’s pretty much unsolvable I think, arrises when I stumble upon a text, that I had planned to read casually in physical form, and it turns out to be too good to treat sloppily. Then I end up with the bad old way of reading in a foreign language, i.e. with a lot of manuall look ups and note taking, which takes forever. This is the case right now actually. “Il prete bello” (the good looking priest) by Goffredo Parise is just too touching to skim.