I agree that it’s clear that I should read much more, the thing is that I don’t have much time for Spanish learning everyday, it’s only possible for me to read for 10-30 min on weekdays (about 400—1.2k ) So how much time should I invest in Spanish at the weekends? And what should I better do (should I read or listen or something)?
I think only you can decide how much time you should invest on the weekend. Maybe try to do an hour on each day of the weekend and see how that feels for you. If you want to go faster, you need to add more time with the language. If you are fine with the pace though, you will make progress on 10-30 min for quite a long time. It’s just going to take a lot longer.
As to the split…Not really sure. I suppose I’d say half and half. If you can, on the other days try to add more listening. If you do some chores, likes washing dishes, or commuting, try to do some listening at that time. Find pockets of time where you can add in a little reading…while on the toilet, in line at the grocery store (or wherever).
The reading speed will increase the more you progress in the language. Since I began to use LingQ 18 months ago the amount of words read each month has reached three to four times the initial value, although I don’t think I spend more time using the app then in the beginning (holidays excluded 
). And if 10-30 minutes is all you can spare, that is okay. As @ericb100 stated you will see progress nevertheless. Language learning is a marathon anyways, so who cares if it takes a few months more. What definetely isn’t helpful is if you put too much pressure on yourself.
In regards to whether reading or listening is the better thing to do, I already stated that I consider reading to be the more efficient way to go in the early stages. But that is my personal impression and you are a different person. So it might be completely different for you. My advice therefore would be to change the weight between those two from time to time and see what feels more efficient to you.
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That reading speed seems a bit slow. In spanish I’ve had only briefly under 100 words per minute. In swedish I’ve had some periods lower than that, which is partially from lack of direct translations and lack of appropriate material to my level. In your case spending so little time reading might affect reading speed. In essence you are doing below breakeven and thus don’t improve which would make you get more bang for the buck so to speak.
I would also consider whether you are trying to understand too accurately and thus getting less input for the time you spend. For example when I started spanish, I didn’t care about what conjugation of a verb it is. If I knew the verb it is conjugation of, I just marked it as known. Idea is to build general concept of what words mean and not to go directly to advanced knowledge of each word.
I wouldn’t think how much you need to spend at minimum, but how much you can. Spending too little and you still continue not making progress. If you really want to learn spanish then I would make a push and try to add as much time for as long as you can to get through the initial hurdle. Once you get a little inside the language it’s possible to add listening of beginner podcasts during commutes, cleaning etc.
Man, I cant wait to be able to read 100 words/min! (Chinese)
This is ofcourse only valid reference when learning related languages with same writing system. I’m sure it is a lot more gradual improvement when learning new writing system, but eventually it should get to similar numbers in any language.
I wonder how the timing is calculated anyways. I sometimes start reading a lesson and in between take a break to make a tea or just pause a bit without closing the browser or switching to a different tab. Probably no good approach if one wants to keep the stats accurate 
And what if you switch to a browser, Google an expression, and discover interesting background information. Thus Tu en as encore sous le pied loosely translates to You have a lot more up your sleeve, and refers to having your foot on the accelerator pedal, and having room to press it down even more. Such research helps solidify the phrase in the memory. But you get no credit in LingQ. Such is automation.
To answer your question I would try USING the language actively. It’s pretty much the fastest way to learn a word that I’ve found. It also requires the most effort so I only do this sort of thing if I’m really motivated and have an actual reason to do so (like living the country). Using or outputting the language is easier if you get a lot of input first but not impossible by any means. If you really need to learn as fast as possible you should probably be speaking or doing self talk or something.
Reading is a lot more fun way to ease yourself into the language but if you’re frustrated try doing some other things. I see some other posts here saying that your word count or time spent per day seems low so that may be an issue too but just though I’d throw out the idea of trying to use the language if you haven’t done so.
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And, man, I cant wait to be able to read 300 words/min! (English)
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You can read 300 words per min using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation technique example on this site https://accelareader.com/ or this app https://spritz.com/
I gave up early paying attention to “known words.” I noticed I could see a word five times, mark it “known” and still not know it the next time I saw it. So what’s the point?
Now when I encounter a word I don’t know, I just write it and the definition into my notebook and mark it known. According to studies writing something down in itself improves recall.
I also avoid the little interruptions of seeing yellow words and incrementing the count.
Unless one goes the flashcard route or other rote means, the best way to learn words IMO is to read a lot. I read 2.5-4.0k words/day.
Plus there is a lot more to a language than vocabulary. Reading also trains one in grammar, structure, expressions and idioms, thus preparing one for language in the wild.
AI is pretty handy for answering questions about those.
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Couldn’t prove that by me. I’m very hearing impaired so that listening is nearly impossible for me. Plus, what good does it do to listen if you haven’t been exposed to the words! You have no idea what the words are at that point. Reading has to come first. And reading a little above your current level is best. I’ve heard a rule of thumb that suggests about 15 % unknown words. That has worked for me. As others have mentioned, beginning material is horribly boring, but you have to get through that to build vocabulary.
I’ve been working on Spanish for a little over a year, using only LingQ, and only for reading. In that time, I’ve read 700,000 words, with ~19,000 words known and close to ~30,000 LingQs. LingQ sys I’m at Intermediate 2 now and I’m reading mostly Young Adult novels which tend to be about 15% unknown words for me. YA novels are sufficiently interesting to adults if you consider Hunger Games and Harry Potter are YA. I stick with Spanish authors, though. My favorite is Isabel Allende.
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I understand and I agree. I have tinnitus [ringing in the ears] which rises and falls. When it is bad, it is unpleasant and difficult to listen closely. Nonetheless, I soldier on and feel I’ve learned a lot of French nonetheless.
I did work hard on listening early on so I could get the sound of proper French in my head. I don’t listen so much now, but I find all the reading I’ve done has greatly sharpened my ability to hear French properly.
I now understand learning French is a long project. For me listening and output will come later. But I’m not worrying about it.
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This is good advice, but at some point you need to speak those words. I read tons too, but I couldn’t form a sentence when I tried to talk so I had to go with a tutor, and AnnaSpanish helped me connect the vocab to actual use, that feels like the missing piece if you’ve been stuck for a while
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I’m only guessing here, but it sounds like maybe you are constantly reading new material rather than repeating material. 300 words for 100k read is rather low. If this is the case, even though you have read about 100k words, the repetition rate might be rather low if it’s constantly new material. Now, if you are reading ALOT and already say B2ish level, reading constantly new material is likely fine, But, otherwise you want to be re-reading/listenting a lesson/book with some space between them.
When I finally got to the point where I could read/listen to simple books, (e.g. Harry Potter), I would read a chapter through, find all the words, then re-read the chapter the next day. Then after I read the book through, I reread the book start to finish, then waited a month, then did it again. It was definitely quite difficult at first, but I find that even 100s of hours later I’m still learning things from re-reads, and it’s more comfortable the 4th/5th time through. I’ve only now gotten to the point where I’m starting to read things and not re-read them (but in the same series, Authors tend to use the same sentance constructs and vocabulary)
I don’t really know how much time or what to expect with Spanish. I’m learning Japanese and it took 1000+ hours of study to even get to the point where I could struggle through Harry Potter. LingQ isn’t the only tool I use, but in the last 2 years it says I’ve read ~4M words, 21k known with 60k links. Most of the 4M words read has been repeated at least once. I suspect, though, if you are coming from English you should be able to learn quite a bit faster then that.
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I’ve been learning languages for over 15 years, and have studied ones from vastly different language families, and become C1 level in several. I’ve used a lot of different methods to study.
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Find the content with the most cognates between Spanish and English, and read lots of that first. This is likely to be academic texts - you’ll be able to read a news article, psychology textbook, etc. more easily than a children’s book or fantasy novel, because English has borrowed so much high academic vocabulary from Latin and Romance languages.
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Use the language (writing, speaking, reading, and/or listening) a minimum of one full hour a day, in one chunk (not 10min here, 10min there).
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You never need to route memorize anything. Also, unless you have to take an exam, you shouldn’t use flashcards. You should always be seeing the language with full context.
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Watch videos in the language, with subtitles in the same language. When an unknown word comes up around 5 times and you still haven’t learnt it from context, then you can look it up. After about 60 to 100 episodes you should have risen to a new language comprehension level.
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ANY grammar, you will eventually learn from context. Looking in a grammar book is usually a waste of time (they’re written terribly - really bad, confusing explanations, etc).
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When you’re still confused, try to look up the ancient form or the etymology. For example, Japanese has a lot of phrases or single syllable pieces of grammar which used to actually be something completely different, but got abbreviated or condensed. After you know the full, original form, the modern usage makes a lot more sense.
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Get long series in your language and commit yourself to that one series. Harry Potter (several books long), Naruto (hundreds of episodes long), etc. Avoid series like The Simpsons where every episode is completely unrelated to the previous episode. The author will reuse words and phrases constantly and you will learn them more easily than if you switch books, series, authors, and so on a lot.
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Always have sound and text in Spanish whenever possible. If you read Harry Potter, listen to the audiobook at the same time. If you watch Naruto in Spanish, put on subtitles in Spanish at the same time.
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Write and speak in the language. If you can’t form sentences yet, just write in single words, such as “Coffee!” and post a picture of a coffee cup online somewhere.
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The original poster wrote: “For one and a half years, I only learned about three hundred words. Reading is the main way of my learning. I have created about 4.8 thousand lingqs. I have read 117K words but learned little….”
I have now been using LingQ for 3.5 days (Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning & evening, Tuesday morning). By the end of day 3, I had already read 26,000 words in Italian. I had marked 80 LingQs (initially unknown words) as “known”, and around 3,000 words as known from the start (mostly cognates with English). This corresponded to only around 10 hours of reading on LingQ.
This means that if I continue this pace, after a total of merely 15 days, I will have read 117,000 words of Italian, the same as the Original Poster read in 1.5 years.
I have also been using LingQ for Ukrainian, a totally different language which I know nothing of. In the same amount of days (3.5), I read 1,050 words and marked 18 LingQs as known, with a total study time of about 4.5 hours. It’s a total slog because 99% of every text is so different from English I can’t even guess at the vocabulary. I am only studying about 40min a day and reading on average 300 words a day. At that pace, I will have reached the 117,000 words of the Original Poster in 390 days.
The Original Poster needs to find texts with more loanwords they recognize in them, so that it is easier to read, so that they get more reading in. And they need to spend more time reading every day.
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Steve Kaufman often argues the importance of choosing language materials one finds interesting and therefore motivating.
I agree. Speaking for myself, being interested makes a big difference in learning anything.
The most important thing in language learning IMO is maintaining motivation.
Humans are language learning machines. It doesn’t happen over night, but with consistent effort, i.e. motivation.
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I have noticed with arabic for every 100k words read (and repeated by listening to it a few times each) i am at 2k words known
Bring it down a notch for conjugations its more likely 1500w per 100k read
For a closer language to English it would likely be double that 3k per 100k read
Next is time. 100k needs to be read in less than a month, perhaps half that to really let the words swim in your head