Hi all,
If I’m using comprehensible input, and I don’t know about 10% of the words, should I be looking up all the words I don’t know or just keep proceeding as long as I understand the general sense?
For me there’re 2 categories of unknown words. For some reason a word can be interesting to me that I want to kwon its meaning at the very first encounter. The second categorie that I have to look up is made by words that keep coming.
Understanding the general sense means you’re getting comprehensible input. Focus on messages not words. With enough exposure the words will fall into place with no effort from you as long as you keep listening to comprehensible stuff. It just might take longer.
If you know the meaning of ‘i went to the shop the other day and bought some milk’ you don’t need to worry about the individual words. With enough repeated exposure you’ll figure them out eventually. Just like kids.
I spent the first year on LingQ looking up all unknown words - generally there were user hints and suggestions which meant it was not a troublesome process. I would, after a few days, reread the article. After reviewing my progress for the year I found it very lacking.
My retention for words was very low. I discovered two things: firstly figuring things out from context was rare and not an effective approach to study; secondly that less common words simply don’t stick without me artificially making them more common (eg: rereading the article or specific vocabulary review).
So my current approach is to look up words on the first read-through, trying to be sure I understand the words AND the phrases. New words which seem reasonable to know are added to an SRS app and I review them. I later reread the article in LingQ - clicking on yellow words as I go to remind me of the definitions I had previously chosen.
If you encounter a word you do not know, its far better to be told what it means so you can be reminded the next time you see it than to hope you’ll eventually figure it out for yourself. You’ll also avoid coming to the wrong conclusion about a word.