I am a new user and I do like the platform… but I have some questions…
I am currently learning Dutch using lingq … I already learned German as 2nd language… so when I am reading an Article in dutch using lingq … I can understand many words because the similarities between German and Dutch… and I just put these words as known, is this the wrong way to use lingq? My other question is about conjugation … because I noticed that the same verb can be counted more than one time because of the conjugation … for example
The verb (to talk)
I talk / she talks / we are talking / I talked
Every form of the verb will count as new word … how you avoid this?
Is there a video or article that explains how to use lingq more effectively, I watched some videos but the videos I watched didn’t answer all my questions
Can you give me advice how you use lingq and how you learn languages in general?
It’s correct. It measures words you are abble to understand passively.
how you avoid this? Same verb can be counted more than one time
You shouldn’t avoid this. You can’t with lingq avoid this. It makes sense as with certains langagues it’s not easy to learn the different forms of the same noun/verb. So each one does count as one “word”.
For instance in Ukrainian sliv ( word genitive plural ) is another form of slovo (word).
In french, être ( to be ) je suis ( I am) and je fus ( I was). It’s quite different.
I agree It makes less sense if it’s easy to learn the patterns.
The whole idea of having a word highlighted in yellow (I dont know), is to make you stop and think about what the word may mean before just instantly clicking for the definition. If you are able to use context and memory to arrive at the definition before clicking, this is called “discovery learning”, and the academic literature is quite clear on the benefits of this style of learning as it creates a lot more pathways in the brain as compared to something like just flashcard memorization.
But in short, if you already know the word, just go for it.
how you avoid this? Same verb can be counted more than one time
You shouldn’t avoid this, it’s just part of the site.
In this way the “know word” counter isn’t exactly correct. For example, B2 level on LingQ occurs somewhere between 15K to 20K known words. In reality most B2 exams, like the HSK 5 for Chinese, require about 2K known words.
So it is a way to track progress, but it definitely hugely inflated.
For general advice,
LINQ is the meat and potatoes of your language learning. Read and listen to as much interesting and challenging content as you can without worrying too much about fully understanding every word, sentence, grammar pattern etc.
Then you refine and develop your “ability to notice” - Steve, by spending a bit of time with grammar books and other more formal methods.
I’d argue it’s not inflated…it’s just a different measure and so it shouldn’t be compared one to one with the typical measurements that only count the “root word” or whatever you might call it. As you rightly point out LingQ’s way will have a much higher number.
I’d suggest it’s more accurate because you might know the “present” form of a verb, while not knowing one of the “past” forms of the verb…or some other tense. WIth LingQ you can measure this. But as you point out, either way is just a way to measure progress.
If I recognised a word, I’ll put it as known. That’s generous but extremely quick and simple. It’s motivating for me.
I try to read thousands of words a day and am up to 1.4m words in Greek.
I read what’s really interesting to me although it’s hard.
I’m really continually forgetting, re-recognising and glossing over words. Overall, I’ve moved from finding Greek impenetrable to feeling at least a bit familiar.
I set up keyboards and / or a mouse move onto the next sentence, hear the audio and read the translation in one click - @Zoran, please make this a one-button function.
Later I’ll talk more and care about grammar.
I’ve been using the app for less than a month but am finding that I’m able to understand much more Spanish than I would have thought via context when listening, recognition of word similarities to English when reading and I find myself saying things to my wife in broken Spanish. Really a success so far.
My question is if I mark vocab as known because I recognize it by hearing or seeing it written but can’t come up with the word naturally when speaking do I want to mark the word known? To me it seems I don’t really know the word but lingq method may have a different opinion.
Is there a guide as to how to use lingq in the most effective way?
There’s no guide, you are free to choose whatever works best for you. In my opinion (and many others) is it is best to mark it known when you understand the word in context. I have a couple of reasons for this.
First is that LingQ is really primarily an input based learning platform…it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try and gauge whether you can use the work in spoken output.
Second…trying to gauge whether you can output the word slows things down. You have to somehow decide if you can use it in output. You’ll find this probably isn’t as easy to gauge as you think, but the answer probably is…probably not anyway.
Third. It will take a LONG time for most words to become part of your active vocabulary. You screen will be a wall of yellow for a long time. Your active vocabulary is going to be much smaller than your passive vocabulary so it will stay yellow for a long time. I think marking it known when you know the word in context gives you a bit of candy so to speak for your hard work and you can really see the progress your making as your known words climb. If you measured it based on whether you can use the word actively, your known words will go up very slowly in a very discouraging way.
Fourth. It’s easy and quick. If you recognize the word in context, bam. Set it to known. Easy peasy. No thought needed. You can spend more time reading and listening and less time trying to decide what level of known or whether you do know the word or not.
If you come across the word again in a different context, you can set it back to unknown. Very easy.
@numairshalhoub Yes, this is correct and you shouldn’t avoid it, you can just embrace LingQ’s philosophy and be flexible with your mind.
Each different combination of a word is considered a different word. It’s not actually so wrong, you just have to consider Lingq words as all of them and not as “unique” words or “family root” words or whatever other combination exist in the world.
You might think that if you know one verb you will also know all its variations BUT it is not always the case. Sometimes some variations are easy and sometimes are very difficult for your brain to recognise or not confuse with others.
It happens to me that even the difference, sometimes, between a particular single word and its plural put me off track. Or an adjective and its declension. Sometimes it is easy to recognise a specific word in one way but not so easy to digest it in another variant.
Enjoy your Dutch/German similarities and increase your known words without problems. Don’t overthink it, at the end, you need to read + listening a LOT. Just keep going.
After a year using other tools, I gave LingQ a go with French. I already had French to B2. I have discovered that simply listening to audio while reading the text has significantly improved my comprehension of native level French. Thus LingQ is training my brain to recognise speech more accurately. I do mark words as read, known etc, but only to keep the app happy, and stop it teaching me words I know when I work on German.
I also use Anki especially for German. I put sentences from LingQ into Anki, then when I review them, I am learning not just words, but grammar and sentence structure,
I find the problem with the LingQ method is that I might not see a word again, or after a long while, hence I for get it. I also have a tendency to remember word combos wrongly e.g. la garde de sol, rather than la garde au sol. Anki fixes that.
Certainly is important to try to understand every word when you are practicing here, unfortunately we can`t avoid the way LingQ teachs its lessons, you have to walk all the road, like everyone