How effective is it to go through a lesson and only look at the sentences with yellow and blue words, and skipping everything else. And at the end not counting the lesson as finished so it doesn’t add words to your words read statistic.
Is this more of an effective way to improve?
I know that the more words that you learn. The longer it takes to learn new words because they start to become more and more rare. So you have read tons in order to come across new words. Has anyone tried this before?
I believe there is value in reading everything, because even though you may know the words, you might want to read them again and again in order to improve “sight recognition” of known words, which would help you read faster in the future. Just reading colored words is similar to sentence-based Anki flashcarding all day. This can wear you out pretty fast.
In order to learn new words, I would rather change topics you read about. I.e. if you have been reading crime novels, move to romance, sci-fi or non-fiction.
I do this from time to time. Actually haven’t done it in a couple of months because I’ve been mostly reading longer books/articles
Conditions for me:
As Jan points out it’s kind of like flashcarding to a degree. Jan also makes a good point that there is still a huge benefit in reading ALL words. Even though you may know the other words, you need to get to a point where the translation is instant or to where you’re not translating at all. Where you can see the patterns and instantly have the meaning. I feel like this may have some benefit to listening comprehension as well. If you have natives speaking quickly you have to comprehend instantly. If you are hearing words that you know, but it is taking 2-3 seconds to comprehend the meaning, you’re already a sentence or two behind.
In short, yes, I think it’s a beneficial exercise to do, and better/easier than flashcarding. However, like flashcarding, I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend more than 5-10% of your time on it (my opinion, subject to change =) ).
I do this for boring content, mostly the Guided Course content in LingQ. The completionist in me wants to finish all of that content even though a lot of it is dry. And I do think it can be effective when you’re also doing other stuff. It’s basically like going through flashcards. I look at the yellow/blue word on it’s own or often within the sentence’s context. If I know it, I unlingq. If I don’t, I make sure there’s a lingq for it. Pushing through boring stuff faster gives me more time actually read things I enjoy.
No and yes.
No if that’s actually all you’re doing, in that case you’re taking out the context of the sentences and remove the whole point of the reading method.
Yes, if you’re doing it right: usually once I get into the advanced phases, I will start reading TL books on my Kindle and then stop every 7-10 pages (or 100-140 Kindle “locations” which in my experience equals a lesson’s worth of text on LingQ) and go over to the LingQ import of the same text and then just skip to the yellow and blue words and mark them as I feel appropriate.
This method gives me the best of both worlds. I get to read and deduct from context on the Kindle with a more convenient interface and then I get to verify meaning and mark text on LingQ. This also allows me to read longer stretches, and definitely allows me to build to final phase of unassisted reading, which is my ultimate goal.
I do just yellow/blue words but I also do look at the context. It’s just sometimes im not that interested in the text (also I can do click click click actions while working on something). However, what I can say I force myself to do is listening to the audio clip if it’s a book or a reading.
I import a lot of scripts and when I import scripts I just listen to the video and/or watch the TV show while looking at the highlighted words.
The interesting thing with Korean words though is that that grammar part of the word will provide a lot of context to.
Then again I went through a whole grammar book series before starting to gain my words on LingQ.