So Im currently learning German and right now Im down to 9000 words so I would need 3000 more to be intermediate 2 level. However now when I check my progress it says that I need 7000 more. Is this a error or the levels changed?
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Hi diogobaptista,
These are still the official numbers according to LingQ’s knowledge base:
https://lingq.wixanswers.com/kb/en/article/how-many-words-do-you-need-to-know-to-be-fluent
Personally, I usually ignore the number of “known” words because it’s too unreliable. I just focus on the number of words read and when I’ve read ca. 2.5 - 3 million words, I’m pretty sure that I’m at a higher intermediate, i.e. B2 or B2-C1, level -
at least in reading and listening comprehension for Indo-European languages…
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Yes, we did update the numbers for reaching level targets in each language to make them more accurate.
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Hi zoran,
Is there a LingQ overview page for that?
And what does “more accurate” mean with regard to what?
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Same thing happened to me, I sent an email to support and they confirmed the same thing zoran mentioned, but didn’t share any other information.
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This is all speculation, but I wonder if it was done to make the levels a bit more representative of what might be necessary to reach the different CEFR levels.
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I’ve been living a lie! =(
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That is an interesting way of evaluate Progress, currently Im at 500 000 words, so there is a long way to go hahaha.
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Is there a website with the updated numbers? I am learning Ukrainian. I also noticed that the numbers changed. I searched for information but found only the old numbers for each level.
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You’re getting faster though. It does take more time, but it is partially offset by how much easily and more quickly you are able to read and listen to content.
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It’s also at Advanced that has changed. I was 4000 words away from Advanced 1 and now I’m 14,000 words away.
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It’s also true that we are all getting closer to our “goals” (whatever they are). I have noticed, for example that I can understand the bulk of the transcripts from my end-target TV shows in netflix (although I can still not keep up with the spoken form). But yeah, I’m getting faster and closer. Not there yet.
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“[…] currently Im at 500 000 words, so there is a long way to go hahaha.”(@diogobaptista)
If you use an “Ultrareading while listening approach” based on timeboxing (say 2x25 min Pomodoro blocks per day) that I described briefly (again 
) for @ericktolu a few days ago (see: Anmelden - LingQ), you should be able to read and listened to ca. 2 millions words in ca. 200 days.
The math is simple:
- ca. 10k words read and listened to in 2 Pomodoro blocks
- 2 Pomodoro blocks Ă 25 min = 50 min per day
- ca. 10k words * 200 days equals ca. 2 million words read and listened to in ca. 167 hours (= 10000 min).
This should be achievable for the majority of Indo-European native speakers being at a lower intermediate level (B1) in their L2 and studying another Indo-European language.
This way there is no intermediate plateau and you should have a solid foundation in listening / reading comprehension that is between upper intermediate (B2) and lower advanced (C1) level.
Caveat:
Another important factor is your choice of reading material. That is: if you don’t choose material that contains a lot of native speaker dialogues (podcasts, YT vids, Netflix shows, etc.), you will still struggle in understanding fast-paced native speaker dialogues.
In short, you will get good at what you train for
Good luck,
Peter
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Keep in mind how unique words are counted when making your estimates. For example, in Spanish, a single adjective could count up to 4 or more words as “known” (sing, plural, fem, masc). God knows how many “known” words can come from a single verb in Spanish.
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A blog post explaining the methodology would be interesting and helpful. It’s tough striving toward a goal and seeing it get much further away. I was 10,000 words shy of Advanced 2 in Korean and now it’s 41,000!
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Yeah. I’ve had to find mental resolve after seeing it be 4000 words away from advanced 1 and now it’s 14,000 also. Grit the teeth time and find new in-between goals.
I think it would have been better to “grandfather” the next stage for everyone to remain where it was and make the jump at the next level.
HINT HINT ZORAN.
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Yes! Ive got gutted so now my focus is just to get to a x number of readed words each day.
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“This is the way!”, would the Mandalorian say if he learned a language on LingQ
This and the “overall exposure time in minutes / hours” are relevant metrics. The rest (“known words” in LingQ based on more or less vague criteria, the number of months/years, etc.) are instead no(n)-sense metrics.
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Yes I agree, for example today, listening to a podcast I could capture 85 new known words but most of them were similar to latin vocabulary. So I find inconsistent the know words metric.
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I think the word counts a little arbitrary anyway, but yes.
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