Hello, my level in German is about A2 and I would like to take it to the next level.
I’ve been studying on lingq for about 8 months now and there is a noticeable improvement in my German, However, I’d like to know from people who reached a high level of German on lingq how did they exactly do it and how did they approach each lesson because I feel overwhelmed from the huge amount of content there is even though that this should be a good thing but I just need guidance on how to make the best use of the content available on lingq.
Also, how many times should I listen and repeat a lesson before I move on to the next one, and should I write down every vocabulary in a notebook or is the lingq system enough for me to memorize the vocab.
Thanks.
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Hopefully someone will share their experience, with learning German on LingQ, with you. 
If you’re a beginner, go through beginner content such as the Mini Stories by reading while listening and repeating out loud sentence by sentence. Do this a few times for each lesson and move to the next lesson.
Memorizing is not necessary.
Once you get to intermediate, start reading and listening to books – ideally ones you can have the translated text for so you can compare the text.
After a couple of books you can ditch the translated text version and just use the LingQ interface to translate unknown words or sentences for context.
While you’re doing this, start re-listening to audiobooks on your spare time – then start listening to new audiobooks and podcasts.
Watch TV in German with NL subs first, then move to TL subs, then no subs.
Keep reading and listening to books until you reach Advanced 2 on LingQ.
Get speaking practice on iTalki or language exchanges.
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You have already had some incredibly useful advice from t_harangi, which I am sure will encourage you on the journey.
One point to emphasise is in response to your precise question as to whether to “write down every vocabulary in a notebook” (sic). No, definitely do not do that! You will get quickly overwhelmed and probably exasperated too. And it will soon be a whole library full of notebooks! Such a task is basically writing your own German dictionary - and you have no need to “re-invent the wheel”. The huge advantage of lingq is that your own personal vocabulary list is kept for you electronically and the important words just keep returning like boomerangs to you as you read more German material.
Everyone is constantly forgetting the meaning of words in their target language, partly because there are often multiple nuanced meaning of these words [context can change the meaning drastically] but also because learning/forgetting/re-learning/re-forgetting and so on ad infinitum is actually all part of the learning process! The research shows that you can come across a word many, many times and still “know you know the wretched word but cannot quite remember what it actually means…” Just stay calm and accept this is all part of the process of getting vocabulary embedded into your long-term memory.
But with lingq it is just a click away to find out roughly what that individual word is, or indeed use the Google translate feature on the whole sentence to give you a good idea of what that phrase or paragraph means. And the triumphant moment comes when you do not need that click any more!
A few extra tips for the intermediate journey, beyond the excellent advice you already have from t_harangi:
- The series of books and audio recordings by André Klein about “Dino” wandering around Germany, Austria and (now) Liechtenstein, which will continue the important advice to read and listen, and are modestly priced but excellent value;
- Listening to the ”Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten” Podcast each day from Deutsche Welle, which is free, and leads on to enormous amounts of other free DW material;
- The videos and podcasts from “Easy German”, which can introduce you to faster, spoken German on the streets (usually in Berlin) and which are good value for money.
And of course keep checking back on the Forum, and follow some very experienced individuals who give leads to superb German material at all levels.
All the best for your onward progress.
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I’m not high level, but I was certainly where you are at at one point.
You’ve already gotten some excellent advice from bembe and t_harangi so I can’t add much more than what they said.
For content around this time, I read and listened to all the “Dino lernt Deutsch” books that bembe mentioned. I imported each chapter into Lingq (I just copied and pasted from the Amazon desktop version for this). Then I listened to the audio in audible. I do think if you get them from his website you can get in different formats. (epub, mobi, pdf). Dino lernt Deutsch - Learn German with Stories
I found these books very entertaining. Easy language, but more adult entertainment value compared to children’s books. Another cool thing about these is that each story takes place in a different German speaking city so you hear about some of the landmarks and places to see. You also get some of the local words and dialect sprinkled in.
Another source of content I used a lot at this time was https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/
They have the articles and the audio is done is slow voice. I’d go over a few articles each week several times and built up a ton of vocabulary around this time just from this.
Go to the “library” tab and filter it down to intermediate 1 and intermediate 2 in the popular lessons “feed”. I especially like evgueny40’s and vera’s content. They have a lot of great content they’ve uploaded. There is lots of other content here you can poke around and try out and see if something of interest shows up.
bembe also mentions Easy German on Youtube. I will second this recommendation. Much of it is really in the intermediate level and not so “easy”, but it is great content, because the street interviews they do are authentic and interesting, and you get to hear dialogue with all pauses, filler words, half thoughts, mumbling and speed. You can follow the dialogue and translations along with the video, or if you choose to support the channel through patron they have the transcripts for all of their videos. They also started a podcast awhile back which I’d say is more for advanced intermediate to advanced? Very interesting and they have pleasant voices so even when you don’t understand what they are saying it’s easy to listen to in that respect. At a higher level of patron support here you can get the transcripts for the podcasts. Also, I think with this level, they have a special link/feed to the podcast that also pops up important words they are saying and their translation. They also have a special reader online that has the full translations as you go. Very nice.
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re: "
how many times should I listen and repeat a lesson before I move on to the next one, and should I write down every vocabulary in a notebook or is the lingq system enough for me to memorize the vocab.
Thanks."
I’ll just add my own thoughts. I personally did do a fair amount of repetition at the stage you’re at. I preferred to do it with shorter lessons that were only a couple to a few minutes long. nachrichtenleicht.de was great for this as were evgueny40’s and vera’s content. I’d repeat each a few times and then move on. I did also do this with the Dino stories, although these are a fair bit longer. They are interesting to read and listen to a couple of times.
Some folks don’t repeat and seem to get along just fine so there isn’t a blanket statement that says you should repeat sentences. So do what you feel works best for you. I’d only suggest, if you do repeat, move on after a few times. Don’t worry about getting every last word from a lesson in your memory banks (you won’t be able to). Don’t get stuck on one lesson trying to learn all the words. There are going to be some that don’t stick. That is ok! You’ll eventually learn them…some you’ll feel like you’re never going to learn it, but you will see it again in other content and some day there will be some magical connection and you’ve learned the word. Of course, many times you’ll forget it again =D. Don’t worry about that. Simply mark it to 1, 2, 3 and try again next time.
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Sorry, one last resource you might find useful is on the DW site. Nico’s Weg:
https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview
The A1, A2, B1 and B2 are the Nico’s Weg content. It follows the story of Nico as he is in Germany. I believe all of the lessons have been imported into LingQ so you can search around there, or follow the lesson from the DW site or app. On the site and app there are quiz questions, if you find that helpful. The dialogue seems pretty normal pace (i.e. even if the words are easy, it sometimes hard to follow listening).
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Yes, evgueny40 and Vera are absolute lingq stars for producing interesting “comprehensible input” in German.
Another person on lingq to look out for is SergeyFM, who is incredibly diligent in finding material, and he gives the links on “The Best Language Learning Sites and Content to Import into Lingq” (always at the top of the “Recent Threads” column).
One final tip before we start to overwhelm people learning German with a myriad recommendations (!) is to check out the free “Slow German” podcasts by “Annik Rubens” which are, in her words, “especially for those who already have intermediate skills”. In reality she is the journalist Larissa Vassilian, already famous for her podcast “Schlaflos in München” and with a huge number of followers. But the advantages of her ”Slow German” podcasts are that they are at an easy pace, always interesting, and you can listen along while reading the text. She is now up to number 239 in her “Slow German” podcasts and if you like her style and content you can also check out her videos, which are targeted at B1 level.
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