I think you can probably count re-reads (fine to keep track separately if you wish as well…that may be interesting to see how it compares) as I thought the paper’s suggestion accounted for seeing a word 13x. (Unless I’m thinking of a different metric from a different paper). So re-reading is helping bump that “times seen” of the given words.
Ya I had previously aimed at 1 million words read to feel “competent” and it definitely does feel like I am able to keep up in comprehension in many situations in Portuguese at that amount but 2 million is much more likely the “competent” amount for said language. Which matches the estimates Toby has on his tracking spreadsheet, I never read where he got the estimates but I feel these are good mile markers to follow as it has basically matched my experience in 2 languages now up to B1.
250,000 A1
500,000 A2
1,000,000 B1
2,000,000 B2
4,000,000 C1
8,000,000 C2
16,000,000 C2+
@alandickey, I believe I requested that once but as far as I know there isn’t a way
Ya considering how one of the most common threads throughout people’s language learning methods/advice is “repeat”, no reason to not include re-reads into the stats if they are indeed re-read entirely.
I tried this just now - thanks Ramonek - a great idea…but I see in comments that some people consider 2 million enough - others 11 million. I guess there must be a sweet spot somewhere around 5 or 6 million words where most things have become known. I have done about 150,000 words of French reading according to Lingq so far, and know about 15,000 words according to Lingq so far, and the words I don’t know in new texts are relatively infrequent - so I suspect I know more than 20,000 perhaps. Maybe my vague “end point” in terms of my vocabulary aims might lie somewhere around 1-2 million words read for me and for my purposes, but for others they will want to read considerably more. I will start to look at words read more as I agree with some others on here that that is a critical influence on how many words are known. Would be nice to be able to rank one’s languages by words read instead of only word count.
I just clicked through a lesson I have already finished, and it was not added to the words of reading. I prefer it like this, since I want to track the amount of original content I have exposed myself to.
That’s a good point. Every time I re-read I do see the word again. That’s probably good for the third re-read, which I do after I’ve reviewed the LingQs, but maybe not for the second, which I generally do, with audio, on a per lesson basis immediately after completely the lesson.
I’d say that I felt competent at around 70-100k known words (basically one year ago, so three years after I started, more or less). Now, I’m just guessing the known words’ count because, as much as I like the pokemon game of lingQ, it is by no means the deciding factor for addressing your skill in a language. I mainly chose that number because I recall that around that timeframe I started feeling like I could do everything I wanted with the language with little to no help. Of course there was back then, as there still is, many room for improvement.
Also, I would definitely avoid novels where I had to fight at every sentence. I have some imports like that, and I just put them on the side when I realize that they are too difficult. Some months, or even years later (and I just finished one that I imported two years ago), I come back and I give it a try again. If it’s doable I read it, if not, well tough luck, let’s try again later.
I would say it’s normal and you shouldn’t worry too much if not for the fact that you’re at almost 120k known words and you still “can hardly decipher a single sentence and half the page is blue and yellow”. That makes me think that you should definitely adjust your approach if the current one is tiresome and you don’t feel like you’re doing well enough, but still keep in mind that some novels/texts, as other mentioned, can be at much higher level and even a native with a large vocabulary would have trouble with them.
My suggestion would be to consider reading easier novels, that is with fewer unknown words, maybe below 30 or 20%.
How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words?
^^^^^ this is the paper here - Paul Nation
@ramonek, there is a timer on each page. Once that timer has passed it is automatically marked as read and words are added. Flipping through a lesson won’t increase this, but flipping, stopping long enough and flipping will.
Ive been at it for forever in portuguese (76059 word count) and im reading a book now that i thought was for kids and I have to stop every other word to look up the definition. But on the other hand conversation and podcasts are easy now. Do you have problems with them too? If so id take a look at what your doing. If its just books and deeper stuff i wouldn’t sweat it, shits hard.
i’m near 5 million words for mandarin (just in LingQ) / 70k LingQs, and while modern slice of life is becoming relatively easy, harder genres like historical / fantasy are still immensely difficult and requires a lot of look ups per paragraph.
but my measure of success is that i don’t get headaches from reading anymore and rarely have to read a translation before / during, which is awesome!
I set a random goal of 17 million words (~28m hanzi read) based on that previous research and reading others experience - then multiplying it by 3.5x since i figured mandarin is harder
but my goal of 17 million words isn’t “i’ll totally be fluent and nothing will be a struggle” - more like if i read that much within another 2 years, i’m guaranteed to become a better reader
after than i’ll increase my goal again and try reading 50 million characters (which is still <50 books since chinese webnovels are so insanely long haha)
learning never stops, and i think as long as you pick a language with hundreds of books you want to read, you’ll get there eventually
and i like reading multiple books at a time - some easy / some hard. that way you are challenging yourself with interesting content but can also turn your brain off and read some trashy romances 
and feel good about your progress
It is a wonderful book. Extremely funny, sad and inventive. But you’re right that it is not meant to be read comfortably, with all its endnotes and footnotes and difficult prose.
You may already have tried this - read a page of the same book in your native language, then read it in x a few times, your own again, then read it in x a few more times. You might be amazed how it starts to become clear. I did this with hard Russian texts when I did a degree in Russian, and after about 5 pages things seemed to improve ever so slightly. After about 30 pages of whichever book, I had the feeling of topping a plateau. The rest of the book I could then often do ok with, as each author seems to use a certain range of vocabulary unique to him/herself. I admit, it is slow going at the start and every sentence might take you 10 minutes. I sometimes only did half a page in an entire day but I think it pays off in the end.
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I don’t do exactly what you’re saying but a similar thing and similar experience. I read in sentence mode mostly for these more difficult things. I try to understand the sentence, if I do, I move on. If there are blue words I need to look up, I do so, read the sentence again and see if it makes sense. If not, or I have yellow words I’m not familiar with, I’ll do the sentence translation. Then I’ll re-read the sentence and usually everything fits in my mind and I “get it”. At least at that time.
WIth this one I had also decided I would, after each lesson, read and listen to the entire lesson as a whole, and then go back and jump from yellow word to yellow word looking at each in context again.
I’ll make it through. Things were like this the first time I read Harry Potter for the first time in German…and as you point out, you begin to learn the author’s vocabulary.
I think it’s mostly a bit of bruised ego…The last couple of books I read were pretty “easy” (still needed LingQ help, but not a huge amount–probably mostly in the 5% blue words category), but this one has a lot of new vocabulary for me (back in the 15-20% blue words category). I’m a huge fan of using sentence mode though. It keeps you on track mostly. I also decided to pay for next tier of deepl so I could translate the full lessons and go back and potentially read each in English in case I got too lost even in sentence mode.
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20K Japanese words (stats are a bit overblown) but still, I’ve got a LONG way to go. I picked up a Japanese paperback book (related to my background, so I’m already familiar with the topic) and just about finished it. Still need to look up words every page. Don’t think there’s a finish line 
The “words read” count in Lingq is a little tricky. If you quickly click through pages or sentences it doesn’t count them - as it detects the time spent on a page (or sentence). Longer time it counts the words, but if it is brief it doesn’t count the words. If I am speed reading. I always check the end of the “lesson” and have to often increment it up to “1.0” - as it often shows me at having read only 0.8 or 0.9 although I actually read every sentence in the novel.
You talk about not feeling competent. Your feeling of competence is different from actually being competent. At 117k known words in Czech, you should be competent. At least in the contexts you’ve been studying in. But you don’t feel competent? I think there may be a disconnect.
Some thoughts:
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Even if you mark known words very liberally, you have read 2.8M words (on LingQ). This should be a good number of words read to be at least reasonably competent. At least for easier novels.
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Maybe your lack of confidence stems from the fact that you read hard material? If you are trying to read poetry and literature, you will be having a hard time. Maybe try choosing easier material. Or at least alternating between hard material (literature) and easier matieral (to keep you confidence up). What kind of material are you currently reading?
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In English (my mother tongue), there is also no end in sight for me too. I don’t actively study English, but no means, but I still read books or research papers and I encounter words I don’t know. Most of the time I just skip the word, cause I don’t consider it important. Occassionally, I look up the definition, just for the lols. But do you feel competent in English?
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I’ve noticed with language learning, my confidence and mood regarding the language constantly fluctuates between feeling “I’m making great progress!” to “I’ve spent soooo long on this language and look at how little I know!” If you keep feeling down for a long time, feeling unconfident and despondent, maybe it’s time for a little break, to pick up another hobby for a little while, to try a different strategy of learning the language, to read some easy material, etc. But, for me, my confidence fluctuates all the time. :Z
Excellent points, nfera!
The relationship between “confidence” and “competence” is interesting.
Let’s assume you want to tackle task XY, then we can distinguish between
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low <-> high confidence -
low <-> high competence
The obvious relationships should be:
- low competence → low confidence
- high competence → high confidence
However, depending on a person’s psychological makeup and / or the stage of competence (see: Four stages of competence - Wikipedia), you’ll also find the relationships - low competence → high confidence
- high competence → low(er) confidence
This refers to two cognitive biases: - “The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of a task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills.” Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia
- The effect of illusory superiority (PB: and inferiority): “More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture.[3 - highlighting by me] Some studies indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in order to improve themselves and get along with others.” Illusory superiority - Wikipedia
In sum, there are several factors at play here:
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The psychology of a person influenced by their social milieu (see, for instance, the “cultural capital” in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu and the studies on “transclasse”).
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Cultural factors (see, for example, how individuals should / can present themselves in the US vs Germany vs Japan).
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The stage of competence (with measurable performances) a person is in.
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The gender confidence gap: “Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence.” The Confidence Gap - The Atlantic
See also: The Confidence Gap In Men And Women: Why It Matters And How To Overcome It
- Age and a general background knowledge based on experience:
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” (Mark Twain)