Currently working my way through the beginner material here on Lingq and it is a sea of yellow as to be expected! I highlight yellow all the new words I don’t know and just try to make some kind of understanding of the sentence then going over to highlight everything so I can get the translation of the sentence I then move onto the next page or lesson and I hope with time I can then turn some of those yellow words into white words!
I hope people do the same when starting a new language!
Any advise would be great currently struggling my way through 2 hours everyday of Spanish but hopefully it will be worth it!!!
It will, don’t worry.
Everybody feels lost, particularly if it’s the first language you learn. Be patient and concentrate on what you can already do, rather than on what you still have to learn
Welcome to my life. I have been through the same process as you- I’d recommend that you just keep going with lingq at this stage. I was a raw beginner like you a while back and now I’m reading mi primera vida atm, there are like 40-60 yellow words for every new page with like 2000-2100 words (after I have read it,) so it definitely gets better.
As a confidence boost, you’ll also notice that quantity of yellow words on each page will rapidly decrease as you learn the first few thousand core words of Spanish- the old 80/20 rule at work. I’d suggest that this will be at around the 10,000 known words mark. Progress will slow after that, due to the exponential word frequency distribution in natural texts and also due to the fact that you will also be able to tackle more difficult materials with additional unknown words.
Although a lot of other members are going to jump down my throat here, I’d definitely recommend spending a solid 15 minutes per day reviewing translated sentences in a spaced repetition system- I noticed that my known word count has jumped up every time I have used an srs.
Buena suerte.
“Progress will slow after that, due to the exponential word frequency distribution in text corpuses and also due to the fact that you will also be able to tackle more difficult materials with additional unknown words.”
I’ve found doing Duolingo Spanish tree before diving into reading articles with lingq has helped a lot with my Spanish www.duolingo.com - although I’ve still got some lessons still to complete on it I’ve found it has helped me kick start my reading ability.
Certainly I found the opposite to be true at the advanced level than when I just started out.
In term of accumulating words, it can really be compared to the different stages in a monopoly game.
@ Jonesjack
I did a lot of repeated reading and listening to the same materials at lingq in the first two months with some srs. I am sure you will see a big difference in a month with consistent hours you put into learning Spanish every day. Sometimes it could be better if you break down 2 hrs of work into smaller (3 or 4) sections.
Wish you loads of fun during the process of learning
All those new words are not your enemies but they will be your tools soon.
One fun way of observing your progress is choosing a set of songs in your target language that you like but don’t understand the lyrics of. From time to time you listen to them without reading the lyrics. Some day you will understand them.
thanks! what would be the best way to contact yourself I am going to visit south america in the next few months hence why I would like to get my spanish up to date!
