Just a comment on Tagging. I look forward to hearing what other people are doing.
I have over 9,000 saved lingqs in Russian. About 8,000 of them are * one star words. I know all of the 2,3 and 4 star words, or most of them, but I do not do so well with the one star words when I review them.
When I read a new content item, a lot of the yellow highlighted words are one star words. I often know them, or have a good idea what they mean. I still click on them to make sure.
I have now started tagging them as follows. If they are a one star word I tag them 1. If they are a somewhat unknown 2 star words I tag them 2. I mostly know the 3 and 4 star words pretty well. However, if I see a word that I want to be able to use, regardless of the number of stars, I tag it “A” for active.
Then I can to to Vocabulary and review my 1 words, my 2 words and my A words.
If I open a yellow highlighted word and IF IT IS A ONE STAR WORD THAT I WANT TO KNOW then I will tag it 1. A lot of the one star words I am not yet that interested in. So it is only a percentage, perhaps 30% of the yellow highlighted words that I will tag in this way.
The percentage of two star words that I tag 2 is much smaller since I usually feel I know these words, even if I click on them just to be sure.
Well, I use tags in a rather different way. The tag I find more useful is “expression” which I use to indicate interesting expressions that I would like to memorize. They are more or less equivalent to the so called idioms, but there are expressions that I’m not sure are idioms strictly speaking, so I preferred a more general tag.
I use tags also for phrasal verbs, but usually I don’t feel like studying them too much… maybe because my years of traditional study made me somewhat afraid of phrasal verbs…
Another tag I use a lot is “pronunciation”, indicating words that I have trouble while trying to enunciate. I use the words tagged this way together with an online dictionary which has sound files for most of its words, so I can remember how they are pronounced and try to mimic them.
On that note, I think that an interesting add-on to LingQ system would be an automatic text-to-speach generator. I’ve used a trial version as a plugin to firefox for some time, and it resulted tremendously useful.
I use tags in a high number for prepositions, for phrases, for word order or expression how ana-paula wrote.
Unfortunately when I want to review “prepos.” i.e. with flashcards I get all words they with status 4 too.
In the moment is the using from tags not really comfortable because I have to write the tags (and cannot choose with a click). Sure I would use it more often.
Helpful would be, to see the taginformation on the flashcard.
Irene,
if you chose to classify the words by status before you click on the tag you want to study, you get the tagged words classified by status, so you don’t need to pick up one by one.
As Ana-Paula and Irene, I use tags for expressions. These are useful as are the tags for phrasal verbs!
I also tag as phrases those which are not really unknown but that I don’t use properly and want to remember. Can belong in this selection some mistakes made in a writing submission. It’s a way to remember a specific word order, plural or gerund after certain words or verbs, whatever.
Besides them, I have tags for adjectives, adverbs, specific field like food, PC, body…
I’m going to create another tag for all words or sentences that I feel more important to learn at first. As tags like ‘expressions’ or ‘phrases’ for instance is becoming a too large term. I will look at the vocabulary section to sort them according to the importance I give to them. I’ll also take in consideration the importance they have in the language by classifying words by ‘importance’ first.
I have tags in German for ‘Dativ’, ‘Genitiv’, ‘Komparativ’, ‘PartizipII’, ‘Perfekt’, Präteritum’ and ‘Plural’. Even though the ones for perfect and imperfect tense are the same and are for no apparent reason separated, except the fact that I don’t know which one should have which name :S
These are mostly to know that certain words are in the plural or that some are the past participle of another verb… Otherwise I’d get confuse…
Steve, I didn’t understand very well what you do with the A words. So, if you have a 1 word that you’d like to really know, you call it A and focus on it? And the others keep being 1 and 2, 3, etc.?
I have tags for the usual word classes (nouns, verbs and adjectives tend to heap up) and the occasional gen, dat and so on.
I realise that there is some point in having different verb forms and/or tenses, but for now I just have several pages of verbs.
As for the actual vocabulary practice, I usually flip cards in 15 minute sessions, starting with the priority lingQs on the first page, and then going to the vocabulary section and working my way up with the “status 1” words I find useful. I might open one of my active items and go through those words (although the important words more or less show up in the Priority box anyway). I always go through any of these “lists” twice per session (to upgrade the status of the words I know).
One is the concern expressed by some people to increase their active vocabulary. The Priority LingQs is supposed to do this, since these LingQs need to be reviewed more often, and also appear in your Writing section.
However, I have so many saved LingQs that I thought I would try to select words that I really wanted to learn to use. These are my “Active” words. “A” is just easier to type.
“1” and “2” words were just an attempt to differentiate the one star words that are accumulataing.
I wonder how many people do keep their Priority LingQs up to date by going through them in Flash Cards regularly. Any comments?
In my early months for French, I tagged verbs according to their tense and mood, as they were difficult to recognise. Now, it’s not so great a problem and I’ve more or less stopped doing it.