Does anyone think it’s bad to spend too much time drilling the LingQs?
I wonder if I’m spending too much time working through LingQs and possibly missing out on more listening time. I tend to gather up a list after working through some content on the site. Once that list has grown into 100-200 words I try to work them. And then I might try to go through them again later that same day or even in the days that follow until they are ‘Known words’. Therefore, I rarely get go through content that has many highlighted words in it. Does anyone think I’m better off leaving the LingQs for a bit and focussing on the listening and reading again with highlighted words?
I think you’re best off doing what makes you enjoy learning the language, typically that’s reading and listening, but maybe you really love reviewing words, so in that case you should keep reviewing a lot.
I mostly read, I should listen more and occasionally play the flash card game.
Going through the saved LingQs is more like a form of exercize. It is good for the brain and helps you to notice things. But most of your time should be spent reading and listening. You cannot review all your LingQs. But you should create lots of LingQs so that you see lots of highlighted yellow LingQs in your texts when you read.
So far, I’ve been going at rate where at least once a week all my LingQs are in the 4 column. It’s probably a bit too much ey?
I’m worried that if I let my list grow too large there’ll be words in there that I’ll never end up reviewing.
I found that getting my LingQs quickly to the 4 level was premature - they would be forgotten again just as quickly. Nowadays I don’t bother doing flashcards at all; I simply leave the LingQs at the 1 level and let them stay yellow on the screen. With more and more content they appear again and again in different contexts, often in a different declension (no problem, I just create a new LingQ). For me this works much better than trying to force words into the brain. I get the feeling that a large vocabulary is ever-so-slowly being absorbed PERMANENTLY into my brain, rather than individual words being forced in, which don’t stay in anyway.
So I guess it’s trying to find the right balance between doing too many and not doing enough. I can definitely see the benefit in doing them. Even if I have to save them again after they get to 4, they soon start to get sticky.
To each his own. I prefer seeing the words in context when I’m reading/listening - each time a little bit of glue is added… flashcards, vocab lists etc. give me a headache ! I’m not sure they were an efficient use of (my) time anyway - I’d rather use that time listening, reading and adding new content…
I go through my LingQs of the Day until all flashcards are removed from the list (tested twice correctly). Because there is a spaced repetition algorithm behind these emails, the LingQs come at me 4 times at spaced intervals over 60 days. I go through the list quite quickly and it works for me. It helps me remember the words but I don’t spend too much time at it nor do I move words to status 4 too quickly.
I do it like Mark. It works perfect for me. I spend time on my LingQs but not too much. If I repeat the LingQs very often in a short period of time I get the impression that I know them, but after a few days I cannot remember them. When I use the repetition system of the email there are some days before I review a word again. This works fine.
The advantage of LingQ is that people can learn in different ways. I often spend a half hour or so at the Vocab page, studying different pages in my list of saved LingQs, which for Russian is 861 pages long (at 25 items per page). I can only review these on a random basis, which I do. Nevertheless I am learning more and more of them, both from the yellow highlights and from the occasional scratching of the brain that the flash cards and list reviews provide.
I tend to move only those words that are the core, essential words of the language to level 4.
Examples would be prepositions, pronouns, super common verbs, etc.
These are words that occur everywhere in the language, spoken and written, so I figure I won’t be forgetting these too soon.
As for other vocabulary I pick up in reading, I leave them in levels 1-3 for quite a long time, reviewing them, doing flashcards once in awhile, and listening, before I actually do move them up to level 4.
I find that once I move them up to level 4, I don’t review those words as often obviously.
But then I think I inadvertently review them when I read old lessons that I’ve worked through previously so it’s alright.
You also don’t need to keep the words in the LingQ list. It makes sense to delete some from it. For example, sure there are words that you have learned and are unlikely to forget soon (ever?). Words (probably) like I, you, my, dog, car, room, place, not, say, etc. No need to keep them in the list forever.
I do as Mark et al. i.e. go through the LingQs of the day. If/when I save many LingQs that I may already know (or at least be fairly familiar with) I move those one up to level 2. Other than tha, I think the highlighting works as a good reminder.
“Oh, these are old friends that I (should) know”
Thanks for the assistance people 
I also do what Mark does…work through the LingQs of the Day until they are all removed from the list (when I guess each one correctly twice). I also like to review the prioritized vocab (25 most common LingQs) each day, also working through them until they are removed. I have not moved any of my LingQs up to Level 4 yet (I have only been using LingQ for a week) but I feel that this system will work great for me and it is very manageable…only takes about 30 minutes each day, and I do it at the beginning of my study time so my brain is fresher and I can more easily read & listen.
I’ve thought about deleting the common words that I likely won’t ever forget as astamoore mentioned…but doesn’t doing so would remove words from your known words total right? I find that it’s a good record of how many words you know in the target language…although admittedly, you do forget those level 4 words after some time…
If you move words to level 4, they are added to your Known words total. So, that is what you should do.
I only really bother to drill the most important words in each language. Happily LingQ decides for me which are the important ones, giving them 3 or 4 stars. I keep my vocabulary sorted by importance and review just the first 3 or 4 pages.
Sometimes I decide to review prepositions or items of furniture or separable verbs. I tag them as I create the lingQ, so I can pull them out on a tag search.
All these approaches are fascinating, what a useful thread! Daily review seems to work for me although I have a brain like a sieve; but I tend to get fazed by too many LingQs in the daily e-mail. (I think the possibility of limiting the number being received has been raised before, so I assume it is being worked on…)