Colin, we only measure “known words” from texts tat appear here at LingQ, in other words we are measuring people who study the LingQ way. It is a measure that is easy to do on the system but it is not perfect. The assumption is that the learner listens to the texts much more often than he or she reads them. If the learner is not listening a lot, away from the computer, on an mp3 player, than the system will be much less effective.
Generally members should be motivated to understand at least 70% of what they hear. That is the process. That is what we advise people to do.
My point was that if I had tried to do what I did with those French sentences with audio instead of text, I would not have caught so many of the cognates. To test this, I opened a short French lesson here at LingQ. I opened lesson 2 of the ‘Getting Started’ course. First I listened to it and tried to identify cognates. I got these
I don’t know how correct these are. I was certainly not sure of a lot of them. The text for the lesson is below.
Choisissez une leçon facile pour vous.
Choisissez une leçon qui vous intéresse.
Lisez la leçon.
Ecoutez la leçon.
Au début vous ne comprenez pas.
Regardez la signification des nouveaux mots et nouvelles phrases.
Vous les oublierez. Ce n’est pas un problème.
Ecoutez plusieurs fois la leçon.
Lisez plusieurs fois la leçon.
Ecoutez plusieurs fois sur votre lecteur MP3.
Vous ne comprendrez que peu de choses.
Vous comprendrez bientôt plus.
Un jour, vous parlerez la langue.
I don’t understand what point you are trying to make Colin. If you study French the LingQ way, your “known words” count will grow, and will be a good indicator of your progress, as long as you read, listen and LingQ. If you stay the course you will learn French, and you will have learned a bunch of French words, many of which are cognates from English even if you don’t recognize them as such at first. If you try to study a list of cognates you will achieve little. If you learn through interesting content, starting with some basic beginner lessons, and occasionally referring to grammar sources, you will learn.
I was not trying to make any point with those posts. I was just interested in how many cognates I could recognise from French and then how this differs depending on whether I listen to it or read it.
Instead of creating a new post, I thought that I would post on this thread (though it is an old thread). When we define Known words as those we indicate as same on our stats , are we defining known words as those we know via reading the text …or as those we know the meaning of when spoken. I ask, because for me it is far easier to understand the written word than one spoken in the course of normal speed speech. I previously would only mark a word as known when I could understand the meaning when picking it up in a dialogue(and of source being able to recognize it in the course of same dialogue) . However recently I’ve begun marking them as known words if i can look at the written word and know or guess the meaning. Thanks !
I just joined this site to comment on this thread. ^^ I started studying a vocabulary list off Memrise and I’m learning about 35 words a day. ^^ I think it depends on your dedication to learning the words and if your target language and mother language are similar. My target language is Korean and my goal is to finish the list in three months. ^^ That’s 1516 words. ^^ I’m confident I can do it and so far it hasn’t been difficult for me. So I think havingstrong motivation and a reason to learn the words will allow you to learn and recall them more easily. Best of luck everyone~! ^^
What am I doing on memrise aside from memorizing? Absolutely nothing. ^^ I only joined because I needed a way to learn more words quickly and keep track of what I’ve studied. It works for me so I don’t see a reason to complain about it. I have only been a member of this site for maybe an hour so I neither feel qualified to compare the sites nor compelled to. ^^ If you asked because you wanted a comparison that is. ~
It is just that I have put quite a bit of time into Korean, mostly listening and reading here at LingQ. I know a lot of words, but I am a long way from understanding the things that I want to understand and from being able to say what I want to say. However, I am now able to study interesting content. I doubt that just studying lists of words is going to help you as much as actually engaging with Korean content. But to each his own.
Oh I see the point you’re trying to make. ^^ I agree with you that learning words alone won’t result in language proficency. ^^ It’s good that LingQ has proved a valuable resource to you. I will be lucky to have a similar experience.^^ Until then, I am studying grammar and talking with native speakers regularly enough to feel like I’m making substantial progress too. I also think it’s great that you are learning Korean. It’s a beautiful language and I think the day that we recognize that we have reached our desired proficency in Korean, we will be more than satisfied with all the hard work we put into studying it. 힘내요~ ^^ 화이팅!
I’m not sure learning words like this really “learns” them. A few years ago I used to do this cramming approach with Italian, using spreadsheets with thousands of words on, spending dozens of hours trying to force them into my brain. It just didn’t really work very well; it was very artificial and the words I did learn I forgot again quickly unless I kept on reviewing them (which eventually became too boring).
In my view you need the context, and the same words and phrases in different contexts. Lots of them over lots of input over lots of time. And they sink in… gradually.
Well it’s good that you shared your experience because a lot of people will do nothing but “memorize” words in their short term memory and I guess, harshly said, waste their time because it’s artificial.
Personally, I don’t merely do the once over on a word and then post myself as having memorized it. I review all the words I learn consistently. Also, for myself and in my experience, I think having to habitually for Drama productions and English tests on short notice in highschool has short of just trained me to be able to mass memorize things in a small amount of time. I also have confidence that this method doesn’t prove to be artificial, as I can still recall accurately many of the words and lines. Granted it’s not all of the words but I think an 80% recall long term is enough for myself.
And now you may try to point out that you think “this doesn’t provide the word in context” and “memorizing lists not only misrepresent the words or partially represent them, but it’s boring.” I realize this is the case for some people, but in my personality I am a very thorough person and I took note of that when I created my “curriculum”. Since creating it, I have adjusted it to cover all the aspects of the Korean language I deem necessary (and see on their requirements) to pass a Korean Placement test into the more advanced but still beginner’s class in College. I truly appreciate the way I study and I don’t find it boring in the least.
As for your proverb, I’m presuming you posted it because you felt I should look at it. Maybe it’s not the way you understand it yourself or how you want me to interpret it but I agree. I think a rising tide will lift all the boats. ^^ I think one person’s positive experience and encouragement, especially with a task as difficult as language learning, can help lift up the confidence and motivation of other people, the exact motive for my initial comment.
I don’t like to rely on flashcards for memorisation for the reason I explained at that time. I wrote
“I started using Anki at the end of November last year, and until about mid-January, I was learning huge amounts of vocabulary on Anki. I was making my own Anki deck and when I stopped using it in January, I had 1200 words in it, with about 70% at the ‘mature’ stage. The reason I stopped was partly because I started using LingQ, and partly because I found that I was not really learning words in the way that I wanted with Anki. What I found was that when I learned a word with Anki, what I really did was I learned the word in Anki. By that I mean that I was able to produce the word, and understand the word, when I was using Anki. But the moment I came across the word outside of Anki or I wanted to use the word outside of Anki, my mind was a blank. I essentially ended up with three vocabularies: an active vocabulary, a passive vocabulary, and an Anki vocabulary.”
However, I still quite like using Anki as a secondary vocabulary learning tool.
I agree with you. Learning words through flashcards, for me at least, allows me to know the meaning of a word in that context…written down as a single word or in other cases written down as a short phrase (mainly only in context of doing flashcards…not so much in literature) . It can supplement my learning ; in that if I hear the word again and again in spoken context , It may "ring"a bell, so to speak, and the proverbial light bulb will go off and I will remember the meaning. However after having taken, in the remote past, 4 years of German, and then a year or so of french in a classroom context and memorizing many words, to only be very deficient in listening and speaking ability…well let’s say it makes me look askance at simply using flashcards for learning how to understand and speak a non native language.
@Colin
That’s an interesting observation, not dissimilar to my own experience. I too felt I had a “spreadsheet” vocabulary which didn’t really work outside this domain.
@KitKat
You are new to LingQ. If you stay here (and I hope you do) you’ll find that, on this forum, people disagree about various things, language related and otherwise - that is the nature of intelligent, robust discussion… you shouldn’t take it personally, but accept that people can chip in with their own views and experiences without necessarily trampling over yours.
By the way, the proverb wasn’t inserted because I felt you should look at it. It just mirrors my own experience of language learning. I will explain the meaning if you like.
Okay, I see what you mean. I apologize for taking your comment to offense. :o Also, I’m interested in what the proverb means to you. ^^ So please explain it if you want to. ^^
Talking about different ways of learning vocabulary, there is in fact a guy who posts on the forum here under the name lovelanguages who likes to learn vocabulary by eating multilanguage dictionaries for dinner. It sounds crazy, but apparently it works. Usually he stirs them into his soup or grates them over his pasta, but I have heard that he sometimes just eats them raw with a knife and fork.
I also think it’s great that you are learning Korean. It’s a beautiful language and I think the day that we recognize that we have reached our desired proficency in Korean, we will be more than satisfied with all the hard work we put into studying it. 힘내요~ ^^ 화이팅!