Someone just responded to my post entitled “My LingQ Lesson Checklist” on my blog and asked me when I move words to the “Known” category. My response was the following, but I’d like to know what other people think/do:
I move words and expressions to the “known” category on LingQ when I can use them in conversation. This is the true essence of “knowing” something to me. I would adhere to the following scale:
1 – I just saw the word/expression for the first time and am not familiar with it
2 – I recognize the word/expression but can’t remember what it means
3 – I remember what the word/expression means but still can’t use it in conversation (passive vocabulary)
4 – I remember what the word/expression means and can use it in conversation (active vocabulary)
Would anyone agree with me on the above breakdown, or do you see it differently? Looking forward to hearing your responses!
Sounds about right to me. Certainly, I don’t move to “known” until I can use it. So I leave most LingQs yellow for a very long time. I don’t in general bother with intermediate levels (2 and 3).
I move words to known when I have too many yellow words on my Lessons page. I tend to go into the Vocab section and go through pages and pages of lists and batch move words that I have ticked, to known. If I am more or less familiar with a term, know the meaning when I see it in various contexts, I move it to Known. I can still click on my underlined Known words in my Lessons.
Since the overwhelming majority of my known words are learned incidentally, in other words, when I click LingQed, I do not worry about claiming to know words that I cannot yet use. One day I will learn to use some of them, or in many or most cases, I will only be able to understand the word, since my passive vocabulary will always exceed my active vocabulary by quite a bit.
I move words to “known 4” when I recognise it’s meaning in a text. I may not be able to remember the term later, and most likey can’t use it actively; but if I can get through a text without looking up the meaning, I consider it known. I think I’d get really demotivated if I was so strict with myself to only move words that I had an active command of into “known”.
I make blue highlights into yellow highlights other wise known as new lvl 1 words
After a while these all accumalate into the vocabulary page and I then spend time sorting through pages and pages of ONLY the lvl1 words ( sometimes 14+ pages which would be equal to 1400 + words).
The way I sort them is that i do batches of 100 words flash cards. I then go through word by word and assign it a 2 , 3 or 4 using the keyboard number keys. Takes about 3-5 mins to go through 100 words or so.
I set most words to lvl 2 “can’t remember” because honestly alot of korean words look the same to me =p. lvl 3 " not sure" words are few compared to lvl 2 or 4. Lvl 3 words are usually for words i recognize but not 100% sure. lvl 4 “known” words are for words I do know when I read them but doesn’t mean I can use them for conversation.
I manually change lvl 2 or lvl 3 words when i reviewing lessons or if I happen to be reviewing the lessons flash cards but I rarely do this. I wouldnt be able to do this using the vocab page either especially for the lvl2 “can’t remember” words. I have like 60+ pages of them…
At the moment I’m mostly concentrating on creating new lingqs and reviewing those new lingqs and sorting them into the proper word lvl. Usually what happens for me is that IF i remember a new word from the beginning after only seeing 1 once or twice it goes straight to the known words because I never forgot those. Some words just stick from the start… However words i sort into lvl 2 or even 3 tend to take a LONG time for me to grasp so I rarely move those to known words… Sometimes I dont even review any lvl 2 or lvl 3 but for some reason over time they just naturally become known. Things just fall into place randomly.