Vocabulary on LingQ

I’m curious is to how some of you learn Vocabulary on LingQ? Which of the four methods have you found to be the most effective in learning vocabulary? Thanks in advance!

“Which of the four methods have you found to be the most effective in learning vocabulary?”

Four methods?

Sorry, I should have been specific. By the four methods I mean the cards, cloze, dictation, and multiple choice that are on LingQ.

I don’t use dictation, and use the different methods in reverse order. Multiple choice first as that is easiest for me. Then Cloze. Then cards as I find that this is the most difficult as there are no prompts. I use these 3 as one exercise

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I think it’s really up to you - probably whichever test you enjoy the most will help you progress the most. I don’t really enjoy doing flashcards so I’ve never spent that much time studying words in flashcards. Instead, I try to learn new words by encountering them more often. Each time I see a word that I don’t remember I look it up to refresh my memory. I end up having a lot of LingQs at Status 1, 2 or 3 that I already know, and I’m sure if I studied through Flashcards I would be more diligent about increasing the status of words that I have learned. But in the end, if I don’t really enjoy flashcards then I’m probably better off avoiding them, especially since I’m learning languages for pleasure :slight_smile:

Try them all out and see which you like best!

I don’t like flashcards so don’t use the flashcard review section on LingQ. For me it feels more effective to encounter LingQs in new text and change their status manually depending on how confident I feel about them. Once words have reached status 4 I start LingQing phrases of 2 or 3 words that include that word, and this way I get a better and better understanding of how the word is used.

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I make it my first priority to read a tons (like 800,000 to 1,000,000 words) and encounter the words in different text. overtime I start changing the status of words as I read them in text. after two or three weeks or intervals that your comfortable with. you can shuffle through 100 or 200 flashcards just to consolidate to your self words you’ve already learned. sometimes its faster just to look through more words at a time from the vocabulary page view though… but I’ve done the flash card thing before, and it can get old quickly, its better to put most of your focus on reading then using flashcards to just briefly glance through and change status of words you feel comfortable with.

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The first 1000 words you have to learn by any methods, but you have to learn them by heart.
It would be your nrcessary base. I prefer the multiple choice because it takes not much time.
But after that you don’t have to learn all words by heart, you can look them up, listen again this podcast and go to the next one and gradually you keep the most popular of them in mind and omit less useful words.

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Does this mean that you do your reading via LingQ? I am wondering how to tackle reading if the stuff I want to read is in paper format, so not LinqQable

Well I ran across this problem when I was learning Spanish. I had a 567 page Spanish paper back book (Un-LingQable) which was quite advance in word content. I struggled all the way through it over a long period of time. But reading wasn’t fun. in fact, the vocabulary of the book was so in depth, I was underling every unknown word and having to look it up (Time waster)… As I look back I realize that it would have been way more beneficial to do most of my reading here at LingQ first. Through the LingQ library and using other content that is LingQable. Once you have Increased your known words substantially and read a lot, you will be way better suited to tackle outside material…

LingQ offers you a quick look at the meaning of unkown words which is important to grow your vocabulary. otherwise you keep skimming over these unknwon words without being sure of what they mean… So in my opinion it is more efficient and less time consuming to grow your Vocab first here through the LingQ process then tackle outside material once you have a high known word count and words read count on LingQ…

& Now that my Spanish is advance I can enjoy regular non LingQable books without struggling so much. And when I run across words I’m not sure of now. I can make a pretty much an intelligent guess through context of the meaning of a difficult word.

Unfortunately Dutch is in beta with much more limited content!

ah I understand. well that may require a bit more of a hassle with importing content into lingQ, and most things are without audio. but it can still be worth the struggle ! especially when you compare it to the alternatives.

I don’t use dictation. I don’t like to practice listening from the computer voice because it could be wrong. For that case, I usually copy the word and type it into forvo.com and listen to a native pronunciation on that one.

The only thing I don’t like about the SRS here is your words get promoted to ‘known words’/4 too easily. All it takes is a few lucky guesses for it to get added.

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Hi ! =)))) Where ARE you? =)))) I’m always there, on Skype! :wink:

I use flashcards exclusively. For me, I find that it’s best to learn a word in the context of other words, because then I solidify my understanding of that word as well. Cloze is a little better, I think, for activating ones vocabulary, but I try to deliberately write for that (I’m learning Polish, so it’s not enough to simply pick the right word out of 4, but to understand what case I should be using). For a similar reason, I don’t bother with diction.

Have you tried OCR? Another way which simultaneously allows you to scan the material you want to study is to type it up and import it.

Yes, indeed and I am importing the vocabulary from my Skype conversations - but to copy type long screeds of Dutch sounds like an astonishingly boring use of time!!

What I AM doing at the moment is to import a few days at a time of a sailing blog, which is fine - but one blog will be enough. The problem then is what next?

I don’t particularly want to be importing news items, If I wasn’t learning Dutch, I would be reading a range of modern fiction. I spent my professional life needing to be on top of the news etc, and now I am at a stage of my life where I want to explore other things.

I have found Dutch fiction I want to read but it’s all paper based and I can think of no means of importing it…

And audio is even more difficult…

I am scratching my head…