How many LingQs is too many?

I have to say, I’m more on the conservative side and for what time I can fit in to this site, I can do about 1500 words of reading, followed by about 30 minutes of active/attentive listening, and I do about 20-25 LingQs.

The next day, I can usually recall about half of them, which is fine, because I usually read through the lessons again anyways to reinforce my knowledge of those words.

I see some people go to the extreme of doing at least 250 LingQs a day. Is this excessive? It seems for learning ‘drinking out of a fire hydrant’ seems a bit overwhelming and dare I say, a waste, but being strung up on slow progression is a bit of waste as well.

Is there any merit towards making this many LingQs?

The more the better is my attitude.

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I don’t agree with Steve in this point.
We have to make so many lingqs every day, how many we can absorb.
Otherwise it is for me some useless work- lingqing just for lingqing!..
But I think - there are different opinions about it.

That’s my approach as well. I create at least 200 lingqs a day. It doesn’t mean I have to learn 200 words that day.

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I agree with Steve and Grigo92.
While reading I’m lingqing. I never ‘learn’ words.

Haha. :wink:

But I’m learning while reading.

PS
At the moment I don’t have much time for Lingq.
But in the past, I was a very active " Lingqer"

I have created as many lingqs as possibles the last couple of weeks, normally I can’t recall them the first time but about the third or fourth time I see them in different lessons I can. This is working great for me, yesterday I did 317 lingqs.

You’re a robot. That doesn’t count!

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That way It´s also good that you get “hints”, so that you still have to validate your LingQs, not just clicking blindly. You always absorb something.

Yes, I think everyone has to go with the prevarable speed and way: somebody runs because he believes that many thousands of lingqs help him by studying, but I prefer to go step by step absorbing as much as I can deeply , almost ready to use and enjoying the new and new unexpected beauties of the new language.

I only believe better is good if the person has a good work ethic and if drinking from the fire hydrant words for them.

If a person does 250+ LingQs a day, I don’t see it beneficial, if the person is lazy to begin with and blindly clicks “Got it” for every flashcard.

I start to see the merit of doing more and more LingQs a day the more advanced I get. I felt starting out, I needed to be strict and allocate my attention to specific targets in mind and expose myself to different rules and words at a slow rate so I didn’t become overwhelmed.

At least I feel, when I’m more advanced and developed good study habits, if I don’t remember a fraction of my 300 lingQs I made last night, then it’s not really a big deal.

I’m with you on absorbing as much as I can and getting the most out of each word.

I’ve noticed the pattern on this site is people enjoy sprinting through things with the mindset of “eventually I’ll get it” whether through just brute force or osmosis.

Nothing wrong with that style, it’s that working at a slower rate works better for me so far. Better learn to walk first, then run I suppose.

Though working slow does has its pitfalls. Eventually one has to move to harder material.

I think I understand your question, but it’s seems to based on an odd premise: that the number of linqs is based on a conscious decision informed by some learning strategy.

Rather than being a mere tool you have at your disposal, the LingQs are “The” core of the system here. To learn the language, you need to know words. If you don’t know the words (ie can understand them already or from context), then you need to look them up. That means creating a lingq.

The more you don’t know, the more you need to learn, the more lingqs you need to create.

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Correct. I am mostly driven by the desire to read and listen to content of interest to me. The more material I read and listen to, the more LingQs i need to create in order to understand what I am reading,. I am also motivated to increase my vocabulary and know from experience that if I keep reading, I will meet these words, these yellow highlighted LingQs, again and again and eventually they will stick.

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I do the same like Steve. It works fine for me.

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As I’ve mentioned before, it pays to describe exactly what you are doing so people’s answers to your post are relevant. After reading your posts on this thread, I’ve learned that you are doing flashcards, and I’m guessing a pretty high percentage.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people like me who are doing zero flashcards, and making no attempt to manicure their lingQs. To answer your question, you need to know how much time people have to study and what percentage of it is spent on flashcards and fiddling around with their lingQs. For example, someone who can study 2 hrs a day, wants to spend half of that time to do 100% of the flashcards etc, might want to limit herself to 30 lingQs per day. I made that number up - my point is just that you could set up some guidelines to figure out how many lingQs are “too much”.

But I don’t think that’s the purpose of your post. It seems you are trying to tell people that they need to reduce their number of lingQs in order to “master” them before moving on, by using flashcards etc. So it would be more helpful to ask “what percentage of study time should be spent on flashcards/etc?”

I personally believe that if you want to use lingQ as the main/only way to get your vocabulary, there is a sweet spot, meaning you should do some flashcards, but not all. When I’m trying to add a lot of vocabulary in my studies, I try to spend 10-25% of my time with anki, etc. I think getting vocabulary from conversation is much more efficient than reading though, so I rarely apply this to lingQ. I don’t do any flashcards here, meaning I get a high number of lingQs.

Some other questions you might ask:
What percentage of my flashcards should I do?
Should I be building vocabulary from reading alone?
Should I manicure my lingQs?
Does it make sense to restrict myself to reading and listening?

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This is my first time learning a new language, and I’ve been actively using Lingq for some four to five months (despite making my account over a year ago!)

To be honest, I never really consider my learning methods. I do what’s fun. At the moment, I’m getting my favourite podcasts transcribed and going through them. What’s my conversion rate on known words? Am I learning quickly? I can’t really say.

However, I know that I can understand a lot more japanese than I did five months or so go, and I’m having a one hour conversation a week. The progress is almost a bi-product of my hobby, haha!

Some days I’ll learn 15 words a day, some days 35, but I’m really not concerned.

I just make the LingQs out of necessity. If my latest podcast requires 250 LingQs, then so be it.

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Way to go!

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I experienced the opposite. The more advanced I got, the less LingQs I created.

When you first start out, you will LingQ like crazy because you won’t know any words. Of course you won’t remember most of them. The thing is the more you read, the more you will see them again and again. I wouldn’t worry about it. Definitely don’t spend a majority of your time flash carding, just keep reading. Eventually, after several months, the amount of LingQs you create on a daily basis will drastically be reduced. I am at around 75,000 words right now and I would say that for every 100 words I put in the known category, I only now create 10 LingQs. This was definitely not the case when I first started out.

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