Hi everyone!
I just signed up for LingQ and trying to figure out how to use it to study Spanish. I understand it is all about immersion but i have a couple questions about the best way to study. Hope someone can help.
How slow should I move through a lesson? Meaning, should I not keep going with 100% comprehension or should I not worry so much about that?
Sometimes there are phrases that I don’t understand even though I understand each individual word (or click on the individual words but don’t understand the whole). How do you recommend I preceded with these phrases? How do you learn them? Should I just keep going and hope that the phrase comes up again to figure it out in context?
Thanks for any help you might be able to provide. I’m excited to learn more Spanish! I Haven’t learnt much in the last few years and am hoping LingQ will push me to the next level!
I can say how I started using LingQ. My thoughts have changed as I’ve progressed, but these changes could be level specfic and might be not be appropriate starting from the beginning again. It also might be different if I were to start from scratch on LingQ having progressed far in one language on Lingq…
The one thing I will for sure suggest is not to stay on the same lesson until you feel you know every word 100%. I do think repeating lessons in the beginning is beneficial (both reading and listening), provided they are short, less than 5 minutes (maybe up to 10 minutes) of listening time. HOWEVER, if I personally don’t know all the words after a handful of times, I’ll move on. Do not become stuck on the same lesson trying to learn every single world. There will be words that will not stick very well and you don’t want them to hinder…there will be many more words that DO stick. Best to move on and see the sticky words in other contexts where it might trigger something in your mind.
Also, I think after a few times, you’ve kind of memorized the story so in some ways I feel the lesson is no longer useful at that time.
Also, by “know” a word, I mean, knowing that word in context. Do not try to assess whether you can USE that word in spoken speech off the cuff. You’ll never progress very fast if you do this. Your spoken vocabulary will always be less than your passive (reading vocabulary). Even in your own language this is true.
So, in short, I’d probably repeat lessons a handful of times, reading. Listening you can listen as many times as you can stand it. I’d give some time between reading too. Maybe read a couple of times now…then try again later and even the next day. However, most of the beginning words will be repeated in other lessons and beginner material anyway so this may not be all that necessary (these are where I might change my approach now…probably less repetition of the same lessons, if at all).
Highlight the phrases, make a lingQ out of them and save the meaning. I honestly don’t do anything with them afterward (I don’t bother with the SRS flashcard style reviews on LingQ). However, the act of highlighting and getting the meaning of these phrases, and saving them will help you to learn them. You’ll see the most important phrases fairly regularly so you will learn them. Some, maybe you’d want to spend some time with SRS or flashcards. Your preference. (Like I said, I don’t bother, but some folks do like to do SRS). Caveat…I DID do Memrise before I found LingQ so I did have the Beginner 1/A1 level already in my pocket so to speak. I think in these beginning levels it may be helpful to do SRS or memrise or something to get some of these basic words ingrained, but I know some folks have started from scratch on LIngQ. No repetition, no SRS and made it to advanced levels.
If you don’t understand a particular sentence, just move on. You might look up all the words, but still not know what the sentence means. In that case, just move on. It probably has some maybe complicated grammar that you aren’t aware of. Alternatively, an option you might be willing to try is to use Sentence Mode. It only shows you one sentence at a time and it has the option to show a translation of the entire sentence. This can be pretty convenient because you can (a) check if your understanding of the sentence is correct, and (b) if you don’t understand the sentence, you can find out then compare it to the words in the sentence (sometimes it happens that one of the words you’ve looked up has a second or third definition that you weren’t aware of. But when in doubt, just move on. Don’t waste your time, when it could be better used.
You can lingQ phrases. Up to 7 words, is it? You just highlight the multiple words and then select a community definition or look up the phrase in one of the dictionaries. You only want to lingQ phrases. Don’t lingQ just individual words together because that’s not very helpful. Only lingQ the words together, if they have a separate meaning or perhaps are always used together, your choice. Then next time you are reading, you will see the lingQed phrase, your brain will concentrate on it as it’s highlighted, and you can easily click on it to check the definition.
Sentence mode translation is great. I work in it most of the time when starting with a new lesson. It helps to get meaning where the individual word meaning may not make sense as often times the word meaning changes in certain phrases. I find it also is very helpful in keeping track of the story…keeping you more engaged. Especially if the lesson is particularly difficult with lots of words. In a big sentence you may have many words to look up and you tend to lose track of what’s going on in the sentence. Reading the translation gets you back to the story. I often like to work through the words in the sentence, read the translation of the full sentence, and then try to read back through the target language sentence and now “visualize” everything with the newfound knowledge. Not particularly exhilirating with a short sentence, but those longer ones it is really really helpful.