Week 11 target: 10,000 known words.
Week 11 result: 10,351 known words.
So 11 weeks into my French adventure and I have reached a very satisfying landmark: 10,000 known words at LingQ. That is one fifth of where I want to be by the end of 2017 and almost half way there to my target of reaching 22,000 words by the end of June.
Hidden behind that figure is (in my opinion) a much more important number: In the first 11 weeks I have made 16,000 phrasal LingQs. Which means I’ve got that bright yellow highlighter on LingQ and made a note of how a particular jumble of words behave together. How articles and prepositions and adverbs work with pronouns, nouns and verbs. Noticing the tense of a verb, or the gender of a noun. I am seeing patterns everywhere and things are getting clearer and clearer. So I am not just learning words, I am also learning grammar, bit by bit.
Congratulations on reaching a new milestone. I am curious to know what type the material you are going through at 11,00 known words. What are you reading and listening to? How does it differ from your Spanish material? Perhaps, you could expand on your work flow as well. Also, how does it change as you progress through a language?
No problem, if you check my earlier blog entries I expand more on the material I am using and my workflow. In brief, I’m currently using the French LingQ podcasts in the Library, reading one a day. In addition I am reading Dune, which as I explain in a previous post, is achievable at my level because I already know the book very well.
I think I spend about an hour a day reading French. I spend another hour and a bit listening when I am out walking or doing other things. This listening is all from the LingQ French podcast series, and I am listening to each episode about 10 times (but not in a row, all shuffled together over many days - a bit like an SRS).
I fully expect my plans to change, but for the moment I’ve got this rough idea of working at French for 100 weeks, focusing first on reading (1-25), then listening (26-50), then writing (51-75) and finally speaking (76-100). That doesn’t mean NOT doing the other activities, just making one of the skills my main focus. That’s why I’ve got weekly targets for reading at the moment and nothing else.
Thanks for sharing. I have looked through some of your prior posts on reading offline with a kindle and using lingq afterwards. I’m going to experiment with that because reading novels on lingq is not that great. I think I’ve been getting ahead of myself on the type of books too. I’m going to stick to easier ones. I will take a look through your blog for some more ideas.
Reading books on LingQ vs reading on a kindle… Reading in LingQ you can tackle much harder material because of the support your lingqs give you. Kindle is good (because of the built in dictionary) but not as good, so I find you do have to read easier books this way. For example I am reading Dune at the moment on LingQ - it would be far too difficult to read on a kindle. When I go on holiday over the summer and just have my kindle with me I will take something a bit easier.