My usual manner of study is to quickly skim through a text and mark down all unknown vocab, study the heck out of them, then go back and read (and listen) to the text; then, when I feel comfortable, move onto the next text and do the same thing while periodically reviewing past vocab.
I’ve grown pretty jaded of this method (I’ve been using it since I started learning, a few years ago) and want to try something more natural but effective.
What methods do you all use for vocabulary acquisition? I remember reading in the LingQ instructions (if I remember correctly) that it’s best to keep reading/listening, creating LingQs as you ago along and not to worry too much about flash cards/vocab lists. Has anyone had success doing this over a prolonged period of time?
I just keep reading and lingqing. Eventually the unknown words will be understood naturally. I never use flashcards or vocab lists for my french and german
In my case, I read, listen, and when I got dead times, I try to remember few words that I have seen or heard before.
Like I try to go as deep as possible within my memory to retrieve few of the words i am not so familiar with.
Anyway it works for me.
Making Lingqs and your Vocabulary isn’t the same.
Making thousands of LingQs, you can read and undestand even the difficult novels of the belletristic literature.
But will you know all these new words?- Obviously no!
Turning LingQs into your acquired vocabulary is a long process.
If you have a good memory, you can remember a lot of the most important words by repeating them in the podcasts, without paying attrention to the flashcards etc.
If not, you have to repeat from time to time new words using flasghcards or multiple choice (I find the last one more useful and less boring).
But in any case, we have to know at least several tousand words to listen to the authentic texts and to speak.
You can read my article ‘How to study words’ in the English library here:
That sounds like an inefficient method of learning useful vocabulary.
Not all vocabulary will be useful or meaningful to you. There’s no need to force yourself to learn every new word you come across. If a word is important, you will come across it again. Save brain space for words that you find interesting or want to be able to use.
I give myself a soft limit of 5 and hard limit of 10 new words to learn per day, extracted mostly from reading.
If I wish to continue reading after reaching my quota for the day, I will do so just for pleasure and exposure, not worrying about learning unknown words, because again, if a word is important I will come across it again and can add it to my quota on another day.
A ton of vocabulary is learned incidentally this way too, just by seeing the same words often enough.
I quickly go through vocabulary each day from my native language (English) to the target language. Takes only a few minutes. Then just continue as above.
I think this method is enjoyable, personal (learning words important to my life) and most importantly… sustainable.
I read through it once slowly adding LingQs, then I go through the article (I mostly use imported news on here) again faster and then I move onto the next article. I no longer do daily flash cards for review. As long as I keep reading enough, the words will stick anyways. Once in a while, I go to my list of LingQs and move up/down words to a lower or higher status.