Thank you for this post. I'm just starting out in Spanish, at around 2800 known words. So would you say that getting to 40k known words while taking time to regularly practice speaking and conversing should get me to B2?

i think it is possible to get to an extremely high level even heavily preferencing reading i cant speak for myself but ive seen it in others, or at least a level where adding on listening comprehension and speaking is massively discounted--the issue is reading *for* the word count rather than letting that add up passively. sometimes i fall into the trap of of focusing too much on the words and not the content, whenever i get swept back up into the actual text the value (and word count itself incidentally) goes up massively

What are the new counts needed for each level? Is there a matrix somewhere I can look at for Spanish?

Hi,

LingQ counts words very generously. Although I am currently at ~75,000 words known for Polish, I can assure you I am very very far away from having anywhere close to the vocab of a native speaker.

Based on my own experience, I would have estimated myself at B2 closer to 35,000-40,000 known words for Polish. I would personally lean closer to LingQ's current estimation and even think it is a bit on the generous side.

Hi Keriamon, 

"Based on what I've researched, to be at a solid B2 level (which should be roughly Intermediate 2 on LingQ), I would need between 8,000 and 14,500 words based on the way LingQ counts them."

Sources?

I'm always amazed when learners come up with "certainties" about the vocabulary size in their L2s, even though the conventional wisdom in SLA research says just the opposite.

See, for example: 

"There is no standard testing method for calculating vocabulary size and the absence of this goes a long way to explain the enormous variation in the vocabulary size estimates and rates of progress among English speaking monolinguals which are reported. A principal cause of variation is how the words being counted are defined: should every different form and meaning of a word be counted separately, or should base or root words be counted together with inflections and derivations as a single lemma or word family."  (page 4 in: https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/29879/2/vocabulary%20size%20revisited_JM_JTD.pdf)

Today "word families" are usually used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_family), but these are not single words. 

"to be at a solid B2 level (which should be roughly Intermediate 2 on LingQ), I would need between 8,000 and 14,500 words"

Hm, what I've seen in my own LingQ stats for Indo-European languages and those of others (Toby & Co.), you should be in the range of 50-70k words in the way LingQ counts them to be on a B2-C1 level (= roughly 2.5 - 3 million words read). And that's a "solid" B2 in my SLA book...

This means for L2s such as Germanic languages:

take your current LingQ word count

divide it  by ca. 5

-> 50k words on LingQ : 5 = ca. 10k words = your "solid" B2 level. 

Polish is another Indo-European language and should therefore be in a similar vocabulary range.  It may be different forNon-Indo-European languages, though.

If you want "real life B2 tests in your L2", here are my current favorites: 

• If you can read / listen to Stephen King's "It" (with ca. 500k words) without any difficulties, then your reading / listening comprehension should be on a solid B2 level.

• If you can participate in a conversation with several native speakers in a restaurant/bar for ca. 1 h despite the fast pace, sloppy pronunciation, slang, humor, and background noise, then you can consider yourself fluent in your L2 - it's nice that, for ex., Oly Richards came to a similar conclusion :-)  

I don't know if LingQ is your only L2 resource and how experienced you were in Polish when you started it on LingQ, butif LingQ is your first and only SLA resource, then you are far from a solid B2 level with only ca. 300k words read...

I think in the way LingQ used to count then, Advanced 1 was roughly equivalent to B2. 15,000 words as LingQ estimates it is absolutely not close to B2, especially for Slavic languages with declensions. I think the way that they've updated it (~50k words for advanced 2 in Russian) is a much better approximating for C1/2, probably more like C1.

i think the issue is that known words is no way to measure actual proficiency; lingq uses it more as a way to estimate how much word count is likely to reflect a level of reading and engagement you've done with the language. its like warren buffet says about book value--it only shows up after the fact/is always trailing behind the actual accumulating value of a growing company, but is the next best thing to measure something in velocity