Hi, I’m new to LingQ, I’ve only been here for about a week - and so far I love it. I’m using it to learn Japanese. I’m not exactly a beginner when it comes to Japanese (Obenkyo claims I know about 4000 words). Therefore, so far it’s been mostly about teaching the system which words I know - I’ve added about 1900 in the first week. But there’s still a lot of words I don’t know yet, and I’ve accumulated a lot of LingQs. And by a lot I mean 465. At first I was unconcerned, because the “Due for Review (SRS)” view in my Vocabulary said “zero”, and I could easily keep up with reviews of the 25 daily LingQs. (I use Cloze exclusively. I’ve been doing flash cards for a long time, and I feel like Cloze is just what has been missing from my reviews. It makes me read whole sentences, providing invaluable context for my vocabulary. I actually use the language while reviewing. Doesn’t get much better than that.)
But now, a few days later, the system says I have 195 terms for review. This makes me worried that I might have been going at it too fast for my own good. I would therefore like to ask a few questions about LingQs:
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Do I have to keep up with reviews of the “Due for Review (SRS)” LingQs? Or is it enough to review the 25 daily LingQs, provided I maintain exposure to the language through reading? It would seem the answer is simply “Just review it all”, but I know that with the amount of materials I want to cover (I plan to read whole books on LingQ) I would get over 100 LingQs for review every day. So I’d either have to spend hours reviewing every day, or slow down significantly - which brings me to my next question.
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Is there a maximum number of LingQs I should be keeping? If I reach a certain number, (say 100, or 300, or 500), should I wait till I get rid of some by learning them, before I start adding new ones? This would once again slow me down and would be against Steve’s philosophy - lots of exposure through reading and listening, as little reviewing as possible.
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Does the system turn LingQs into know words on its own? If I’ve repeatedly answered a LingQ correctly during reviews, will the system assume I’ve learned the word and make it a known word? Or do I have to do it manually? So far the only way I know of getting rid of a LingQ is by clicking the green symbol that says “Known - never in SRS”.
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What’s a good rule for when to mark a LingQ as known? Like I’ve said, I’ve made many LingQs. I’ve learned many of the words since, but I’m reluctant to mark the LingQs as known when I encounter them, because what if I forget the word as soon as I remove the LingQ? When would be a good time to mark the LingQ as known? Should I wait until its status is 4? (that won’t happen very often if I don’t review the LingQs in SRS constantly). Or can I just go ahead and remove the LingQ if I’m fairly sure I know the word?