Stopping the status of a word increasing when reviewing LingQs

I found a thread about this from around six years ago but nothing since so I thought it’s worth bringing up again.

When reviewing flashcards within LingQ, I find that as I answer correctly, the words status automatically increases until the word eventually becomes known. As far as I am aware, there is no way of disabling this, and I find it quite frustrating to the point of me not wanting to review the flashcards, despite them being useful.

I usually like to only review flash cards within lessons. Because I have just read the lesson text, I find that I can answer lots of questions correctly, where I don’t really know the word very well. I would rather manually increase the status of a word once I encounter it in a different context. Some types of flash cards seem to give you an option of manually increasing the status of a word after a successful review which I like, and I think this should be extended to all reviews.

EDIT: Credit to dgbeecher for coming up with a better system. When reviewing LingQ’s in lessons, the SRS interval should be smartly adjusted according to the original due date and when it was last reviewed (à la Anki). Then only when the review interval passes a threshold should the status increase. This allows you to “cram” LingQ’s within lessons without unphysically modifying the SRS due date. Thus, if you continuously review the same LingQ’s on the same day, the status will not change.

2 Likes

Yes, once you correctly answer twice in a row for the same term, its status increase automatically +1. That’s how it always worked.
You can always adjust the words status manually on the Vocabulary tab if you prefer so.

Thanks for your reply. I hope that one day this can be customised in the review settings. Do you think this is something that might be added in the future?

1 Like

I do it like this: I always choose X on “did you get it right?” after the flashcard is turned, that way it never increases automatically, and I choose on all types of flashcards that the status bar is shown, that way I always increase it myself when I feel that I know it.

1 Like

This is a good idea to avoid the problem. I will try this from now on, thanks. Although, for users that like to use the SRS functionality of LingQ, this would really mess things up!

1 Like

If you get a card right twice in a row within a review session, why wouldn’t you want that term’s status to increase by 1? Especially if you are reviewing cards that are due according to the SRS, wouldn’t you want the status to increase so that you would have a larger interval before you see the term again?

I’m asking because I’m new to LingQ and am curious to hear how different people use it. Your preference to keep the status from increasing surprised me, so I was hoping to know your reasons.

Hi! I have only been using LingQ for a few months myself. Generally speaking, I like to use LingQ for lots of listening and reading. I think it’s great how you can import loads of different content and neatly manage it all in one app and access it across all your devices. I love that it tracks the known, learning, and unknown words across all the different content.

I do not use the flashcard feature very often since I feel that I can learn quickly and naturally by continuously reading, listening and reviewing lots of content. However, when I encounter a text that I am struggling to remember the words, I might use the flashcard feature within the lesson to drill that specific vocabulary. Inevitably, the word status will increase from this. However, I think the only way to truly assess your understanding of a word is to encounter it in-context on a different day and see if you can comprehend it without looking it up. I would rather be able to self-assess my knowledge of a word, rather than have LingQ try and do it for me.

Regardless, I think being able to customise how many successful reviews lead to +1 status is something that might interest other people, since different people learn at different rates.

I may give the SRS feature a try soon, but right now I am happy with my progress made by learning LingQ’s in context. Of course, different people learn in different ways, and I think the most important thing is to enjoy the time you spend with the language.

The auto-increase makes intuitive sense but… In reality, I’m a much better test taker in the softball way that Lingq tests you in reviews. So I get ~90% of the review tests correct, but I just barely know a lot of the words it then decides are a 4. I find myself coming across those 4s in lessons and having to tag them back lower to a 2.

I think the review tool could be much better. Each card should be showing you the context from which the word came. Isn’t that what Lingq is all about, contextual learning?

2 Likes

Hi Pete495, and thanks for your detailed response! The way you use flashcards makes a lot of sense. LingQ seems to encourage us to use flashcards in a targeted fashion, and it seems like you’ve found a way to do that: to drill terms for a specific difficult text to make that text easier to read. I may try this myself.

And actually, it is totally logical that these terms should not increase in status during review, because you are not necessarily reviewing them according to the SRS-recommended intervals. In fact, that behvior (to automatically increase status after two correct answers) really only makes sense when users study via the “Due for Review SRS” tab of the Vocabulary section, because that’s the only place where the systems knows when the term was last reviewed. (As a comparison, in a true SRS system like Anki, if you answer a card correctly today, but it wasn’t actually due for a month, then its interval would not change by as much as if you’d waited that month.)

Perhaps the LingQ team should thus limit this behavior so that it applies only when studying terms that are “Due for Review”? Otherwise, introducing customization as you suggest could be useful too.

For me, though, I have put so much time into flashcards (Anki) in the past that I’m kind of sick of them, and have been avoiding them as much as possible in my first week of using LingQ. So, I don’t think much about the status of terms – I think of them as either known or not, and ignore the status increments. Also, I don’t worry about marking something known too early and having to turn it yellow again later on. And I don’t agonize over finding the “perfect” definition; once I’m satisfied with my “sense” of the word and sentence, I move on. We’ll see how this strategy holds up!

1 Like

Hi tparillo. Unless I misunderstood what you are looking for, there are actually ways to have the cards show you the context. In Settings, look for Review Settings, and then click on the various Activities to change what is shown on the front/back of the card. Check out especially the “Phrase” option. Does that give you the options you are looking for? (Or did you already know about those settings, and are seeking something else?)

1 Like

Yes, I think you have nailed it. I should have worded my original post in this way. To reiterate, when reviewing LingQ’s in lessons, the SRS interval should be smartly adjusted according to the original due date and when it was last reviewed (à la Anki). Then only when the review interval passes a threshold should the status increase. This allows you to “cram” LingQ’s within lessons without unphysically modifying the SRS due date, and thus keeping the word status unchanged. Thanks!