LingQ tips # 1 reviewing saved words.

Here is the podcast

In LingQ we called each saved word a LingQ. Over the last few months I have saved well over 4,000 LingQs. That is a lot. Bear in mind that in Russian there are a lot of words, and because there are a lot different forms of each word, you need to save a lot of words, probably more than in English. I do not know how it will work for French or Chinese for example. We will find out.

How can I review so many words. Well I can review them in the order in which I saved them, the most recent ones first. I can look at a list of the last 25, or the last 100 and so on. I can check the hard ones and use Flash Cards to work on them.

I can also list them by importance, that is frequency. I can also list them by status, in other words, by how well I know them. Again I can look at lists of 25, 100, or more. I can check them and use the Flash Cards. In all cases I get to see the word, the phrase where I first found them, and other examples of the words in use.

There is another great way to review them. I can select a new item from the store. Or I can select only those items in my Workdesk that are still Open or New. In other words I selected them the last time I browsed the store but have not yet Updated them. I have not yet finished creating my LingQs in this content item. If I open one of these content items I will immediately see all the words that I have LingQed from other contents already highlighted in yellow. What is more I will see them in a list on the right hand side.

I recently opened a 22 minute long Podcast from “Все так” on Charles Stuart, the English King who was beheaded. There was a great long list of words that I had previously Lingqed. I review these before I start listening to and reading this content item. Invariably these LingQs are useful words, and ones that I am close to absorbing. I Flash Card the hard ones. Then I start the content item and come across these words again. Of course I will create new LingQs in this content and they will show up in some future content item.

Comments

[Ilya]

I just enjoy and benefit the most from seeing the old links highlighted in a new text. (This feature is new to the LingQ; it was not implemented in the old, the Linguist system, was it?) It allows me to spot and instantly review the words and phrases, which were recently unknown to me, while I read a new book. And a new book tends to be more interesting than the one already read. In short, it’s a great feature.

[Chris]

I'm currently using the system for French and German; the former I'm learning from the beginning and the latter I'm refining and trying to improve. Already with German, the number of new words I've learned just through the various content in the store and on the web is serving as great motivation, making the task less stressful and ultimately all the more enjoyable. I think in this case, for refining one's knowledge of a language, LingQ is especially useful.

With French, I'm using the system to learn more or less from the beginning, and only with a small amount of prior knowledge. I'm doing basically the same as you mentioned in the podcast: saving words and phrases, reviewing them, then listening to the content a number of times. Then I go through and flashcard all the words for that content item, to reinforce what I've been learning.

Also, when listening, I try each time to stop thinking through my first language to grasp the meaning of each sentence, or simply recognise by expectation (be it through reading or multiple listens) what the sentences mean. I try to "feel" the meaning, if you will, of each word, as though I am a native speaker of that language. It's quite difficult to do that in the beginning stages, but forcing yourself to listen to content in this way from the beginning has helped to strengthen not only recognition of individual words and phrases, but also the patterns and structures in which those smaller elements are put together. I haven't fully explored the vocabulary section other than flashcarding, so that's something I'll start making more use of.

I think for the first time ever, I've actually committed myself to doing something like this every day. In the past with learning languages, I start slacking off after the third or fourth day!