Iversen wrote:As you can see from the quotes above, the TestYourVocab-site tells you that people who read a lot - and in particular a lot of literature - score higher on the vocabulary tests than those that don't. So gnashing your way through a lot of German novels isn't the worst thing you could do.
The big question is how much attention you should pay to unknown words. Counting unknown words on some sample pages is an excellent way to keep track of your passive vocabulary, but at least in the beginning it would take to much time to look them all up, and it would divert your attention from the simple task of just reading. Personally I would supplement the reading with some separate looking-things-up sessions.
As for the question of a limit for word acquisition: it is probably more a question of time and 'Aufmerksamkeit' than anything else.
This is essentially what I do. I'll jot down the unknown words from my samples but not look them up at that time. Whenever my anki deck begins running dry I'll look up a bunch of those and add them as cards. I typically read on a kindle and I'll check the meaning of a word on there if it is hindering my comprehension or if I'm curious or if I want to see if my guess from context was correct but I don't look up every word I come across and I try to maintain some sort of flow.