Getting the most out of LWT
Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:27 pm
So, the other day I installed Learning With Texts aka LWT on my computer (Yes, I actually did it all by myself! ). And now I'm aksing myself how to get the most out of it.
Up to now, I have been reading paper books, underlining unknown vocabulary, and looking everything up in paper dictionaries (sometimes also online dictionaries). While this method is very slow and time-consuming, it's also effective and great for really learning the words. I find looking something up and copying it out by hand makes you memorize the word easily. Also, you can make Iversenesque wordlists this way.
Now, LWT has the advantage that (in theory) you only have to look up an unknown word once (actually, it's more often when words are declined, conjugated, or mutated). Also, looking everything up via one click in connected online dictionaries is very handy and convenient.
However, I get the feeling I don't really "learn" words this way. I can look them up quickly, but this prevents me from really memorizing them. Also, I tend to focus on single words too much instead of seeing sentences and expressions as a whole. I know there's the "test" option, but I haven't really checked that out yet.
What's more, importing texts is very cumbersome for languages like Irish or Hebrew. There aren't many e-books in Irish out there, so theoretically I would have to scan my Irish books, use an OCR software, and import everything into LWT. That seems like a lot of work. Also, LWT is next to useless for Biblical Hebrew, because you would need to remove all accents, diacritics, and arguably even niqqud signs in order to make LWT work for it. Once again, this would be a lot of work and reading Hebrew without niqqud is really hard.
I don't deny LWT might be great for "big" languages like English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and so on where there are a lot of e-books and even audiobooks available. But I start to feel it might be of limited use for less studied languages and those with a complex writing system.
So, my question is: Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong? Do you have some advice for me how to get the most out of LWT even for less studied languages? Thanks in advance, all advice is really appreciated!
Up to now, I have been reading paper books, underlining unknown vocabulary, and looking everything up in paper dictionaries (sometimes also online dictionaries). While this method is very slow and time-consuming, it's also effective and great for really learning the words. I find looking something up and copying it out by hand makes you memorize the word easily. Also, you can make Iversenesque wordlists this way.
Now, LWT has the advantage that (in theory) you only have to look up an unknown word once (actually, it's more often when words are declined, conjugated, or mutated). Also, looking everything up via one click in connected online dictionaries is very handy and convenient.
However, I get the feeling I don't really "learn" words this way. I can look them up quickly, but this prevents me from really memorizing them. Also, I tend to focus on single words too much instead of seeing sentences and expressions as a whole. I know there's the "test" option, but I haven't really checked that out yet.
What's more, importing texts is very cumbersome for languages like Irish or Hebrew. There aren't many e-books in Irish out there, so theoretically I would have to scan my Irish books, use an OCR software, and import everything into LWT. That seems like a lot of work. Also, LWT is next to useless for Biblical Hebrew, because you would need to remove all accents, diacritics, and arguably even niqqud signs in order to make LWT work for it. Once again, this would be a lot of work and reading Hebrew without niqqud is really hard.
I don't deny LWT might be great for "big" languages like English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and so on where there are a lot of e-books and even audiobooks available. But I start to feel it might be of limited use for less studied languages and those with a complex writing system.
So, my question is: Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong? Do you have some advice for me how to get the most out of LWT even for less studied languages? Thanks in advance, all advice is really appreciated!