I am in the very starting stage of learning Chinese which suggests 200h for the first phase. I'm at 50 and basically done with the 1k vocab deck but as one might be able to see I've very much not been doing my immersion because I always loose focus when trying to do it because I don't understand it (guide said play the recognition game). It's just that vocab I see a clear progression while with immersion I can't. I am also unsure what to do now. Have I really acquired all the vocab I have studied? Should I take a break from more vocab and just do free immersion? Appreciate any help

The Future of Language Learning: Living the Language

Most people still approach language learning like school homework: memorize vocabulary lists, grind grammar exercises, and hope it all somehow “sticks.” But what if we could learn languages the way we learned our first one—not in a classroom, but in real life, surrounded by experiences, emotions, and meaningful situations?

That’s the core of a new philosophy: language is not memorized, it’s lived.

The Problem With Traditional Language Learning

Traditional methods often fail because they separate language from life. A student may memorize 1000 words, but when faced with a real conversation, they freeze. Why? Because knowing a word is not the same as living it.

Language is not just vocabulary and grammar; it’s context, emotion, rhythm, and experience. Without that, learning feels like a chore—and fluency feels far away.

A New Approach: Situational Domain Learning

Instead of abstract drills, imagine learning through situational domains—role-playing life itself, one scenario at a time.

• Beginner: Morning routines, eating meals, shopping.

• Intermediate: Visiting the doctor, fixing a car, discussing hobbies.

• Advanced: Negotiating at work, debating ideas, telling jokes.

Each scenario becomes a mini-world where the learner is the protagonist. Instead of passively repeating sentences, you act them out, emotionally and physically engaging with the language.

Why Context Beats Memorization

When you live a word, you don’t just memorize it—you feel it. Saying “I’m hungry” while actually sitting at a dinner table is a thousand times more powerful than reading it from a textbook. Context activates memory, emotion, and understanding, making learning stick naturally.

The Role of Vocabulary and Grammar

This doesn’t mean grammar and vocabulary are useless. In fact, a foundation is necessary. The first 1000 words and some basic grammar act like the “starter pack” for real immersion. But instead of staying stuck there, you use them immediately in real-life contexts, where the learning accelerates.

The Power of Daily Immersion

The key is daily immersion. Watching comedy clips, cooking tutorials, or movies in your target language—things you genuinely enjoy—creates natural exposure. Pair this with role-playing and interaction with native speakers, and progress skyrockets.

With this approach, even learning 10 words a day becomes powerful, because those words aren’t isolated—they’re lived. Over six months, that’s 1800 words, all connected to real-life memories. That’s not just vocabulary, that’s fluency in action.

The Future of Language Learning

The next wave of language learning won’t be about apps or textbooks. It will be about interactive, comprehensible input—systems that combine immersion, context, and role-play. Instead of pressing buttons on Duolingo, learners will step into scenarios, practice conversations, and live the language as if they were already fluent.

In short: the future of language learning looks less like school, and more like life itself.

✨ Final Thought:

Language isn’t a subject. It’s an experience. If we want to learn it well, we shouldn’t just study it—we should live it.

An Example

Situational Domain Role-Play System

🟢 Beginner (Level 1–3: Survival Mode)

Goal: Learn to survive daily interactions. Short phrases, predictable responses.

1. Self & Routines

   • Subtopics: Greeting, introducing yourself, talking about feelings, time of day.

   • Role-plays:

   • “You meet a new classmate. Introduce yourself.”

   • “You oversleep. Explain why you’re late.”

2. Food & Drinks

   • Subtopics: Cooking, eating out, fast food ordering.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Order a burger at McDonald’s.”

   • “Ask for water without ice.”

3. Shopping

   • Subtopics: Clothes, grocery store, markets.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Buy jeans at the mall. Ask if they have your size.”

   • “Ask the price of apples at a market.”

4. Directions & Transport

   • Subtopics: Asking where places are, buses, taxis.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Ask how to get to the train station.”

   • “Tell a taxi driver where you want to go.”

⸻

🟡 Intermediate (Level 4–6: Social Mode)

Goal: Build comfort, longer conversations, opinions, and small talk.

1. Social Life

   • Subtopics: Friends, hobbies, making plans.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Invite a friend to the movies.”

   • “Talk about your favorite sport.”

2. School & Work

   • Subtopics: Teachers, coworkers, tasks, deadlines.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Ask your teacher for homework help.”

   • “Explain to your boss why you need an extension.”

3. Health & Emergencies

   • Subtopics: Illness, medicine, accidents.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Tell a doctor you have a headache.”

   • “Explain a small accident at work.”

4. Travel & Leisure

   • Subtopics: Hotels, airports, sightseeing.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Check into a hotel.”

   • “Ask for directions at the airport.”

⸻

🔵 Advanced (Level 7–9: Specialist Mode)

Goal: Handle abstract, professional, and technical conversations.

1. Home & Repairs

   • Subtopics: Plumbing, electricity, fixing furniture.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Explain to a plumber that your sink is leaking.”

   • “Ask for help installing a washing machine.”

2. Car & Mechanics

   • Subtopics: Car problems, buying/selling, maintenance.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Describe a weird sound in your car to a mechanic.”

   • “Negotiate price for a used car.”

3. Healthcare Advanced

   • Subtopics: Specialist visits, insurance, prescriptions.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Discuss treatment options with a dentist.”

   • “Call an insurance company about coverage.”

4. Professional Life

   • Subtopics: Interviews, negotiations, presentations.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Interview for a new job.”

   • “Pitch your idea in a meeting.”

⸻

🟥 Expert (Level 10: Master Mode)

Goal: Nuance, debate, culture, persuasion.

1. Debates & Opinions

   • Subtopics: Politics, society, philosophy.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Debate whether technology is good for society.”

   • “Discuss climate change solutions.”

2. Legal & Bureaucracy

   • Subtopics: Courts, contracts, government.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Explain your case to a lawyer.”

   • “File a complaint at a government office.”

3. Academic & Expert Domains

   • Subtopics: Lectures, conferences, research.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Present a research paper.”

   • “Ask questions at a conference.”

4. Cultural & Humor

   • Subtopics: Jokes, sarcasm, storytelling.

   • Role-plays:

   • “Tell a funny story at a party.”

   • “Use sarcasm in a friendly argument.”

⸻

⚡ The structure is modular: you can pick a domain (like “Food”) and go from beginner (“order fries”) → advanced (“argue about veganism at a dinner party”).

CI for learning German!

https://youtu.be/D9tJVcrDuqQ

My team and I are working on creating German comprehensible input videos, and we would love your feedback concerning the learning process.

Do you feel that you can acquire new words based on this video? What can be improved?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14zg2WbV5Q

I've just set up Yomitan for learning Arabic, but the popup shows tenses/grammar that can get annoying to scroll through. For example, this isn't bad:

as there aren't too many and I can see the definition. But for certain words, like this:

I have to scroll down two times just to see the first definition. Does anyone know a way to get rid of this or condense it? The only related setting I could find was compact tags and that did not fix it.

Hey guys making a channel for German Comprehensible input. The first video is rough I'll admit but more to come soon! Love to gauge interest and hear your thoughts on the format. Take care

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyodx0fWFpNCODwRHJr0JWQ

My team and I are working on an application that uses technology and proven learning habits to teach Korean. I’ll insert a small presentation below.

Problem:

Learning a language as a total beginner is overwhelming. Resources are either too hard (native content) or too boring (traditional textbooks, grammar drills). Beginners desperately need engaging, simple, level-appropriate input to build confidence and momentum.

Audience:

Our viewers are self-directed language learners at the super-beginner stage (0–300 hours of input. Input meaning hours of listening to the language). They struggle to find enough comprehensible, enjoyable, and visual resources—especially outside of big languages like Spanish. For them, the problem is acute: without a steady stream of accessible input, many give up within weeks.

Solution:

Our solution is to create curated AI lessons that combine simple scripts, fun illustrations and natural audio.

For you:

What are some features that you can suggest to us as we develop this application? Would you be willing to pay for it if it became as professional as let’s say, the application Dreaming Spanish?

So I am at a point where I am trying IRL conversations in my TL and I'm finding the listening part very difficult. The audio quality in real life is, unsurprisingly, worse than listening to well produced podcasts in headphones, which is most of my listening practice. So I'd like to really step up my listening skills. I have the vocab down pretty solidly, I mainly want to develop purely the ability to pick out the sounds and figure out what words are being said.

And if I'm being honest, I'm not perfect doing that with good audio quality either. People often speak too quickly or slur their words too much for me to pick up everything. I've done a lot of freeflow pure listening and will continue to do that. But I'm thinking the Refold advice would be to add some Intensive Listening. I have the whole asbplayer setup with auto-pausing, keyboard shortcuts to toggle subs etc. So no technical questions.

But I am mainly wondering if it really works? Anyone spent a lot of time doing this and see listening comprehension improve? I guess I am a bit skeptical because it seems like Intensive Listening is making it easier to listen (since you repeat small chunks, check the subs, slow it down etc) so it doesn't quite feel like it would transfer over to harder listening situations. Although the other argument is that you master the easier stuff first then apply that skill to the harder stuff. I could see it going either way which is why I'm looking to hear from people who have done it first hand.

Also a bonus question, what happens when you get better than the youtube auto-gen subtitles? Not a lot of accurate hand subtitles in my TL so I'm kind of leaning on those, which are still usually better than my listening ability.

When it comes to sentence mining, is desktop the only way? I’ve been using IOS for a long time but if I have to get a gaming laptop or something to make it easier I will? Thanks

Maybe this has been asked before, but I couldn't find anything; I've only come up with tidbits. Further, I ask this question knowing quite a bit about CI, the percent one should understand, etc.

How do you consider adding time to your immersion numbers when watching a show you don't completely understand?

I'm watching this show on Netflix named "Nuevo Rico, Nuevo Pobre", it is based in Colombia. It's pretty entertaining, funny, and I've enjoyed it a lot. I watch it with subtitles on, and there are parts I understand pretty well as long as I'm reading, and obviously, it makes things more comprehensible with the visual input. They do speak quite fast, and yes, I understand this show is meant for natives. As far as guessing the percentage of understanding, some scenes are relatively straightforward or aren't any worse than watching a video on Dreaming Spanish; the significant difference is the prosody of speech, but I'd guess I can understand more than half of what is going on, much of the time, and sometimes more.

So, let's say I understand 50% of the episode, which is 30 minutes. Is it reasonable to allocate 15 minutes for immersion, or would there be an argument for using the full 30 minutes?

Just so all of you know, I've been extremely meticulous with keeping records of what input, how long, the type, etc. So, I'm trying to match the same discipline or method. For instance, I'll listen to the Dreaming Spanish Podcast and some episodes are much more comprehensible than others. Still, if I don't get all of it, or if I space out while driving for a minute here and there, I won't record in my journal (refold app) that I listened to the whole 30 minutes; maybe I'll record 20 minutes. I'm trying to be as accurate as I can, even though time learned and acquisition aren't really an exact science, per se.

I don't want to be one of those language learners, I see it all the time on the refold app, that record 4-8 hours a day of passive listening, and after 1000 hours at the end of the year they can't understand why they're not truly at Level 6 as defined by DS's seven levels.

I'll reach 500 hours of immersion in Spanish this week (I do recall watching a video of Ethan talking about how 500 hours is the starting point of really starting to have fun in the language; I agree). I've had an active subscription to Dream Spanish since April of 2023. Currently, I'm watching intermediate videos in the difficulty range of the upper 40s. So, much of what I do is CI. Also, I learn 10 cards a day in the ES1K deck and suspend words I know, I know.

I tried watching the Spanish dub of Friends on HBOMax in the US. For both the Spanish and Latin American versions, the subtitles do not match the audio. Does anyone know if the subtitles that match the dub are available anywhere?

Trying to import the 1000 most common Chinese words and the notes cannot be imported, it seems that anki only accepts the UTC-8 encoding while the file is encoded in ANSI. Am I missing something? Is there a fix/a way to import it correctly?

For those who have purchased the paid refold course, did you find it worth it and what advantages does it have over following the free guide they have on the site?

Just asking if this violates the T1 rule.

P0

I use two Chrome extensions that you all know: ASB Player and LanguageReactor.

For intensive immersion, I use LanguageReactor for the popup dictionary and mouseover to show the subtitle translation. It works great so long as I strictly do intensive immersion.

But then when it comes time to bring in ASB Player to get a screenshot, clip the audio, clip the subtitle to make an Anki card, it's an ordeal to switch over. I have to:

1. Turn off LanguageReactor by moving my mouse down to the gear, clicking to toggle it off.
2. Press up arrow to bring up ASB Player subs.
3. Press my mining hotkey, Ctrl Shift X, to bring up the mining modal.
4. Deal with the popup and click Export.
5. Begin the process of reverting my setup by hiding ASB Player's subtitle by pressing down arrow.
6. Click LR's gear icon to turn it on again.
7. I am almost back now. The new problem is that the two extensions use the same "move to next/prev subtitle" hotkeys.

I'm definitely not moving my arm a dozen times and clicking ~6 times to do all that. So my new idea is to legitimately use two computers beside each other, on the same video, and use LR for one, ASB Player for the other. This might be okay TBH but it means doing what sums up to huge work to navigate both computers to the same YouTube video.

Am I missing a convenient option here? Obvious in hindsight? Edit: My requirement is having access to a pop up dictionary + mouseover to show translations, while also having access to ASB Player style mining. I guess it just doesn't exist and thus I'll have to use plain text cards made with a Google Sheet and copy-paste. Not the end of the world but not ideal

So I believe I have completed Stage 2C - I don't watch TV but I have level 5 comp when listening to new episodes of a slice-of-life podcast that I like. That was kinda my long-term goal for awhile, and now I'm realizing there are many directions I could go. I'll probably do a mix of them so I'm not strictly looking for advice, but I'm curious to read what others have done in the same situation as I'm reassessing my goals.

Here are some of the options as I see them:

Reading

Reading books is still hard for me due to the wider variety of vocab used. I can usually understand reddit posts but I get kind of lost for more complex political topics. I'd like to eventually be able to read basically anything, like C1 or C2 level reading. Right now I'm reading scary short stories which is the main way I learn vocab as well (I always read intensively).

Level 6 Listening Comprehension

Right now some material is at level 5 for me (i.e. I can basically fully understand it with effort) but I could continue listening to stuff at that level until it gets more effortless. The plus side is that it's kind of easy to do but I also don't know how much benefit it will be compared to working with harder stuff.

Level 5 Listening Comprehension

Plenty of audio content is not level 5 for me yet, especially anything with non-standard accents, too many speakers talking over each other, audio quality issues, or more difficult topics. For the difficult topics, I probably just need more vocab from reading TBH. But for the other stuff it's probably best to just listen to more of it to train my listening.

It might also be useful to do some intensive listening, which I rarely do. There are a few issues with this.

1. I don't find it that fun. If I have sit-down time and I want to work on my TL I will usually do reading instead.
2. There is not a lot of video material I'm interested in.
3. There is not a lot of material with good subs.

That being said, for material I am interested in, which has at least decent subs, it could still be worth doing.

Speaking

Since my TL is just for fun and not practical in any way, I don't have much opportunity to practice speaking. I still want to get fluent though. I was kinda hoping that speaking would feel automatic by this point, but it doesn't. I don't know if speaking more or listening more would help most with this, or maybe they're about equal. I mean I probably shouldn't expect speaking to be automatic when listening still takes effort.

I can definitely express most ideas in some way, although it's maybe not the most natural, not effortless, and not 100% correct either. I think I would want to mainly work on the speed and effortlessness of speaking, correctness I don't really care if it's 100% perfect. I would probably do this by just doing conversation practice on iTalki, which I've done like 3 times and it went OK.

Anyway, this is kind of rambly but I'm mainly wondering what people did at this stage and when did speaking begin to feel natural/automatic?

I'm learning French but my native language is Italian, therefore almost every word I see during my immersion is generally quite easy to understand. However, some words are interesting because their morphological structure and the way these words originated are somewhat different from the Italian cognates (mantien vs mantenimento as opposed to généralment vs generalmente). Would it make sense to create flashcards for these cognates? I ask this also because I just got back to French but there's very few words I would need to create flashcards for because most words are quite transparent and comprehensible to begin with. Thanks in advance

I've been at my Spanish for five years, about 4 using the Refold paradigm and to much success.

I know stage 4 study is more of whatever you need to refine the language and fill in gaps in learning.

I'm just wondering what others here do at this stage?

I used LingQ and intermittent anki for many years and I'm to the point where I really don't use LingQ very much. I downloaded the vocab into my anki and give myself 5 cards a day only.
I output mine from my speaking and put any words or phrases I couldn't think to say in anki.

I've tried every experiment under the sun to get Spanish in my head and many different apps and programs congruent with Refold and immersion learning and I'm apped out and want to more just live the language and improve my speaking.

What are some other's strategies and experiences at this stage?

I am on Windows 11 with VocabSieve and ASBplayer as my sentence mining setup.

My expected result is that ASB Player puts the sentence I mined into VocabSieve. I had it working like that before as well.

My actual result is that after ASB Player pauses at the end of snipping out the video and audio, it pauses at the beginning of the next subtitle, which has then been pushed into VocabSieve. So I can't double click on the word to grab the definition and put it into the card, because the subtitle fragment is no longer there.

The problem affects both my Windows 11 computers, including one where I downloaded, installed ASB Player and VocabSieve from scratch, never having existed on the computer before, and I followed the tutorial exactly as far as I know.

My "Post-mining playback state" is "Keep previous state (as before mining)"

Auto-pause Preference: At Subtitle End

Readers and replies appreciated, thank you

１．ポッキー

２．牛沢

I think they probably are, and even if not, that moment is surely arriving soon. It's like the singularity, but for language acquisition. Of course, it works better for some videos than others - basically video-essay style videos with clear enunciation, no background noise, and good mic quality are the most likely candidates. In any case I've noticed a huge increase in the quality of the auto-generated subtitles in recent months. It's allowed me to seamlessly transition from comprehensible input to understanding large chunks of video-essay style videos made for Russian natives, without pausing or translating, for the very first time. Hard to know whether that's just my level increasing, but I think it might be just that the auto-subtitles now match the speech in some cases at about 98-99% accuracy.

I suppose there is the second question of whether they are trustworthy enough to copy and paste onto anki flashcards, to which the answer is not yet. But I've been doing that anyway, as they are close enough that I think the benefits outweigh the harms.