I think Refold does invent some of the details of their method, in order to differentiate themselves from just pure immersion. But overall, I think 95% of their method is right. Just immerse, and make your immersion as comprehensible as possible.

I completely agree with you about reading. It’s probably the single best way to learn a language. Obviously you have to listen and speak but you can achieve an enormous vocabulary just through reading. After 5 years of reading French I understand 99.9% of the words when reading classic French literature. And, yes, I regularly measure my percentage of unknown words. I’m sure other people can achieve that with enough time spent reading, especially if you love to read.

You've managed to articulate many of the grievances I've noticed myself following the Refold method fairly religiously. Like you I'd still consider myself a Refolder (seen you around in the German discord), but I think the roadmap needs another rework with these points in mind. I've added about an hour of reading per day and my German vocabulary has skyrocketed. And heavily wishing I'd started outputting 6 months ago, but what can you do except know better going forward and for the next language. Great video!

I think for Japanese specifically, some of the worry of the Refolders vis a vis reading is that you can very realistically be in the process of memorizing a vast swathe of kanji, starting with the meaning rather than the reading, and the chance that you're going to subvocalize those meanings in your native language is super high because you'll be looking at 紙 and your mind's eye will immediately jump to seeing the word "paper" instead of seeing the word かみ. Which again shows Refold's primary target to be Japanese learners, since a native English speaker learning Spanish, for example, isn't really going to have a problem seeing the word "papel" and subvocalizing the English word instead.

10:30 this is actually a really good point and something I realized at one point myself. I conditioner myself to be so comfortable with not understanding the content I was immersing in that I would catch myself not even attempting to understand. I would basically just watch whatever it was passively and my brain wouldn’t even try to decipher what was being heard. I don’t think this is an issue with the method itself so much as a danger of becoming too comfortable with not understanding and falling into the trap of thinking you don’t need to make any kind of effort and can watch shows purely for enjoyment. If you get too comfortable I think your brain just tunes out the dialogue as background noise, so I think you need to actively pay attention so your brain realizes that what you are listening to is important enough to be puzzled out. I think this is an advantage of doing sentence mining, because every time you make a sentence card, you are signaling to your brain that this is important information. All this is in Refold I believe but I can see how the community might focus too much on being comfortable and having fun and neglect the focused attention component.

Hey, great job addressing all of this stuff! A 30 minute video with so few cuts and just talking is an impressive feat by itself! Sorry my post is gonna seem ridiculously long... but I like to be thorough in these things. 😂 (it's not to hate, it's just because your video has a lot of stuff in it). The point at 6:49 - that sometimes it's fun just to notice stuff etc., I would say that Refold just hasn't publicised their views on that quite as well, because Ethan actually helped me work on a video that specifically talked about having fun in a language you're still not good at. The video was kind of a cross of one that I had wanted to make, and the fact that Ethan wanted to be able to point to a video addressing your exact point here. I won't link it but it's about 5 videos back in my timeline (with the thumbnail "I suck"). It's true that Refold misuses the term "ambiguity" and when Matt initially said that, he may have misunderstood the word or he may have been using it to just mean "ambiguous TO to learner". His English wasn't actually that great when he was doing a lot of the earlier Q and As that formed the basis of Refold. (Yeah, I know he's a native speaker but his English sounded like someone who went through school half in a different language... because he did.) But it's not really a big deal because everyone in the community has come to think of "tolerate the ambiguity" as meaning what it means in that context. I think what Refold is saying is: You won't increase comprehension by JUST knowing more words. I don't think they're saying "You will get to 100% comprehension by watching and doing nothing else". There are quite a few different pieces of Refold addressing that very question (e.g. "How much time spent watching/reading vs studying words/phrases?") When it comes to the early output thing... I'm not sure who is banning anyone from speaking. Maybe there are some elitists in the community but no one has come after me with a pitchfork even though I'm a confessed early outputter and recently stated that I'm trying to go to Mexico after what will be barely 5 months of learning Spanish. Again, in multiple Q and As and videos on his channel, Matt has addressed the difference between output based on what YOU want to say, vs just copying certain sentences from natives etc. Again, maybe they need to make it more public, but I don't think they are as draconian on it as you seem to think. About the hours per day thing... I actually think that someone who learns for 4 hours a day may actually learn MORE than twice as much as the person who learns for 2. Maybe that's extreme but certainly 2 will be more than twice as good as 1. It's complicated to explain but basically picture a car on a hill going slowly up, but whenever it stops (i.e. you stop learning for the day), it actually slips back a bit. By going up for twice a long, you also reduce the amount of time you slip back down the hill. I think a LOT depends on the methodology and the language in question (e.g. is it Chinese for an English speaker, or Spanish for an Italian speaker?), but from my experience, the weeks that I did a LOT of Swedish were the ones that pushed me to a whole different level that I had previously felt was a door that continued to get further away. I am also not saying that it's realistic to spend 8 hours a day, or even 3. I have kids and work for myself (which means working a LOT). At the moment I spend an average of about an hour a day on Spanish. But I do think I'd progress more than twice as fast if I spent 2. I agree with your point about reading. To be honest, I'm not good at reading without any audiobooks or anything, and I mean even in English. Not because I can't read, but because I have destroyed my attention span like many others have this century. It's just hard to get yourself to keep going, but I do think it's important, EVEN IF only from a mental strength point of view. So because I can barely get myself to just sit and read in English or Swedish, I don't much like my chances in Spanish. I need to meditate more, use my phone less and basically develop a better attention span. But I do think that at first, reading along with an audiobook is great. I don't know what Refold says about graded readers but yeah, I don't have a problem with graded readers. I think children's books are normally way too hard. I was easily a B2 in Swedish before I could comfortably read children's books. I also completely agree with you about new tools that allow you to look up words quickly. One problem I have with many of these tools is that they need an active internet connection. Honestly, my best chance of doing ANYTHING is when I go into a different room and turn my modem off. Anyway, again, great job addressing all of this. I'd be interested to see what Ethan and the team had to say about it.

Hey, that's me at 13:13 :) I agree that at some point, you do have to start speaking in your target language to improve your speaking. That said, I think the point at which you're sufficiently ready to speak varies based on your target language and the language you're learning. Personally, I'm 683 hours into my Russian immersion (including 484 hours of listening), and as a native English speaker I know that if I put that same amount of time into French, I'd be a much farther along with French since it's closer to English than English is to Russian. Just my 2 cents!

Honestly the Mandarin companion graded readers are very compelling and use very few words (starting at 150 words). It's definitely possible to write a graded reader series for beginners (who know a few hundred words) that incrementally builds up words hitting a 2-3% target. That said, I also generally read things outside the 2-3% range. Lookups on my phone are definitely not instantaneous, and if there were too many words to lookup in a sentence it would definitely be a problem, but it's still pretty doable. That said, 50% unknown words sounds very challenging and frustrating even with a pop up dictionary. I think I'd forget half the words that I'd looked up in the sentence by the time I'd gotten to the end of it. That's literally every other word unknown. On the other hand, it's also pretty hard for the percentage of unknown words to be down that low since the most common words are so common.

A key point to make concerning the 5th point at 15:11 of discrediting education, is that modern language teaching actually does immerse students in a natural process as a large part, if not the majority of the lesson. It's a question basically of what kind of methodology you've been getting. Good language teaching classes focus on a constant fusion of the meaning with the language, so the conveyance of that meaning is the priority always, and needs to be happening pretty much all the time, and also with every student simultaneously. Basically comprehension deepens and broadens and sharpens during the class, with attention to the features and forms of the language happening in relation to making better sense of it, so any noticing of structural issues comes in in that framework where it's fused with meaning, and then there are elements of processing and expressing meaning in relation to the same, with any structural issues being related to how to correctly communicate, so its immersion in meaning all the way through, with attention to feature and form being inseparable from that, and focused on meaningfully and manageably in that context. It's true that many courses, and many materials used for those courses, are still unbalanced somehow, often being too analytical and learning form too distant from meaningful communication (either receptively or productively), but better courses and materials do do that, and the trend has been in that direction for decades. True, it's a bit slow, because stuff is created to sell, and students themselves often prefer the look of more old fashioned courses and materials, because they miss the point that by far the biggest thing is the meaning of the language, and less so the 'grammar rules'., etc., etc., that they expect to see and understand throughout the courses. They kind of do it to themselves by creating a demand for a more mechanical approach to learning languages, but language teaching professionals often surprise them by doing things differently. Sadly this even can create conflict, where language students, or school admin who don't know the process properly, think the teacher 'isn't teaching', but 'just making us read and listen to and talk about stuff a lot', etc., etc., etc.

Well said, I agree with basically all of your points. btw what is the tool/website shown at 29:11 and elsewhere in the video?

wow, you really made some great point in this. I believe refold has gained approval mostly due to its inclusive 'just immerse' philosophy. From my experience, some people are simply not willing to put in the work to learn something. The learning process is arduous and you fall down and get back up several times. It takes courage and a bunch of other super powers. Additionally, people have different learning curves and it might not be enough for certain individuals to 'just immerse'. It might take them many years

Appreciate your insights. What's the e reader you use here in the video 29:25

Refold has already come a long way, but it definitely still has a lot of room to improve! Very comprehensive video!

For me, learning grammar on my own was really hard, but taking classes made it much more bearable. People say that school is too inefficent, but I think that its really useful because it gives you direction while you lay the foundation for your knowledge, making it easier to move on to immersion and sentence mining afterwards.

Maybe it's a recent addition, but a large part of the refold roadmap deals with reducing the ambiguity/incomprehension. Obviously not every language will have perfect tools available for doing this (like graded readers or subbed children shows), but the same could be said about every learning method.

I was already a veteran language learner before refold came along so I was looking to integrate what made sense to me and discard what didn’t. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard the argument that you need to be super careful about learning bad habits while speaking. I’m personally against it. I think mistakes are inevitable but people who keep trying to improve will fix their mistakes over time while people who think their output is good enough won’t. They’re obsessed with this idea that you’re going to build bad habits but really you already have bad habits from your native language and it’s going to take a lot of work to mitigate this. I agree with you 100% that reading is fantastic but many many people don’t like reading even in their native language. Good luck convincing them to read a foreign language.

Most of the problems with Refold stem from Matt trying to repackage AJATT to appeal casual learners as a means to make money, which just fundamentally doesn't work since AJATT's entire ideology is aimed at a demographic of people who see fluency as mastery over the language and is one of the reasons why Matt was even drawn to it in the first place. Matt himself got as good as he did in Japanese by spending most of his time reading in the beginning and became heavily focused on listening when he wanted to try and perfect his accent which is not representative of what kind of narrative he started pushing once he realized he could repackage AJATT into a dumbed down version that is more broadly appealing in MIA and then repeating it by dumbing it down even to appeal to almost anyone with Refold, by advocating that people instead spend a lot of their time listening early on to avoid instilling bad habits like sub-vocalizing the incorrect enunciation of words. Though I will say that some of the issues you bring up like people expecting to get results from doing nothing but white noising Japanese or whatever other language for multiple hours a day has never been something anyone was ever encouraged to do, and that is something that any experienced AJATTer/MIAer/Refolder/whatever pointless tag someone refers to themselves as/etc, would always make abundantly clear to be completely unhelpful, because looking up what you don't know is the basis of turning something incomprehensible into something comprehensible.

what app do you use for reading? like at 28:45 or 26:55

I think this video was a good criticism. For me personally on the point of delay speaking and weeb centred learning is that pure input anki cards worked great for me in mandarin but in european languages i felt that output cards really helped me learn more effectively. Maybe something to do with reading characters being more difficult. On the points about 'tolerate the ambiguity' vs 'you should understand almost every word' it never occured to me when I was reading through their stuff that they meant literally sit with content you dont understand at all, especially because of the influence of Krashen on the method I thought the point is having as few unknown elements as possible and progressing with an x+1 type immersion, but yeah I agree that is not always possible at all finding resources like that becomes almost impossible once you're past the beginner phase and not yet super advanced either. With tolerate the ambiguity maybe a better way of putting it would be increase your tolerance to cognitive load.

Holaaa!. Este fue un gran video. Cuando descubrí la metodología de Refold, creí que era lo más revolucionario que había encontrado para el aprendizaje de idiomas. Pero cuando la puse en práctica me di cuenta que tal vez llevaban un poco al extremo sus planteamientos. Lo que realmente llevo conmigo es que también es posible aprender mediante la inmersión comprensible y no solo los libros dedicados a este fin.

I’m not doing Renfold but a comprehensive immersion program that doesn’t want you to speak until like 600 (but more like 1000) hours. If I just watch the input at 3 hours a day I’m earliest six months before I speak. I understand the concept as I don’t know much vocabulary to form sentences after 30 hours in but a vow of silence doesn’t make sense to me. So I’m trying to figure out how to use the Anki decks for vocabulary, I have a basic grammar book I’ll be studying daily, I’m reading a little, words I’m not sure of I’ll look up as you suggested and I’m repeating words and learning short phrases, eventually I’ll find a native speaker or tutor to chat with. Prior to the internet, when access was much more limited, people learned languages through classroom study. Most who say they studied for years, never got to use it in real life settings, if they did while learning traditionally I’m sure it would have been very helpful. I guess I wish there was a program that leaned on CI while understanding balance is needed.

I deep dove into the refold stuff a year ago and watching this video is really strange for me. All the "wrongs" in refold derive in my opinion from "ambiguity". Some of the people misinterpreting the refold guidelines isn't really refold's fault. Why haven't I interpreted those that way? Why do I have a different idea? These title would be more accurate: "Some mistakes those make who use the Refold method" or "What you might have gotten wrong about Refold".

In my experience with Refold, the idea is solid, it can just lack the nuance sometimes necessary that may throw people off. And be too harsh on straying from the set path. One example is how it emphasizes T+1 sentences. If you're a beginner not much will have just one unknown word. That got me stuck for a while because I try and follow things exactly. Or downplaying grammar. Sure you don't NEED it. But it helps massively speed up comprehension in some cases. All that being said, I would still tend to be hard on classroom learning in general. There's a reason why Americans all have to take a language in highschool, yet almost no one can speak anything besides English. There's a reason Japanese are required to learn English, and yet almost no one can speak it. So it's important to have "good" classroom learning, because there's a lot out there that won't help at all. Korea and Europe are examples of successful classroom learning.

Hey, just wanted to say it is amazing and refreshing to see someone with a balanced mindset that has more experience with a number of languages talking about stuff and not making up any scientific theories out of their head. You are amazing, for me you were right about 100% of the stuff you said. I think people who made criticism, for what I read down here, are just people on sunken cost fallacy being in deny.

I've already been in my Japanese learning journey on and off for a few years now so I would call myself an intermediate to pre-advanced level. I discovered Refold recently and I do agree with the comprehensible input part, where it encouraged me to take the plunge and start consuming more native media with the TL subtitles, focusing more on getting the meaning and not stressing out about getting everything 100% first time. This works for me because I already have a basis of vocab/grammar which allows me to understand at least 40-50% of what was being said. I think what makes immersion hard for beginners is the lack of toolbox words in the TL that they already know. I think there's no shame in looking to traditional language study resources like textbooks to learn those basic grammar structures and vocab until they get that down. I think immersion with native media is better placed for intermediates and above. I do agree with you that their advice not to speak until fluent seemed contrary to other language learning advice I've heard, even from other comprehensible input practitioners. I have heard people say hold off on writing until fluent particularly for languages with different scripts (because you can easily waste time learning how to write kanji strokes when it's more useful to learn reading listening and speaking first), but I think speaking is crucial to learn early on because what's the point of language? To communicate! I think the hardest part of learning a language when you live in a country that doesn't speak it is finding native speakers who will help you practise their language at your level. I haven't tried the refold discord yet so not sure if it's possible to find language learning 'parents' there, but that's been my main struggle at the moment for language learning. My listening's thankfully been improving thanks to the immersion technique by Refold, but my speaking definitely needs more work.

I'm always wary of any approach that claims to be the "one true way". Effective language learners use a very wide range of approaches that suit their preferences and abilities. For example in adults there is a very wide range of ability to learn by induction. People with strong induction abilities can do well with immersion-focused approaches. People like me, at the opposite end of the scale, need to spend more time on structured vocabulary, grammar and output work (which I personally enjoy - because I feel I'm getting a handle on the shape of the language). It's interesting to note that agencies like the FSI, who have studied effective learning with thousands of students over decades and simply have to produce results, use an eclectic approach. Obviously there is a good deal of focus on input, but also on structured learning and output. For most people, the middle path will work best.

I think a key point in this video that shed missing is the emphasis on intensive active immersion. Refolds method says intensive active immersion takes work. Trying to genuinely have fun with that is next to impossible but if you embrace the pain and challenge and that becomes fun. With that said the one area I think needs to be updated is the emphasis on understanding multimedia like Netflix shows without subtitles before moving on to output. Multimedia these days has shown to be difficult to understand without subtitles even in your target language. She also brings up a great point about there being a lack of content for less popular 2nd languages

This video was fantastic. A lot of great points argued well and sums up some problems I had with refold but hadn't really put fully into words yet.

My take on the tolerating ambiguity, is that while starting learners may atart off with childrens stories and other things that will always be at their comprehension, if a mew leaner get bored pr wants to watch a show that is higher level but more fun for them, they shouldnt stress about wjat they cant comprehend and just focus on picking out the words they can comprehend. As for the little focus on reading, i kinda agree. Matt more recently with his obsession with having perfect pronunciation has the, maybe true, idea that tour accent will turn out better if you immerse with hearing more than speaking. For the average learner though, it is not worth slowing your progress in comprehension just to come out with a better accent, and reading is definitely a vital tool in gaining comprehension.

Subtitles: In English shows subtitles usually match very well, but subtitles do not usually match when listening in Spanish. I have found a few shows where the Spanish spoken matches with subtitles in Spanish, but they are rare.

Interesting takes. Thanks for sharing, and I tend to agree with a lot of it. Especially the more intensive study style being more useful in the beginning, and the importance of reading.

where does one aquire these translated e-texts?

I agree with a lot of this, but I completely disagree with your take on subtitles. Reading target language subtitles is extremely hard for certain languages, like Japanese in particular. I actually think it's harder to read Japanese subtitles than it is to read a book (depending on the book obviously, so I mean harder than reading a level appropriate book) in Japanese, because it's so hard to get your Japanese reading speed up high enough to read the subtitles while they're on screen, at least in my experience. And while I agree that you should read books as well, I think this is actually an advantage of subtitles, since it forces you to work on your reading speed and really concentrate on what's going on.

I think input is a necessity to learn a language and of course, studying the language too could be very efficient and speed up the acquiring part I 100 percent agree with that but it's still not a necessity like input, as for speaking i disagree that you necessarily have to speak to be able to output for example I'm not a native speaker of English and i did english for ~2 years in 1-2 grade we learned basic stuff like i am ..... you are ... and stuff like that but other than that no studying but something that i did was that i started watching a lot of english content on youtube every day, stuff that i found interesting to watch (compelling input) and i did that for years and i could understand the language without trying or studying (i technically did study after,but in class i already knew everything that the teacher was saying and teaching so i never learned something there) and how im a able to speak without talking to anyone in english is because of course i got a lot of input, and i understand the language first but i also i did a lot of whats called "shadowing" in the language learning community,so basically it's a bit embarrsing to admit but im quite a parasocial person when im bored or distracted i do talk a lot with myself or with other people (i promise you im not crazy) in english, that's why i think to some extent i can talk and write english to a good amount of level with all that being said im not saying im fluent or that i have no struggles sometimes when reading about topics such as philosopy or politics but when i do have the chance to talk or express myself with people in english i can do it quite comforably

Wow I didn't realize refold didn't put emphasis on reading. I've been doing immersion for almost 1.5 years after I found out about refold and I think I kinda subsconsciously don't follow refold as it is despite using the guide as my starting point. After finding refold, I try look more things up and ended up watching a lot of talks from Stephen Krashen which really, really put heavy emphasis on reading that made me assume refold also does. Maybe all this time I was only listening Stephen Krashen advice 🤷‍♂️

I think about diminishing returns like this: yes the returns are diminishing but I think you can cover more ground this way, meaning someone who only does 1-2 things over a couple hours will likely not be as well rounded. Someone who reads for two hours, watches shows for two hours, and reads articles or watches youtube for 2 hours will probably be more well rounded overall. At the end of the day people should put in the time they have but i still think more is better

Any recommendations for Japanese e-texts?

I think when I tried the ~tolerate the ambiguity~ it really didn't work for me. I thought it was a me pproblem, but I agree with your point there. Specially in reading.

the only thing i really disagree with is the words ´spilling´. im not sure how applicable this is for other people, but for me. its a very simple concept. if you can think in the language, you can speak in the language

Diminishing returns is not really true the US Army has a program that forces people to learn languages and they do it at an incredible rate.

Kudos to you for speaking your mind about Refold! I thought you raised these problems with great clarity and thoughtfulness. I'm well acquainted with Refold's methodology and have a few things I think are off as well. As you mentioned, making early output a taboo because it will lead to poor speaking habits I think is way overblown. The only way you would cement bad speaking habits is if you didn't study the phonetics of the language at all, don't do any listening immersion, and only communicate with other non-native speakers who also speak with poor pronunciation or poor grammar. This is a very specific circumstance that I think most learners would have enough common sense to avoid. Will Hart is a great example of someone who did early output and had great results learning Mandarin Chinese. I also think the reluctance to study grammar is somewhat misguided. I think if your target language is similar to your native language, you could get by and pick up grammar from immersion. I'm learning Japanese and as an English speaker, if I didn't spend time studying grammar, I'm sure that certain grammar structures would never be acquired because they are so different from my native language. It could take hundreds or thousands of hours of immersion before a grammar structure becomes clear, if ever, but if I spend ten minutes studying the grammar point, it basically clears up immediately. Honestly, I think some of these strongly held opinions in the Refold community is a product of the dogma of MattvsJapan. He helped bring immersion learning to the forefront, which was a great benefit to the language learning community, but he has such a strong conviction that his way is the ONLY way, it created a little bit of a toxic culture in that community. Just my perception! Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I agree, especially, with your point about time. Watching Matt’s streams can be quite discouraging because he attributes a lot of his success to binge-watching 8 hours of Japanese content per day while avoiding English like the plague. Which is not only unrealistic, but unappealing. I like English lol, I don’t want to feel repulsed by it. However, on your other point, I think the roadmap is more than clear with what it means by tolerating ambiguity. For so many of us immersion learners, that map gave us direction. It gives you strategies to keep up your comprehension while the language still sounds like gibberish. It tells you to look the plot up ahead of time, google words while you watch, and always focus on noticing the words you’ve already learned. I don’t think it suggests you just sit on the couch, put on a show, and let the words float in one ear and out the other. I do appreciate this video though. The Refold community can feel a bit culty/elitist at times, and it's a good reminder that other methods of learning are valid and can lead to success.

While I agree that immersion is very beneficial, my eyebrows totally left my forehead when I, too, stumbled over the 'words will magically pour out of you'. Was this former strict output restriction stance based on any real data? I grew up in a multilingual environment and am pretty decent in listening comprehension in a couple of languages, but never have sentences started pouring out of me. Many fellow third culture kids, who share the same language background as I do, can attest to this. It is a common topic among us that by neglecting output, we have never gained fluency in conversation.

The "Tolerate the ambiguity" part is what I needed to hear. Thank you.

Solid video. Really well done. I’m still afraid of sub-vocalisations.. We say it doesn’t matter if we take 10 years to learn a language but I also know there is little foundation for me being worried.. but I can’t get rid of it and I’m not in a rush ! But if anyone had any advice I’m all ears (😉)

I appreciate someone providing a different perspective on the Refold framework. You do make some good points. However, I am not a die hard user of Refold, I found the framework refreshing because it provided a framework - scaffolding if you will. I see Refold as a framework for acquiring a language. Refold came from the Mass Immersion Approach (MIA) as put forth by Matt vs Japan. As one comment stated - a re-work of AJATT with more accessibility. I don't limit myself to just the Refold method. I do my best to incorporate ideas and frameworks from other people such as Stephen Krashen, Steve Kaufman, Olly Richards, and Rocky Rodriquez. What Refold has pushed me to do is listen more. I agree that the Refold community does have some die hard adherents - the Refold way or no way. I do think Ethan and contributors are open to improving their framework. I would suggest people checkout their KZfaq channel as well. They do have discussions about the method and other topics. Overall, I would recommend people checkout the framework and see what they can take away. Refold does provide A WAY, NOT THE WAY, to approach language acquisition using a deliberate approach.

Nice video. I just made a similar comment about reading on one of Matt's videos. Reading early is grueling (I buy an English version of a book and the target language version to read them sude by side as needed). But it allows you to take all the time you need to fully comprehend every sentence. Doing an hour a day, I finished my first novel in 70 days. The 2nd one in 36 days. My third in just under 30 days. I'm now averaging just 4 word lookups per page, no longer needing the English version to cross reference, and understanding extremely well at probably 120 words per minute. Watching native content with target language subtitles is already plenty comprehensible to be fun and effortless for hours a day on top of the reading. And both reading and TV continue to get more fun every day because of that hard work at the beginning. To me, massive amounts of comprehensible input is the key, but active, intense study is the express lane to reach comprehensibility faster and shave many months off of your time to reach comfortable fluency.

Totally agree with you. Thanks for sharing!

Sorry to be that guy but what is the app being used a 18:22 😅

Hi Emis, I am would like to start with two disclaimers 1) I am very new to refold. 2) I have failed every attempt to learn a language German, French, Japanese, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Japanese. With traditional methods. Now my thoughts: 1)Though many folks are weebs - I don't think the refold method is suitable for just Japanese. I think the community has just begun from the Japanese learning community. And over time more folk will join. 2) Fun - hard work can be fun ... I don't think refolders expect language learning to be relaxing sort of fun. Hard work there's a difference between drudgery and honing. Both are hard how ever one is aligned with purpose. There's that sweet spot in music practice where you do just a little bit harder than what you know and that is what makes you grow. I see a lot of parallels in learning a musical instrument with learning a language. Time required, deliberate practice on the edge of your ability to grow. listening to music before playing yourself etc. 3) Tolerating ambiguity - I didn't take it to mean I must consume incomprehensible input. To me it was clear that comprehensible input is what is required and that to grow you need to take input which is mostly comprehensible with a little bit of stuff you don't know and your brain will work magic. How to get that comprehensible language that is the rub which I am trying to figure out. 4) Delayed speaking - I am must admit I find it hard not to shadow speaking the vocab. Yet I take great comfort that I will be speak ok when I start working with a native speaker. That speaking will just happen easier after I do tonnes of input. Is very appealing to me. I don't want to waste my time with native speakers with "my name is" 5) Traditional grammar instruction is useless. Language is alive - languages aren't lego you can't build sentences. Language just comes out of your head like magic. Some grammar can be assistive but once you know the shape of the language more. English speakers get taught grammar after they have been acquiring the language for years. That grammar process is more about formalising and standardising a written form of the language as opposed to being descriptive of spoken language constructs. And yes reading is the most effective way to acquire the grammar of written language. Yet speaking is needed prior to the ability to write. 6) Agreed about how many adults have no idea about the lives of other adults who have responsibilities that make 3 hours of study impossible. 7) I have no trouble parsing languages basic meaning in text I find picking up words and patterns visually very easy .... what I do find incredibly hard is the listening - listening is what I need to spend most of my time doing. My focus for language learning is interactions with real people. So reading can go jump till I have got the listening down. I am still new to refold. My situation is: my TL is Mandarin; I have limited time; I'm just listening for 15 - 30 mins a day for now. I'm not doing an anki deck yet. Nor, switching my youtube profile yet.... I'm watching a kids show I am familiar with - ABC kids has Bluey episodes in Mandarin. It's mostly incomprehensible which is not ideal. Yet I needed a resource that I was familiar with that I could use with an app I already use. i'm trying to hum the tones of small phrases as watch and for looking out for the few words I know. Main point for me is to establish a pattern of engagement and then grow from there. Would recommend Bluey as a great language resource - it's quite fun not just for parents but for anyone who has been a child - it's delightful. Don't care how long it takes many people in my local community speak mandarin - I've got time to take my time I'll get there.

Wow I just found this video and you expressed exactly my thoughts about refold. So many of your points of view I also had them in the back of my head but for some reason I didn't realise I needed to listen to them from someone else. By the way, what is your native language? You give me strong German vibes but your English is really good!

Totally agree with you! It's good to have a more balanced view of the refold method out there on the internet for people to see. Btw a "timely investment" would be an investment made at a good time, e.g. if the stocks of a company were about to skyrocket, it would be timely to invest. I think you wanted a phrase like "a big investment of time". Only commenting to try and be helpful, because i know if it were me I would like to be told :) but apologies if you prefer not to be corrected. Btw your english is really good :)

My girlfriend is American but didn’t socialize much and learned most of her words though reading, and she honestly pronounces like 10-15% of her active vocabulary completely incorrectly… in her native language, though, her vocabulary is bigger than the average Americans, so it’s kind of a trade off, that being said I’ve decided to start reading in my TL because pronunciation be dammed I’m tired of my vocabulary being so small lol.

I absolutely love your channel and your honesty. You always tackle very interesting and original topics unlike many channels which seem to copy/paste their contents. Well done!

Well thought out points.

Wait, are you not a native English speaker? I just read your channel description. You have a very good accent though 😂

I find that your points are valid critiques, but they are not specific in what they are criticizing. I.e. they do not specify clearly when they are criticizing the main road map, the larger body of refold associated content, or the community. Some of the criticisms (e.g. the "fear or output", over-prioritization of 'fun', underestimating the importance of intention in active immersion) also seem to be aimed at misconceptions of the community that are contradicted by either the main guide or other official publications. More generally, I think that many of these flaws are present only when focusing on a particular point of their recommendations while ignoring the wider context they were made in. (Note: This should not be construed as saying these criticisms are not important, they are, but I think they should be re-framed as problems with the clarity of the guide rather than problems with the 'method' as a whole. Ironically this is the same problem with Matt's earlier videos--that one had to watch hours of content from different videos to get a good understanding of what exactly he was advocating for.) As an example, take the point on the importance of reading. Your criticism seemed to be rooted in the community (that there are many Japanese learners with an interest in Anime) and the refold guide not dedicating more space (or importance) to reading in the acquisition process. While these are both things you can criticize (although the first seems more like ad hominem against the relevant group rather than a critique of the 'Refold') the second feels predicated on hyper-focus on that particular section (ignoring other relevant materials). Looking just at material from the guide, they don't seem to imply that reading is not effective, on the contrary, it states that more immersion is better, and it's suggestions for active immersion and study inherently favor written content where dictionary lookup is simple and fast. Leaving the guide, other refold publications such as Q&As repeatedly state that the particular balance of listening and reading for a given person is dependent on their goals, that more listening based immersion (especially early on) may lend to better pronunciation in the long run, whereas reading is extremely effective at improving your language ability (he likened it to a drop of ink in a glass of water--even a little bit can have a drastic impact), it does have an impact of how you parse the language (which can lead to poorer grasp of more intricate pronunciation (more precisely, writing is an abstraction of the spoken language and there is inherent loss of information (i.e. many different ways of saying things are transcribed the same)). Matt also points out that he mainly did textual immersion (he states that was reading various novels including classic Japanese literature) and his problem with his approach was that his reading ability far outpaced his listening and speaking ability. He does not imply that it is not a powerful tool for language learning, in fact, he suggests the exact opposite--that it was so powerful that it takes more listening immersion relative to reading immersion to have balanced listening/spoken language ability. Additionally I think that it is important to consider that the aim of Refold is to teach normal people an effective way to learn languages including teachings about mindset and more general aspects of the approach (which are inherently not the only way of learning). This further implies that the guide is not some sort of manifesto of scientifically supported facts about language, but rather a call to informed action. Thus suggestions to do things like 'be comfortable with ambiguity' need to be considered in context. It is a mindset to help you stay motivated to keep immersing even when you know you are missing something and not get hung up on analyzing everything. This is an important suggestion because analysis can only produce hypotheses; only immersion can verify them. This should also be understood with the sister suggestion of getting the metaphorical low-hanging fruit. Assuming this is saying you shouldn't try to understand understand or that you should be complacent with not understanding feels like an uninformed bad faith interpretation to me. Similar things could be written for some of your other points (although, I don't have the time). In closing, I think that the 'Refold Method' has a extremely effective and somewhat adaptable approach to language acquisition. Despite this, the central resources should be more comprehensive, as the current guide misses many nuances discussed in the broader set of Refold resources. However, as with most everything else, the key to understanding the finer points of Refold is to get a good understanding of the underlying principles, as they are more important than any of the specifics.

I think the point Refold is trying to make is that the most important factor is to make it enjoyable. Watching a show you don't understand isn't really that fun, but it's not that boring. It's not about the whole process being fun, just being fun enough to where you're able to follow through with it day after day, which is the hardest and most important part of it all. Sure, it's not super fun, but I don't think people mind having to watch shows they don't understand because it's at least entertaining with the visuals and sound. Same with the "you should do the same things you do in your target language". The point is that you should do what you find at least somewhat enjoyable. If you enjoy something once, it means you at least don't hate it. If you like to read at times then if someone points a gun at you and tells you to read, even though you might not be in the mood, you won't really mind doing it. It'd be like "okay fine..?". Refold is emphasizing fun because it's trying to drive the point home that being able to do it day after day is the most important part. Not how fast, not how efficient, because if you're not even able to go through with it, none of that matters. The reason for this emphasis on consistency is that it is the key to fluency, and it's trying to make that daily grind (which looking from the outside is a very try-hard way of learning) as casual and available to the general public as possible. Since the beginning, AJATT and immersion type methods are seen as big commitments and an intense process, only for those whose lives' mission is to learn that particular language. Of course, this isn't really true, and Refold is trying to make this method as widely accepted as possible. On the point of tolerating the ambiguity: First is the fact that it is not nearly as extreme as you paint it to be. They do mention that searching up is good, but you should do it occasionally and only in specific situations. This connects to the previous point of prioritizing fun, but also in a way that makes sense. Searching up all the time is not fun, and it's also not even effective. Those 'specific situations' I mentioned are when looking up said word allows you to comprehend the entire sentence, or close. This is actually effective, achieving that i+1 effect, allowing for higher comprehension, because you just understood that sentence now, which makes you enjoy it more because you've just deciphered more of the language, and that word is more likely to stick because of the full comprehension of the context that surrounds it and the way it is used in context. Meanwhile, if you hear one of those long ass sentences with many words you don't know, looking up each word and trying to understand is not fun and also completely ineffective, because it's too much new information. Incomprehension is not solved by looking up every word you don't know, because these don't stick. Incomprehension, especially at the beginner stages, is solved by vocab decks, which are actually effective for learning vocab unlike searching up every single word, and also just immersing without looking up, which brings me to my next point. Surprisingly, "staring at your screen and praying for progress" actually works. I've personally experienced it immersing in japanese where after a while you start getting a feel for what certain words or expressions mean, what certain verb suffixes mean, etc... You've also definitely experienced it in your mother tongue when you hear a word you don't know and after a while you just get the meaning. An example is modern slang like 'to rizz'. I can assure you most people did not look up in the dictionary what 'rizz' means, and just started getting it from context. I'm gonna be honest, I haven't watched the whole video, but I agree with your points of infinitely delaying output. Output is nothing bad as long as your input is at least like twice the amount, and also after you gain a certain level of understanding with your language. Refold is trying to make those super try-hard immersion methods into something the general public can start doing casually, and I think the cool UI and way it breaks down immersion into a daily, yet casual commitment. The reading point is also true, but again, if you don't really enjoy it, you shouldn't do it. What I mean by 'enjoy' here, is if you just don't like reading (not if you sometimes don't feel like it or if you don't like not understanding or anything), if reading is something you really don't like doing in your native language, then you shouldn't do it. And that's the Refold way, prioritze being able to do it consistently and following through on it. If you don't like reading but would do anything to get good and so you're able to read daily, then go for it. It's all about what you're able to withstand on your way to fluency. But yeah, reading is really effective to get to higher levels. Anyway, good video, I like when people critize with valid points things like this. As I mentioned, I don't agree with everything, but yeah there are definitely some flaws with Refold.

I loved your video!

As a full-time working person with a large circle of friends, a social life and multiple hobbies, I just couldn't relate to a community that includes people who say they spend 12+ hours a day consuming their target language and then give advice on how to learn languages to people who only have 1-2 hours a day, which is just ridiculous. For me, Refold would only make sense if I had a lot of time every day and was willing to invest that time in learning a language (this is was the roadmap imo indicates as a given fact). The latter would never be the case, as even if I had the time, I rather build my carrer or business and social circle and when I take off a longer time from responsibilities, travel the world and make precious memories.

I like reading, but I only do it with audio from native speakers.

20:40 I agree that reading a book is WAY better than reading subtitles BUT if u r going to watch a TV show w/out ur TL subs the learning will be less than if you use the TL subs. And It's an easier approach to reading if u are just listening, like refolders tend to do.

Hello! I wouldn't consider myself a "refolder" (like I don't follow refold to a tee) but I do use it for reference every now and then. I agree with most points of this video! . The only thing I'd like to make a comment about is your comment on traditional education. . The first thing you say is that "people underestimate what they accumulate over 4 years of classes". I can't say for who "people" are but I personally don't underestimate what I've learned over 10+ years of Chinese while living in Hong Kong. Again, me personally, but I am very realistic and upfront with my Chinese ability and how bad I am at it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, yet I cannot order from a Chinese menu, tell the Taxi driver to go to a Chinese address, or watch/listen to Chinese films and music without English subtitles. . The next thing you say is that "school is essentially priming your brain, which is also what Refold advises". So the thing with this is that Refold is free and allows learners to achieve much better results, school costs a lot of money and does not allow learners to achieve Refold's results. Both will prime your brain, but when you lay out the pros and cons, it's clear which has the advantage. . As a third point, Krashen has quoted a study comparing traditional skillbuilding vs comprehensible input (search "Krashen EDiversity" for his lecture). The research showed that students who focused on comprehensible input performed BETTER on grammar tests than students doing traditional skill building. . Fourthly, from my experience, schools tend to lean more towards making sure you pass a test than actually helping you develop any real skill- yet they lie to you as if they're helping you develop some skills. What ends up happening is that they are inefficient at both. Take JLPT for example, JLPT never tests your speaking. Traditional teaching will follow the curriculum laid out by some JLPT textbook and fit some speaking practice into it, and the end of the year/semester/curriculum students will take a JLPT test. So here we have students learning not what's necessarily the most common/useful stuff to learn, but instead, just random bits of info someone arbitrarily decided would be at a certain level. Then we also have people trying to pass the JLPT without solely focusing on the JLPT (by taking away the speaking). We end up with people having sub par JLPT scores, sub par speaking abilities, and not much actual skills. . Finally, and this is my biggest problem. Traditional teaching does not try to actually teach people the language the way it actually is. They always try to use some textbook that innacurately represents the language. Japanese for example- so many schools use Genki, which is just known to be absolute dog water. Why do schools not take this into consideration and look at other options ("Making Sense of Japanese" by Dr.Jay Rubin, or Cure Dolly's Japanese Structure curriculum based on Dr.Rubins book)? I believe it's because they're not interested in actually giving you the education, but more interested in following their curriculum, not innovating, and just taking your money. . I definitely agree that Refolders who attack "studying" in general instead of just traditional skill building is not such a great thing as studying can learn to more comprehension, which then can lead to more acquisition. My belief is that these people confused Krashen's words of "studying does not lead to acquisition" and take that as "studying does not help at all". . To conclude, I think schools that follow a really traditional skill building way of teaching and uses outdated textbooks when clearer, better methods exist; those schools DON'T get enough hate and all learners should be heavily advised to stay AWAY from them. As an alternative, any method that engage students with immersion combined with teaching more useful structures of the target language leads to much greater results- whether that be a more modern language school that uses this approach, or Refold. . **EDIT: One thing I have a problem with in your video is 13:22 where you use screenshots of people questioning their own fluency and saying they're "not fluent" but make the comment that "they can't speak the language". I have no clue whether the contents of all those videos actually have people saying they can't speak- but from an outsider's perspective, this comment feels very disingenuous. Just because someone isn't fluent, doesn't mean they can't speak the language. They may be able to convey what they mean in a slow/not smooth way- this means they're not fluent, but they can definitely still speak it. . Again the contents of the video may support your point, but the screenshot don't help here. It looks like you made a point and went out of your way to find screenshots for it instead of doing the research first and making a point. Furthermore, you CAN actually find many examples of people immersing for a lot of time and being able to speak perfectly fine. . I agree with your main point that more time investment doesn't necessarily = more results, but this one point in particular is a miss for me.

I agree with the Tolerate ambiguity stuff in the sense of media bit it is some of the best advice I can give to someone for irl immersion. I teach English in Korea. Too many times I've seen Korean friends and students just get terrified when around native English speakers talking amoungst themselves. It's like they feel like all there years English study has failed because they can't understand native speech. While on my side as a Korean learner most of the Korean I hear is native speech and there is so much I don't I understand at times. But because of my willingness to try and listen no matter what and put up with not understanding my ability to understand native speech has improved massively.

What’s the app at the very end after lingq?

Desafortunadamente te entiendo poco, estoy adquiriendo el idioma (ingles) por metodo refold, desearia entender lo que estas diciendo saludos desde Mexico

I personally don't find most of your criticism an accurate representation of the bulk of Refold's guidance. I think, in particular, that they're proposing that no part of the process is "work" and is (or should be) entirely "fun". You repeatedly give the impression otherwise, which I don't think is very accurate at all. My understanding is that Refold takes a very holistic approach and that's uncomfortable for those that want or expect (or want, if you're spergy) more of a bootcamp approach. I think that the most important point that you don't appreciate is the same one that pervades every other facet of life -- the best intervention is the one that's practicable. A diet that is not sustainable is NO solution to the problem (and actually can be detrimental) versus the one that you're willing to follow that's sustainable -- unless you really do have a hard/fixed endpoint that you have to meet. Having watched most of their 2021 content, I can't fit together your reservations (criticisms) from late 2022 from what I've heard them saying. Perhaps the bulk of your information comes solely from the roadmap and you haven't gone through the same set of monthly Q&As from around 2021 that are on KZfaq. I'll leave it for others to form their own judgements about why that material and yours are incongruent. I'm assuming zero malice on your part though and that perhaps you haven't either kept up with them by not having seen the full breadth of their stated approach(es).

26:56 I disagree with that translation. Selva goes better with "jungle" as translation. The options shown go better with "bosque".

During covid I discovered Matt’s KZfaq channel and really bought in to the immersion doctrine. It really felt like every other way to learn a language had flaw after flaw that immersion learning fixed. Plus it was “fun” and “fast”. So I started learning Japanese because that was what everyone was learning. I did it for a good bit, I got through the entire 1k rtk deck over a couple months and started the tango n5 deck. The immersion was always an after thought to be honest. It was so un enjoyable I told myself I could put it off till I had some more vocab and my higher % known would finally make things comprehensible. But this would ultimately be the cause of the end of my learning. I straight up quit learning Japanese because I had a talk with myself of “the refold guide says you have to be immersing 5+ hours per day to become fluent within 2-3 years (anything longer felt like forever at the time), your basically wasting your time if you aren’t working on it that much so are we able to commit to that or not?” (Just checked in the refold guide (I still knew exactly where they say this lol) and they still say 5/5 active/passive to reach fluency in 2 years, 3/3 in 4, and 2 hours is the minimum to “make real progress” and doesn’t even give a years estimate) The answer obviously was no. I couldn’t bring myself to watch hours of content and listening to podcasts with all the free time I had understanding maybe 5%. I remember rewatching Matt’s “having fun in a language you suck at” video regularly because immersion was hours of, as you correctly point out, incomprehension, not ambiguity. And refold is very elitist in the way where I felt (and still do) that traditional learning will never work (or at least is super inefficient/counterproductive in comparison) so it’s insane immersion or nothing. For me it would be nothing. It’s been 2 years since then and it has really been hitting me recently how what 2 years ago felt like literally forever kind of flew by, and had I stuck with it (even for 1-2 hours a day) I could’ve made a lot of progress. Obviously not fluent but a far place from where I am now, sitting monolingual with regret. I love languages and linguistics, I want to learn a language. I think it’s just so cool of a skill to have. This video really helped me look at the refold methodology in a more reasonable way. I’ve been really into kpop recently so might start fresh with Korean. Still struggle to free my mind from the feeling that if I’m not immersing for hours as they recommend am I really learning? But I guess I should save my future self in a few years from feeling how I feel now with Japanese. Thank you for making this video.

I'm not a huge fan of the refold community since I think they over exaggerate its effectiveness though I do believe it to be better than going to school. I did get to fluent Chinese reading and Cantonese speaking from purely watching Chinese Dramas with Chinese subtitles. Never ever have I read a Chinese book of any sort or taken any classes. (Before I discovered refold) I've also taken 8+ years of French in school and private tutors, and 5+ years of Japanese in college and private tutors and my french level has basically been reading level only cause that's all we did, I'm not able to understand any french speakers. For Japanese due to me having already learned to read Chinese the kanji was easier and there were some words that were similar sounding. I do think school was a waste of time cause we learned all the grammar and conjugations that has nothing to do with my goal of becoming fluent. I learned to become fluent in Chinese without ever knowing any of the grammar rules. If you think about it that's how we all learned our native languages too. If I spent all the time learning how to conjugate words and grammar for french and Japanese in school and focused more on immersion immediately like I did with Chinese I'd probably be fluent in those two languages by now too. Most native English speakers would fail grammar tests that non native speakers take I'm about ~280 hours into immersion for Japanese and what you described at 15:16 is basically me. I finished the JP1K anki deck and just went straight into immersion with 0 sentence mining due to lack of time, and I'm finding myself already able to listen to podcasts on my commutes and understand ~30% of what they are talking about. I know the refold methods website kinda doesn't emphasize on the importance of reading enough, but if you watch all the youtube reviews of people who are doing the refolds method, and go on their discord, everyone there emphasizes how important reading is and how it gives you the best return on investment on your time spent. I need to get on this myself too but as you said I don't have much free time so podcast on my commute is the best medium for me right now, and I struggle to find interesting material to read, NHK easy news is to the extent of what keeps my attention. In the end just like any other hobbies, do the method that makes you keep showing up / practicing. To some people having fun is important, while to others doing the boring grind makes them feel productive, and some people like my wife need to pay someone to kick their butts and keep them accountable by showing up to class.

Your reviews are super valuable for the unbiased commentary. It's hard to find actual reviews, most are just sponsored!

Great video :) Lots of points i totally agree on. Especially more Reading! Less tolerating ambiguity and having less of a Japanese focus and not delayed speaking so damn much. The one thing i just have to push back a bit is the education thing. and this is just my experience ofc. I took 8 years of French and as u will probably guess where I'm going with this, is that i never made progress and have forgotten everything. 8 years! and i feel like I know nothing (realistically i probably do know SOME things but nothing that comes to mind whenever ive tried to read french). I never studied French again though which why my case feels different. Maybe after all that priming i wouldve picked it up faster than from zero. But after 8 years of priming I'm just sick of it. When starting Korean, i had one year of priming (did on and off Duolingo and ttmik grammar lessons, which sure, were very likely useful for me which is why i recommend some grammar study) and then i did 2 years of immersion to get to great proficiency and able to speak and read and watch tv. Am i fluent? no but 2 years is insanely fast to progress than i would have ever imagined. Korean is a far more distant language. So why didn't 8 years of French help despite putting in effort at school? I guess what i mean is, would i rather prime for a year + immerse for 2 or do 8 years of priming hoping it will get me proficient? Maybe classrooms work for some people but unfortunately it just didnt work for me and I think there must be a reason for that. Would a combo have helped? maybe but when i think about time investments like you do, i find that using that time to read just seems far more productive. Language learning definitely isnt a race but many people would naturally prefer it to be quicker than slower if they could and did so comfortably. I'm very against doing crap tons of hours. Id love to know what you think though.

this makes me feel pumped to go again thanks so much i was too busy stressing about every little thing

I'm testing the refold methodology with japanese. I never studied it and I have zero previous knoledge. I'm a native portuguese speaker and my most developed second language is English. Last two years I spent studying german and now I'm taking some rest from it and I'll spend some time with refold method and learning Japanese. Im taking it easy, I'm not obsessed with learning fast and not willing to spend 5h+ per day with immersion. But i learned a lot of valuable concepts with Matt that are helping me with learning Japanese from zero

15:45 “took classes for 5 years learned nothing” I call bullshit I’m studying Japanese again but I’m high school I took 2.5 years. I don’t consider myself as skilled as I was back then but even if my skill was less than it was, the classes gave me familiarity with the language. Even if you don’t build a lot of skills, formal education of a language will give you familiarity with it that will boost your ability to study. Idk how to describe it. But it’s easier to study on your own after taking classes for a year or more.

I am with you on the power of reading. But man, it sure is intimidating seeing a paragraph of Japanese text. Just have to go through it one character at a time.

My opinions have altered over the years. AJATT proposed an immersive framework for learning. It's one interpretation of comprehensible input. A lot of progress can be done with quite a little. Periods of immersion sound good but it underestimates the ability of the brain to process language and generate both grammatical knowledge and vocab learning between study sessions. My opinion is knowledge is not obliterated. Sometimes it is consolidated in sleep and cleaning the house. Comprehensible Input is a good guide. Once you're bored or tired it's time to move on. Dont scrimp on sleep or exercise. Ever. In the early days less time is probably better. Some every day. Language learning should be pleasant. Your brain is your friend. It's already primed to acquire languages, no trickery or forcing is required. Also falliw time is OK. Consolidation is OK. It all helps in the long run.

Correct me if I'm wrong on the ambiguity tolerance part, but "aquiring" language is when your brain _subconciously_ acquires it. You can definitely _learn_ certain words or grammar points, but you acquire the language via the input hypothesis with your brain creating the neural pathways and figures out the patterns. Also if you are doing early output, is just hurting your pronunciation in the long run. Output comes naturally and easily after having a good bank of input inherently.

I'm struggling to get the criticism you are trying to give you seem to agree with the majority and sometimes when you do criticise it you are contradicting yourself or your taking the examples to the extreme

Facts.

Refold literally say you have to learn grammer, on top of immersion and vocab. It is not totally immersion immersion is consumption of content. Working on skill and repetition is fun. Refold will adapt and grow based on new info and research.

today is the day, today is a new day

I mean of course there are downsides. There are downsides to every method and what method is the "best" depends on your goals, learning style, and amount of effort you're willing to put in. Any method one uses, even if inefficient or has downsides, will impart some knowledge of a language. Barring any method that teaches anything outright wrong. I at one time tried that hot garbage called Rosetta Stone and for as bad as that program was, I still learned SOMETHING at least. I tried Pimsleur and while it was good at speaking practice I learned jack at reading and writing. Find a reputable method that works for you and jump in. If your main method has a deficiency in some way, fill that hole by supplementing with another method. Even traditional classroom learning has major downsides, else people would look back negatively on the experience despite the solid foundation it provides in the long run.

So iiuc reading > reading with the same text as an audiobook?

You seem the singer Aurora

15:15 Anti-school is the informed position you just haven't heard of Short; kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gKt_a6d2z5zTiKc.html Long: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fLKAqKaIvZvFpIE.html

Hi

I think the major disadvantage of the immersion approach is that as adults we are really not as good at picking out subtle details of a language as children if such details do not hinder our understanding, for example, my native language is Chinese which lacks tense and inflection, but not noticing tense or inflection doesn't hinder our understanding most of the time, so I am the most likely to make this kind of mistake, so for adults, we need really some sort of deliberate learning or some conceptual understanding of your target language. it is really not as different from practicing a sport or learning an instrument when you are not a super genius. I would actually go as far as to suggest that we should popularize some basic linguistics in the language community (syntax, phonology, and IPA) which at the beginning stage of learning a language can help us to analyze our target language to make it more comprehensible and at a later stage can help us to fix some of our more subtle mistakes.

the problem is when u don't know how sound the word

balanced

yaaasss 👏 queen 👏 slay 👏

People follow Matt and his methodology because he sounds like a native speaker.. they don't wanna follow someone that still sucks at the language and speaks like a robot after 20+ years of language study.. a native like level is unrealistic and I guess people have to lower their expectations.

That's why they ask you to read their philosophy first... I feel it's important to listen to incomprenhensible material to get acostummed to the intonation and sounds of the language. Then you read up on phonetics and compare how much you notice from what you've heard. I feel it works for me because I'll make it a habit and whenever I get to understand bits and pieces of my target language, I'll get a boost on motivation. Because I'm listening my incomprensible language in my dead time while I start on the basics

Any one ever notice zid on ice age? Didnt know he had a sister.. fuuuck

polygloddess? 😆subscribing just for the channel name

Next: everything wrong with Anki

I agree with you about reading. It is great and IMO much more interesting than TV shoes and anime--I would kill myself if I had to watch anime all day. I think the refold method seems to also aimed at this generation who don't read books and only watch TV. It's a little depressing to me, as the information in books is most of the time much more interesting and complex. Though I do agree it's important to get a feel for spoken language, so I'm not denigrating it. Just idea of watching videos for hours seems so awful. However, reflecting on some of my language learning experience I do wish I had had the language learning community (not just refold, but the broader one.) When I was learning Hebrew, I read a lot and it was hard. I was reading native short stories (for a class) and looking up *many* words. It was painful. However, the stories were great. It was just the process of reading them that was difficult. Probably like 40-50% unknown words omg. With a PDF and online dictionary, not a text with popups. (I think --well I know--that my instructor was not informed in language learning pedagogy. He was just a graduate student recommending his favorite short stories. His taste in literature was excellent, but I don't think he realized how hard the stories he chose were for native English speakers.) This was in 3rd of 4th year of hte language and my instructors all thought graded readers were disgusting because they were literature snobs. I do feel like the subvocalization hurt my pronunciation. More than that, I didn't get a sense of the prosody of the language (rhythms, melody, intonations) because the majority of the time I spend listening to the language was in class, maybe 3 hours a week, which is really not enough. At the time I was not really informed about language learning methods and I was just taking a class at university and doing the work of the class and thinking that was enough. (I know better now!) I don't regret the time I spent reading but I wish I had done a lot more listening at the beginning, which really would have helped get the rhythms and feel of the language. This is easier in French which I'm learning now because there seems to be more content for intermediate learners. I do have some graded readers in Hebrew which I'll pick back up if I start learning it again, and definitely I'll benefit from popup dictionaries which were't available as much 10 years ago..... On that note, I slightly disagree that "having it read to you" is passive...if I were to listen and read an audiobook, it can still be pretty challenging. For me as a beginner sometimes audiobooks read too fast. So one strategy I may do is read and then listen again. I think reading a graded reader while listening to the corresponding audiobook (eg Olly Richards' books or a series like Dino Learns Deutsch, or even dialogues like Assimil) isn't passive and will help someone get the rhythms and intonations of the language. Ok sorry for writing a novel! thanks for your video! I agree with most of it!

Great video! What most disturbed me with these Refold type immersion learning sites is that they are always presented by guys who have zero exprerience of actually teaching a language, nor do they have any professional education of teaching. Why? Because if our goal is to promote immersion the Refold style, you don't need any skills. Just ask people to watch hours of anime and play with an anki deck, and make them pay for this "advice". I speak five languages and I consider myself to be fluent in three. But never would I consider myself to be a teacher, nor have the skills to teach any of the languages I master myself. The immersion itself is a false promise on learning a language without any active effort, just by watching tons of anime and listening to crappy jpop. Instead of learning basic grammar ,speaking in a real situation, reading, or writing something correct and meaningful. Think just of all native english speakers who can live decades abroad without mastering the language. Passive listening is just not enough. Learning a language takes time and a lot of work. Not just hours spent with the target language but effective hours where you try to make an effort. That said reading is hugely important, but only when you understand what you are reading ,the words and the way they are connected in a meaningful way, grammar.

I have some things to say on these matters: 1- 4:34 where? 4:44 ok. 4:50 yes. 5:00 yeah. 5:10 yeah. 5:45 you still haven't pointed out what the problem is exactly, you say it's the "heavy amount of jp learners" but why is that even a problem? And then you say that tools don't exist for other languages, and... yeah?? Is that a problem with refold?? No, it's just what happens when there's limited supply of people developing language tools and huge demand for jp tools. 2- 6:14 Why do you say limited to? 7:27 nobody said that tho?? Refold just said it didn't have to feel like work, not that it must *always* be fun 8:29 who is that, tell me their name so I can get them on a hitlist. 3- Hmm. I think that there's nothing wrong with sitting for 4 hours watching an incomprehensible show. Is it wrong to not have fun? No. Is it wrong to not understand something? No. Is it wrong to use a slightly inefficient method? No. There's nothing wrong with doing that. 10:57 you're contradicting yourself. First you say we shouldn't stress over comprehending every word, and then you say we should decrease comprehension. So which is it? Do I lookup every word or do I not look-up every word? 4- I agree. Output isn't *that* detrimental It will internalize. But it's not *that* hard to get rid of later. I don't think it prevents you from speaking. Just get to 2C, stay there for 1 or 2 months, and then start speaking! 15:03 wait is there somebody that _actually_ expects people to shut up during class? 5- 17:16 Wait, hundreds?? Let me calculate for a sec: 10 years. Every year 120 days of school time Average time per day is 30 minutes. (Some days we have no English study some days the teacher's out) 120 × 30m × 10 12 × 3 × 1000m 36000m (36000/60)h (3600/6)h (600)h Okay, fine... 🙄 I guess I did have *600* hours of English education, but half of the time we were just repeating stuff! We probably spent like 10% of that time just on the present simple tense! So I still school only gave a minor benefit, like, 3 months' worth. Though it did give a lot of bad habits, can you believe the awful pronunciation we have gone through in those 600 hours?? Rant done. 6- I straight up don't agree. 21:34 have you considered that some people (a lot) are learning languages for their careers? It *does* matter if you reach fluency in 2 years vs 10 years. Overall, this section is way too clickbaity. 7- I agree It said "aim for" not "you HAVE to read at 2-3%", so basically it's saying "look for comprehensible things to read" which you can't really disagree with, can you?

I was somewhat on board with at least some of your points but when you said you can "check your pronunciation with IPA charts" I lost it. This is super misguided for a number of reasons: 1. IPA is a lot coarser than human speech. Consult any of your IPA sources about words containing らりるれろ and you'll notice that they just describe it as [ɾ]. The reality? The Japanese /r/ is super complex and its exact realization depends on a number of factors, including whether the mora is utterance-initial, whether it is followed by an /i/ (i.e. り), whether it follows an ん etc. ん is coincidentally even harder to transcribe in IPA and many sources just write /N/. Good luck figuring out which realization to pick. Oh and of course the vowels: tongue position is a continuum whereas the IPA vowels are just a finite set. You may get close to the true vowel but even if the same IPA symbol is used for a vowel in two different languages, they are regularly pronounced slightly differently. 2. IPA cannot properly represent pitch accent. While I have seen some notation where IPA is used in combination with the overline to denote high morae, this still falls flat when it comes to higher level concepts like tone terracing. 3. There is no resource that gives you the IPA while also respecting connected speech. Connected speech is something like palatalizing the t in "don't you", i.e. saying it something like "dontchu". Connected speech happens A LOT in extremely many places in every single language. If you pronounce every word as though in isolation, you will sound very foreign. The way different words connect in speech is an essential part of a language's phonology but no resource is going to give you the exact IPA while respecting every single connected speech phenomenon. Doesn't help that this is a seriously underresearched topic. TL;DR: IPA does NOT tell you how to pronounce something correctly. Even if you are an IPA god who can pronounce every IPA symbol 100% accurately, you'll still sound non-native in most languages.