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I'd argue that watching TikTok is actually way better than using Duolingo, as long as you do it exclusively in your target language.

I'll never get tired of duolingo slander

$30 a month!? That's mental, literally paying for Netflix, HBO or Prime (or even KZfaq) is more worthy than that to learn a language.

Duolingo continually habituates you to be uncomfortable when you don’t know something. You don’t know a word, you get the whole exercise wrong, too many wrong and you can’t learn any more 😂

Skill-building grammar is like medicine. You take a little bit when you have a specific problem, to cure that problem. But medicine is not food! Massive amounts of input is the food.

One of my favourite comments was something like "Duolinguo can make you fluent, you just have to supplement it with a good book and online lessons". But... but... but... if that is the case, then what is making you fluent is the textbook and the lessons, not Duolinguo.

Evan is a prime example of how you will speak a foreign language if the majority of your learning is 'conscious', as is the case with Duolingo. He's essentially speaking English and just subbing in German vocabulary as if all languages share a core framework. It sounds less and less natural the further removed the language is from your native one. Intonation, rhythm and natural phrasing can only be acquired from mass input.

I think you're right about Evan, I didn't feel your video was targeted at him or whatever, I think he took it too personally when it wasn't meant to be a personal attack on him. Great video!

I first got into duolingo when it was at its best. Stopped after the first update, as I didn't like the direction & having looked back a handful of times, I don't regret abandoning it.

Yoooo-great point! “I’ve never heard of anyone leaving the comprehensible input camp” (me paraphrasing you). That’s legit. Well done. Damn-I’m kinda floored because it’s so obvious but I never noticed it myself.

Evan sounded to me exactly like an A2 student of German sounds. I've known enough of them, and he was very typical. When you get to A2, you feel as if you have made a breakthrough. And you have! It is not surprising he was quite proud of his achievement. Same for B2. It is a breakthrough. It is the B1 level where you feel that you are standing still.

Um, the stuffed animals in the ad read were my favorite part.

Wow, that Surfshark ad was like slipping into a fever dream!

Duolingo works on all the days that don't end in Y.

I think a huge problem with assessing what method works is false attribution - people learn a language, but they themselves don't fully understand how they do it. So they focus on what was most difficult or vivid in their minds. So they decide that it was all the hours studying hard, or playing with an app, or hours of Anki, but they don't attribute it to the 'easier' stuff, like watching movies, etc. I've a friend who spends a lot of time using duo lingo, but she herself learned English by spending hours watching US soap operas in her teens. I've no idea why she doesn't see that she could do the same thing for her Spanish studies.

Props for having an ad spot that was actually entertaining enough not to skip through lol

Omg i love your surfshark ad. And as always, hyped for a new video. SAMI is amazing, love it.

Someone from Norway decided to argue with me once about Duolingo. I had suggested to a third party that they should stop using Duolingo after 90 days in favor of something else, and said my 1.000 days on Duolingo were mostly wasted. The Norwegian butted in claiming that them learning Spanish was because of Duolingo. They then said that they had been using Duolingo for 7 years and could finally understand things in conversations, while living in Spain that entire time. When I said I don't really care if they want to use Duolingo, but that might not be the whole truth, they called me a "mjølkass uten livserfaring" and that I had no idea what I was talking about. When I pointed out that them saying this all på norsk to me might not be proving their point ... they did not like that very much.

If you're watching this in your native language, use the auto-translate function for subtitles to get some practice in your target language while you're at it.

Hi Lamont from Minneapolis, MN. I hope you are well. I really enjoy your lead in puppets/ Muppets for surf shark ad. Keep up the acerbic wit.

I love your videos so much. Even the Surf Shark promo and i can't stand adds😂

I'm from Brazil and 30 dollars would be about 12% of the minimum wage here To use Duolingo That's just crazy

Since your last video on Duolingo, I've been watching more TV shows in Spanish. Even with like 20 minutes a day, it's fun and engaging and I've never felt like I've had more of a grasp on the language so thank you for that lol

I hate that Duolingo is most people’s default idea of effective language learning

Surfshark ad was the bomb. You made us watch and not skip it, fantastic job. Wish all ads could be so entertaining and deliver a surprise or chuckle 😅

I was a little bit of a defender years ago. I did think it provided an excellent start for several languages. Keeping with it was a bad idea, but I found that the earlier stages worked well with the fast paced clicking. Nowadays though, it seems awful for anything. The biggest advantage I think it had, it's fast pace, is now totally gone. It's so long winded and takes so long to get through very simple concepts.

I remember when I knew absolutely nothing about language learning, I just assumed Duolingo must be really good. Later I realized it was garbage. Lots of people are never exposed to the idea of comprehensible input, especially given how language classes are taught in school.

This is one of your best!

Lamont, am I doing the reading thing right? I have a book (that I like), I have it in English and in Spanish. I read a chapter in English and then read and listen to the same chapter in Spanish (so I can be confident that I pretty much know what I'm reading and listening to) daily. Rinse and repeat for chapter, after chapter, after chapter. I'm also doing lessons and flash cards in Spanish Dict to build vocabulary. I don't have access to any streaming services to watch movies and so far have found nothing of interest on KZfaq. Is what I'm currently doing enough, or do I need to do more?

Nice vid, I like the longer content Immersion is definitely the way to go. When I was learning Polish, I actually spent the time looking at tables and learned all 7 cases. Works well if you want to know why form a is used instead of form b, but that's about it. 99% of the grammar you're using is habitual, meaning you're just saying what "sounds right". I'd like to see someone try to speak Polish at a normal speed while analysing the grammar in their head while speaking. It's impossible.

I don't know how anyone makes it past the tedium of Duolingo to do it long enough to say whether it IS effective.

Brilliant Surfshark bit. So entertaining that I didn’t skip ahead.

I love books and reading and it took me a stupidly long time to realize I could literally use my love of reading to help me acquire my target language. I really wish immersion (besides just moving to the country) was talked about more outside of the internet

What are your thoughts (if any) on the Assimil book series? Seeing as they incorporate comprehensive input from the start

The comment section was helpful in the Japanese course because Japanese is a bit odd, and there's a lot of etiquette mixed in that people would mention, like which words are appropriate in different situations. People actually gave a lot of useful information in those comments, and there were also comments that were just people joking around. It was a fun comment section. I wouldn't always read the comments, but if something seemed odd in one of the questions, there always seemed to be an explanation there. It was nice to have that interactive section if you wanted to use it, and a bit of a break if you were getting bored answering questions.

Please do a review of pimsleur! Do you have any immediate thoughts on it?

Good point that no one goes from immersion to the other methods. So true!!

Seriously thank you. I feel like I'm crazy for being the only one around me that believes that Duolingo isn't worth anyone's time. I really really try to have my friends quit duolingo but it's an addiction for them.

I'm already a believer of mass immersion, but the way you explain it is so clear and simple. I'm definitely stealing your 3 schools of language learning to explain the hobby to curious people!

Not to mention, they've never released any new courses that they've been promising for the last 5 years which only Finnish, Latin, Scots Gaelic, Haitian Creole and Zulu, while Xhosa, Tagalog, Bengali, Thai, Punjabi, Urdu, Maori and others are only offered as English courses to those who speak those languages while going the other way around, those courses have been in the back burner along with the incubator.

I usually skip ads. Didn't skip this one, it was just so interesting that I just kept watching lol.

Does Duolingo even work on modern devices? I have a Pixel 7. It's a modern Android device, and the app doesn't even run (it opens and tries to do some stuff but gets stuck).

Even though Duolingo Arabic is garbage, I found it a pretty useful tool to speedrun the alphabet and learn how to read when I started learning 4 years ago.

You are always so reasonable, I like it

Hey man, you do have some great points. I started learning Mandarin Chinese and Dutch using Duolingo. I agree that it’s the additional efforts which really helps. For example, it was not until I discovered Yoyo Chinese with a native speaking teacher that my “learning” really started to take off. I felt like I’m cracking the code. Also I agree about the incomprehensible input, like listening to podcasts in Mandarin. At first I didn’t understand a word. Firstly the speakers were talking a mile a minute, but as I kept at it, I started to notice a rhythm, patterns and began to understand some words. So I think it’s a mixture of learning methods. Thanks for your video! 🤗

Im using busuu to get started, because I am currently in Brazil, not speaking Portuguese and need some basic phrases to just function. That being said, im trying to spend way more time in immersion, and I'm basically speedrunning busuu so I can get those basic phrases and move into full immersion.

sick beat at the start

I had French and Spanish classes at school and havent really touched either after that. I'm currently studying for my A-levels (a decade after my GCSEs). While I still understand a lot, speaking/writing has been a bit of a struggle. Due to time constraints (I have half a year left to get to B2 in Spanish and C1 in French, in addition to other subjects) and the way my language skills are being tested (lots of writing and grammar), I can't just focus on immersion. Despite knowing that Duo doesn't work, I finally gave in a couple months ago and downloaded it because I figured "it'll help me stay consistent" (it didn't). It did help me find my footing in actually using the languages again, so I guess that's a plus. But really, there's no need to (attempt to) "stay consistent" at this point - I'm far from comfortable in either language but I'm able to express myself again. Duo isn't going to get me any further than that.

Please do a video on all the random crazy comments you’ve had over the years! I need this!!! 🤣

Ironically, I think skill building is really only useful for people who are already pretty advanced in a language. In schools, people take classes in the grammar and the academic usage of their native language. For someone who wants to catch up to a highly educated native speaker when it comes to in depth mechanical knowledge of how the language works, that's when diving into grammar and style is most helpful. Before that, spending time memorizing a grammar book is just a way to procrastinate actually being exposed to the language. At the end of the day, people are just hesitant to admit they are scared of the ambiguity of trying to comprehend another language. Reading about the grammar rules of another language or just sitting in a language class is way easier to do and gives the illusion of progress. When they go to actually use the language, they don't have any intuitive sense of what sounds natural as they've barely heard any real use of the language outside of an app or classroom example sentences. It's estimated it takes about 540 hours to reach B2 in Spanish, but an average intro Spanish class might have 14 hours of Spanish actually being spoken or read during an entire semester. That's barely a fifth to get to the 80 hours needed for A1 the lowest level. It's no wonder that people who take these classes come out feeling like they've barely learned anything. 14 hours of language exposure in 4 months is terribly inefficient progress. Most people are likely for forget 90% of what they learned as soon as they finish the class anyway. Then there're any language learning apps that just drag on forever. They'll just drill the same words over and over and use these horrible AI generated sentences. The apps are designed to keep people using them forever. They do just enough to make people think they are learning something, but drag out the process so they stay subscribed or watch ads for years. They have no reason to teach people how to actually learn a language because then nobody would use their dumb app. Just watching KZfaq in the target language and making sentence cards for Anki would be a 10x better use of their time than all of these commercial language learning products combined.

It always surprises me how quick some of the best non-native English speakers resort to Duolingo or skill building approaches. I knew someone with almost perfect English who sounded exactly native in accent. They had learned English through immersion growing up. But when it came to a new language they emphasized the grammar again. I guess it is because English was always a part of their life and grew up with it somewhat. We all learned our native languages unconsciously and when it comes to learn a new one we just do what the majority says to learn through skill building and apps like Duolingo. I remember my college Spanish teacher a capable woman from China in Spanish who likely learned from different means told me to use Duolingo for Chinese.

Millions of Europeans speak fluent English because they've casually consumed English content on the internet. This is all that really needs to be said. The evidence is out there and I pity those that are still incapable of drawing the right conclusions from this.

I am only asking Do you view it differently for someone who using Duolingo as a refresher and then motivated by streaks. Compare to a learn starting from zero. I mean is there room for nuance on Duolingo and diverse goals a reason people use the app?

Duolingo is the homeopathy of language learning.

Im interested in seeing your review of busuu! I have it and speakly right now for french

Do you have a video guide of ways to immerse in the language?

I would agree that SAMI is the best, most assured way to learn a language. The reason I attempt to use skills-based learning in conjunction with SAMI is the time requirement in mass immersion. It is convenient to believe I can make incremental progress with Busuu and keeping the experience fun has its own value. I don't really like watching tv shows or listening to podcasts much so it's definitely out of my way to immerse myself in these ways. I've began converting to more content as my focus. I mainly use Busuu for the well-built SRS flashcards for my Russian study but I already use Anki for my Spanish study, which I'm much further in. I plan to phase out Busuu as I finish through the lessons since for all its faults, Busuu still does combine accent practice / writing / reading / auditory skills. If I were to dedicate more time to language learning like Lamont does, SAMI would be my best best to gain a high level of proficiency in a reasonable timeline. I guess I'm converted haha

I will do a lesson for a quick dopamine hit. Basically, I accomplish some thing really easy, and that motivates me to start studying for real. Saying that, I’m probably only spending about five minutes on the app a day and fully acknowledge that it’s may be a drop in my language, learning bucket.

7:30 "Can seem ineffective in the initial stages" I wouldn't even say that, unless you mean something like the first 3 weeks. After getting the basics down and starting immersion, that initial rapid progress is like a drug. It's not until intermediate that it starts to feel like progress is really slow, but you also mention: "Difficult to track progress" And on that I definitely agree. I prefer to track hours read/listened but it doesn't really give you a good sense of how much you've improved in the language.

I don’t disagree with anything that you said about Duolingo, but I have to disagree with the idea that rules are and explanations are unnecessary. I think this really comes down to what your native language is and what the languages you learn and how fluent you already are. As a German I find it very helpful because the majority of our German literature courses in school are focused on our own grammar rules and exploring them. Learning the grammar first by heart is a good strategy for picking out overlapping patterns and it gives me the ability to correct myself which is invaluable when learning a language without any native speaker to help out. As an example I would have never ever found out that Ukrainian differentiates between soft and hard letters in a way German (for us soft and hard letters are equivalent to the idea behind the Kiki-Bouba, for Ukrainians it is a palatalization after I sounds) doesn’t because I would have never looked out for it. Saying Тітка in front of a Ukrainian without knowing this uhm could be funny. If you know enough languages and what to look out for this might become unimportant but learning your fifth language is very different from learning your second.

Can you actually do a video on weird comments though? I think that'd be pretty cool

Their stocks went up 17% recently

Can you give me a heads up next time you're going to mention Evan so I can invest in Kleenex stocks before the upload? Thanks.

cool video mate

What about learning basic grammar at the beginning and then jumping to mass immersion?

Ok so i have a massive goal to learn like 7 languages. French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Mandarin, Hebrew, Italian and Swedish, plus Japanese and Korean. So 10 basically and I've dabbled in all. I have used Duolingo for most of them but ironically, what i remember is what i watched or listened in shows. I'm a culinary student currently on an internship at a 5 star hotel. Been there now for 7 weeks at one particular restaurant and now I'm basically able to hold my own at a few stations. Tonight for example I was transferred to a new kitchen today and had no time to learn the menu. All asain cuisine, all technical, with a lot of different elements to add to each dish and 70 hungry guests. I was confused and fumbled alot and I asked for a lot of help but by the end of the service, I for the most part, knew exactly what i was supposed to do. I had to get burned mess up and shouted at but when I asked the supervisor how i did, she said i did very good! Mind you at one point i was so lost and working of 6 checks at the same time. Simply to say, immersion works fam☠️ The main restaurant i usually worked in was in they feelings cause i got sent away but i digress😂

ahh, this video is cathartic 😌

People defend DL because they invested effort into it. The reason it does "work" is because it gets them coming back. What i personally like is its sequential. Often i find myself paralyzed wondering which video to watch, what kind, what to read, what level, which online course to try. I often spend more time trying to decide what to do, than doing it. DL offers you bite size chunks in a sequence. You can jump into an exorcise where you left off. If somebody made an immersion version of that puts clips in order for you to watch and rewatch, read and interact with so i wouldnt have choice paralysis, i'd love that. Also, i think DL is making moves to be more immersive. They talked about moving into courses with no translated language (maybe in the upper levels?) so i think they are finding out what works, but will it be implemented and improved? I do credit DL for getting me to a certain point like so many others but i am now seeing it slow me down. Should i grind it out so i complete it for satisfaction or break the streak?

It's great for 5 minutes during spare moments. Like waiting for food at a fast food place.

i wouldnt say duolingo dont work, i am learning dutch right now on duolingo, i watch some films and some learning videos. yes is speak german so its kinda easybut duolingo helps me to know the basics, so i wouldnt say duolingo is useless

The way I think of it is, no matter what method you use to start with you need a lot of input/immersion to be fluent. Why? To learn how a native phrases things, what they say in each scenario, their intonation, their mannerisms and even their culture. Even if you start using a textbook or Duolingo you will need input eventually, so why delay it? You could memorize thousands of grammar structures and words before reading or watching anything, or you can start off watching and reading things and learn what is relevant to you immediately and enjoy the process much more. I have more fun watching movies and game let's plays in Korean than I ever did matching word bubbles by guess to make irrelevant sentences... Honestly, I feel like relevance is one of the biggest keys to language learning. When you see a new word, you associate it with the rest of the sentence it is in and the context in which it was said (or written). Duolingo has none of that and it delays doing the core loop of language learning: spending time with the language.

Where's the Duolingo owl social profile with a snarky comment used to mask the fact that it doesn't work?

I was using DL to practice writing hanzi... and then I just downloaded a hanzi writing dictionary. Now I can write onto that and look up words from my novel I am reading instead. I did have to fix the cracks in my phone screen to use the new dictionary, where as DL estimated if I did the strokes correctly. I was literally just barely swiping onto DL and it would guess that I did the stroke right. I have to write out the strokes for the dictionary to find the word. So... yeah, obviously reading my novels are more important that trying to pay for this app... I spent the monthly money for DL on buying books I want to read before someone tries to translate them.

Duolingo is fine to start with or goof around with. I played a mobile game with someone from Norway and did the first 3 or 4 units just so I could say such interesting things as "my dog has cheese" it was just for fun. But I was able to watch a couple movies with subtitles, so it's not as horrible as some want it to be.

11:25 to 11:52 🤣. I simply cannot agree enough. I understand the necessity for grammar instruction up to a point. But like you, I agree that it's needless complication. Not even close to being a selling point for me. 🤣

My buddy asked me if I was fluent in Spanish after less than 3 months of doing Duolingo. I said: Of course not! I’ve only been learning for 3 months. Him: But, you have 20,000 XP 🤦‍♂️

On duo teaching the wrong thing, I’ve reached the b2 level and I’m finding obvious mistakes. I’m comparing my translations with other sources to check them.

I fall under the skill building and immersion camp. I believe you need to learn the foundational grammar if you want to meaningfully progress in your language studies. On the other hand, you also need immersion to see how the grammar you learn is used in real life and how natives will deviate and the reasons why. Technically, you can immerse 100% in the language without opening a grammar book, but you'd be shooting yourself in the foot. You could spend 10 hours watching videos just to figure out one grammatical rule that is generally followed...or spend 5 minutes reading the explanation of how said grammatical rule works. On the other hand, you also shouldn't obsess with skill building - that would be like missing the forest from the trees. Both immersion and skill building are important. Perhaps an extreme example of skill building is learning individual kanji and their on-yomi and kunyomi readings...which might be useful if you are taking a test, but virtually a useless skill in real life (nobody is going to stop you on the streets and ask you the on-yomi or kun-yomi reading for a random kanji). Yet people still do this instead of just learning the vocabulary first, and only then learning how said vocabulary can be written with kanji. Knowing kanji is important to the extent that allows you to read native level material with ease as well as to be able to write messages using the right kanji.

I tried speedrunning the Czech course on Duolingo and got so many things wrong despite being a native speaker. The whole thing rubbed me the wrong way and while I don't remember any flat out mistakes, I don't think it's a good way to learn Czech. Same goes for Spanish, which I'm by no means fluent in, but even at my intermediate level, I felt like something was off about the course. But that may just be me.

Lamont! Doesn’t that blue light bother your eyes‽

I knew someone who become fluent in Spanish with mass immersion and then felt guilty for not using speakearly, so they decided to use speakearly with their next language. They switched back to mass immersion pretty quickly

23:58 - it's "the blub paradox", in a different context. (Originally written about in terms of programming languages -- you can't tell how much better one language is than the one you know, but you can tell how much worse one is if you know both -- seems applicable to the learning models here, too, and I'd agree that SAMI is definitely a goodness.) Also, I dunno how I'd failed to think about the perverse incentives thing, but yeah, that's totally the thing, isn't it? I've definitely felt like Duo was annoyingly slow, and now it clicks as to why, so thank you for that. (I feel I should have known that was it, but it somehow didn't click until you said it.) I paid for a year, but I definitely don't plan to renew.

Duolingos meningar är ju också jätte konstiga, liksom varför ska jag behöva veta hur man säger ”Kattens ost”? Det har ju ingen betydelse så tidigt i min språkläran. Det är en bättre användning av ens tid att kolla på Netflix eller KZfaq på det språk man vill lära sig. Jag ville också säga att jag gillar när dina videor är längre och att jag blir glad när du lägger upp, fortsätt så :)❤

I think Duolingo can be an effective tool for the classes in school, as what duo is teaching you is similar to a school introductory course. That being said, while it can work to get good grades, it’s terrible for ACTUALLY learning a language. And unfortunately the school classes is just not the way to go and thus Duo isn’t either.

They improved some things (kanji drawing for Japanese), but grammar instructions became worse for many courses when they turned from tree to path, and the removal of sentence discussion forum is really annoying. It was one of the most useful features to me, as usually some others would have the same questions as me. Maybe it depends on the type of questions you have. So for me... it got worse. Luckily MAX isn't available here, so I'm not even tempted. So overpriced, just the integration into the app would be nice.

I think it’s fine for a quick practice everyday, but for me it’s a supplement to 4-5 other resources including online language school.

only thing i can think to add is that the person you are responding to in this video probably isn't arguing against the immersion idea because in that specific video from 5 years ago you weren't yet as gung-ho about immersion, i think you yourself said you only started fully believing and understanding immersion recently. so the person they are arguing against was the 5 year old you, who was arguing that apps like busuu are better than apps like duolingo exactly because they are better at teaching grammar. busuu isn't better at immersion than duolingo, it's just better than duolingo at what duolingo is trying to do (grammar and vocabulary and translation exercises).

This guy looks like a barbarian 🔥 All love

Duo has the most useless sentences to memorize for practice: "the elephant sneezes on top of the chimney". As a user since 2019, it's now Way worse. First, what happened to the dialogs? Best feature, gone. Next, now we can't choose what part of the language to work on, we have to follow its stupid path. I didn't use the discussion much, but it seemed like I might in the future - gone. Also, just to gripe, I have no idea what their point/gem/heart structure does. They stop letting you acquire accolades past a beginner's level, except with points: no word count anymore, nothing to measure yourself by like "fastest lesson completed", or "average time through this level". And the images are 1990's level. Don't mention the obsequiously pandering cartoons. But it's free, and at least provides some basics.

Mer videos och som den här! Jag lärde mig kyrilliska alphabetet förut med en ramsa, det gick ganska lätt, lärde mig det på typ 2/3 dagar. Bara nötade in ramsan i huvudet. Nu ett år senare har jag glömt det mesta lol. Man måste nog underhålla det ett tag så det sitter

I’m a recovering Duoholic. I do think the immersion method you suggest would be more effective, but I have a bit of trouble sticking with it. Duolingo is better at maintaining my interest and it does in fact provide input. I used the Spanish course and it had a fair amount of input. I agree that it’s too slow and they have lots of shady practices which is why I stopped, but soon after I stopped Duolingo I mostly stopped learning Spanish

Good to know I was right to not return to Duolingo. Found myself being better at the gamification aspects instead of being able to interact with any sort of quality in Spanish or Mandarin. The sheer tedium of repeated ridiculous phrases. Madrigal's Magic and Integrated Chinese did more for me as core textbooks with regards to grammar while opening up to massive input in those languages ( Star Wars in Spanish or Mandarin 🤣 ) did far more for improving my recognition and basic fluency in both languages. Which is an ongoing process. Minus the guilt tripping notifications from a cartoon owl about why I haven't ' checked in' in awhile 😅.

Is there a shortage of hairbrushes in Australia?

32:40. I know exactly where this guy is coming from. When I first started learning Spanish, I had a Spanish girlfriend. I watched tv and picked up a lot of words talking to her. That being said, the only words I could ever understand were the words I learned on Duolingo. Whenever she’d speak it or I’d hear it on tv, it would reinforce what I’d learned. 90% of my vocabulary knowledge was found strictly from Duo, while my ability to utilize and hear vocab, was learned elsewhere.

I booted up Duolingo two days ago to try to supplement some vocabulary, after quitting for who knows how long, and the "hard exercise" it gave me was to translate I am a banana. I'm sure this will come up a hundred times a day going forward! 🤣

I like the yes it works, I also did: all the other activities that make you learn a language. Personally, I think that no app is useful for learning a language anyway.

Non-dis-un-a-irregardless people will still call you out on this video too

For me, I find pure immersion pretty difficult, but I’d say it depends a bit on the language. An English speaker learning a Germanic or Romance language would quickly learn to recognize a lot of cognates and that would make it much easier to understand even in the early stages. More distant languages are much harder to get started in. Easy immersion videos like Dreaming Spanish are great, but you usually can’t find enough of them outside of the most popular languages. So for me, a combination of immersion and some kind of textbook or app-based course is usually the best. Without some kind of explicit instruction, I can’t just jump into a movie or series for native speakers and get anything out of it. No matter how hard I try, my brain just tunes it out. Of course, proponents of the immersion method tell you to use comprehensible input, but it doesn’t always exist.

I used to use Duolingo for a long time, but after watching your videos i stopped but learning German and Korean became more sporadic and less frequent since I couldn't find any substitutes to keep me learning except for some KZfaq videos.