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Patreon Q&A - March 28th, 2021 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-03-28 19:57:13
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:23 - Is Refold going to make a monolingual transition deck?
4:15 - Is is important to read a balance of both fiction and non-fiction books?
9:06 - How much Japanese do you think you would forget if you didn't contact Japanese at all for 10 years? (Long rant on language maintenance)
20:14 - Is it effective to read a book while simultaneously listening to the audiobook?22:40 - How should you go about reading a novel that is way above your level?
23:29 - Is there a "bare minimum" amount of Anki you would recommend to people who hate Anki?
27:26 - How can I get the most out of passive listening?
30:22 - What are your current thoughts on Morphman? Do you recommend it?
37:58 - How effective do you think passive listening is?
40:48 - If you're feeling low on motivation, is it OK to have some days where you only do reviews and don't learn new cards?
41:09 - How much should I read while going through the JP1K
42:22 - I'm still in Stage 2 but have an opportunity to speak for 1 hour once a week. Will this be harmful?
44:35 - Is there a certain amount of words I need to know before moving on to Stage 3?

Files

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Patreon Q&A - March 27th, 2021

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:23 - Is Refold going to make a monolingual transition deck? 4:15 - Is is important to read a balance of both fiction and non-fiction books? 9:06 - How much Japanese do you think you would forget if you didn't contact Japanese at all for 10 years? (Long rant on language maintenance) 20:14 - Is it effective to read a book while simultaneously listening to the audiobook? 22:40 - How should you go about reading a novel that is way above your level? 23:29 - Is there a "bare minimum" amount of Anki you would recommend to people who hate Anki? 27:26 - How can I get the most out of passive listening? 30:22 - What are your current thoughts on Morphman? Do you recommend it? 37:58 - How effective do you think passive listening is? 40:48 - If you're feeling low on motivation, is it OK to have some days where you only do reviews and don't learn new cards? 41:09 - How much should I read while going through the JP1K 42:22 - I'm still in Stage 2 but have an opportunity to speak for 1 hour once a week. Will this be harmful? 44:35 - Is there a certain amount of words I need to know before moving on to Stage 3?

Comments

Geniusssmit

Do you think practicing reading tategaki is important? I thought about "naturalness" of reading in that way. Humans have two eyes, situated on the left and the right of the face, so horizontal vision should be better therefore it should be more natural to read from side to side + ofc years of practicing reading left to right. Do you think always reading left to right is better in the long term? What are benefits of reading tategaki? Thoughts?

Anonymous

As someone with a bit more experience with language atrophy, I'd just like to expand on what Matt said: If your abilities are at or below B2, they will deteriorate rather quickly. I learned Spanish and French (B1 and B2 respectively) at school so it might be a bit different learning with Refold but in my experience, you'll quickly forget very specific grammar points while the basics stick. At some point they just become intrinsic knowledge, even with a more traditional approach. So all it takes is a quick refresher to get back to the same level, grammar-wise. Even for the things you've forgotten completely, that's all it takes because once you read about it, you remember and it just sort of clicks. As for vocab, I found myself with a lot of passive vocabulary. I hadn't had anything to do with French for about 3 years but I still had level 3 or even 4 comprehension. It was definitely harder to understand than it used to be but over all, I was able to understand about the same amount as before. Producing French on the other hand, seemed nearly impossible at first. It still takes a lot of effort to write in French, let alone speak it. It's been several months since I started trying to get back into French but I'm also juggling multiple langugages. If you were to intensively focus on that one language, I'm guessing one or two months could be realistic. If your skills are above B2, the language atrophies a lot more slowly. Now, my English never atrophied because English is basically everywhere but here's my guess based on my experience with Spanish and French: Some of your activated vocab would turn into passive vocab, assuming that you've acquired some rather specific and rarely used words. "Atrophy" would likely be among the first words to go if I were to stop engaging with English completely. If you're at a C1, you're probably outputting on a somewhat regular basis so I'd assume that you've used everyday words so much that they'd stay activated over years. I imagine getting back into outputting after several years would still be difficult a lot quicker than in the case of a B2 language. My estimate, based on nothing but a gut feeling, is maybe two or three weeks to be able to use the language with ease. As for grammar, I don't think there'd be much of a problem. If you've reached a C1, you've had so much exposure to the language that anything you may have forgotten would just come back to you when you come across it again in your immersion. I don't feel like maintaining a C1 language is difficult though! You don't have to immerse for hours each day, all you need is a bit of exposure. One video, some songs, a short article, that's enough. I've been staying away from intensive English immersion in order to make time for my other languages. I stay up to date with the new Marvel shows but other than that, all I do is watch a video or read the news. That's really all it takes to stop a C1 language from deteriorating. You wouldn't even have to be exposed to the language every day so if you had multiple languages at C1, you could just rotate each day and you'd still have time for immersion with a new language. A couple minutes is really all it takes to maintian a language.

Anonymous

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the perceived importance of what someone is immersing with. I'll explain. When I am at work and my manager talks to me about all the tasks that need to get done for the day and goes into detail for each of the tasks, I'm much more focused and could easily repeat back to him what he just said. On the other hand, if a colleague from another department tells me what his manager told him to do for the day, I'm less focused and wouldn't even be able to repeat back to the colleague what I just heard. I've found that while I'm immersing in my TL with a TV show, I don't subjectively perceive the audio as being very important and therefore don't retain as much of what the characters may be saying in the show as I could have if I viewed the dialogue as 'important' Is there a way I can make my immersion seem more 'important' (or relevant, pertinent, etc.) to me so that I pay more attention to it and retain more? Thanks!

Christoph Märkl

Hi Matt, a Question about grammar: I did 2 years of japanese university classes (after which I did basically not understand a thing of real japanese, but thats another story) and i assume i learned the basic japanese grammar, which is always refered to in the immersion learning approach. We used Minna no nihongo and i learned thoroughly for the 2 years. I started MIA 5 months ago and followed all your advices, but skipped the grammar part. Do you think the grammar tought in classes is fine for the required basic level or should i do tae kim? Thanks for your videos, already helped me alot.

Fraser Cain

Hi Matt, I've been working on Chinese for the last year or so, and my reading comprehension is way beyond my listening. I can read fairly advanced stuff, but it feels like I'm just reading English with different letters. The faster my reading gets, it feels like the faster I'm able to integrate closed captions in Chinese when I focus on my listening. This wouldn't be a problem in any other language, since reading characters from a small alphabet improves your listening too. Should I keep getting better at reading, so in theory I can get better at caption comprehension, or switch back to listening and let it catch up? It honestly feels like it's two completely separate skills with Chinese.

Snugboy

Hey Matt! Love Refold and your channel. My question is how meticulous do you have to be when recording your timing for active immersion? For instance, I actively immerse on my lunch break at work for an hour but if we’re being specific it’s more like 57 or 58 minutes. Is there harm in rounding that up to an hour or should I count minute by minute? Additionally an anime episode is 23 minutes long but I count one as 20 minutes after I cut out the intro and credits. Love the work. Have a great day. Bring back the manga wall.

Anonymous

Hey Matt! I started immersion learning for French back in October, and I've been making steady progress since. The problem is that I'm still in French class in high school, which I feel like is making my French worse due to my teacher's accent, early output, and inaccurate conclusions about how the language works. I can't really secretly read or anything because it's a very small class and my teacher has us work on output activities. Based on your experience, how could I make the best of my 40 minutes a day in the class? Is it better to just ignore the teacher's advice or is there anything to gain from the class?

Anonymous

How would you deal with the situation on JP1K where you go to check if you had the right pronunciation, you didn't, but seeing the right one gave the right meaning, but you can't get the meaning without seeing the reading first? Maybe should I first try to get the meaning, then take a guess at the reading, check it then flip the card to check if the meaning was right?

refold
>>56696174

There is no need to try to associate the kanji with the meaning. If you try to recall the reading from the kanji, and you try to recall the meaning from the reading, then that will lead to naturally being able to go from kanji to meaning. Basically, if A=B and B=C, then A=C. Trying to recall both the reading and meaning before checking the reading will increase the cognitive load for the review process. I would just stick to: 1) try to recall reading 2) check reading 3) try to recall meaning 4) check meaning But you only pass or fail a card based on if you get the meaning correct or not. If you get the reading correct but the meaning wrong, this is normal, but fail the card.

Anonymous

That makes sense, "infrastructure" would probably be built over time, eventually allowing you to go straight to meaning from kanji

Hayden

Hey Matt in your newsletter video you mentioned you've been studying Chinese moderately for 8 months and I was wondering if you could share some thoughts on how you feel about the Chinese language in general? Also do you think studying Chinese has benefited your Japanese in anyway?

Anonymous

Could you describe the subjective experience of reaching a level 5 level of comprehension in a TV show? Is it still level 5 if there's the occasional word I don't know? How much "fuzziness" or missing nuance is considered acceptable? Related to this, I find it very hard to apply the levels of comprehension to the novels I'm reading. Since there will always be unknown words, no matter what level you're at, what rate of unknown words would be considered level 5? I personally feel like an unknown word every 500 words (or one every two pages) feels like I've reached a new level of comprehension, but I was curious to know what you think. Thanks!

Anonymous

Hello, Matt! I just found your channel the other day. And I really enjoy it! You are also into meditation, I've been very into meditation for about 6 years now, so I was wondering if you had any resources for doing meditations in Japanese?

Anonymous

I would like to add something to your answer about maintaining a level in a language... French is going to be literally the easiest mainstream language to do it in. There are a couple of weird grammar patterns and false friends that you constantly have to be on the look out for (while you're not highly fluent) but they'd only total about 1000 (words and patterns), and then the rest is just intuitive as an English speaker. I'm not saying this makes all of French easy (though IMO it is the easiest language for an English speaker), but the average native speaker of a language is supposed to have a vocab of about 50,000 words, and French would share at least 15,000 if not 25,000 of those with English. So if you get your French to C1, keeping it there really is not a big ask. It's been almost a year since I touched French and I was only about a B1 maaaaybe B2 level and I can still understand it well. So long story short, I think it's not much to worry about.

Katie Woodhams

Any tips for staying alert while immersing? I often find myself getting really sleepy. My target language doesn't have a wide range of content so I can't just find more stimulating content.

Daniel

Hey Matt! I wanted to ask for your advice on forced early output from taking Japanese classes at university. Unfortunately, my major has a foreign language requirement that requires me to take 4 semesters worth of classes (goes up to Tobira level). There is an option to test out of those classes, but since I’m just starting Refold I don’t have a realistic chance of passing. My intention was to wait until I became fluent- or at least around the Tobira level- before taking the exam, but my college counselor is forcing me to take these classes which really sucks. I remember you said you took the highest of Japanese at your university, so I’m sure you know how heavily output/production is forced onto students. I’m currently taking the 1st-semester class and the schedule is 5 days a week, 1 hour every day (this will be the same for all future classes). Luckily because this semester is online, I’ve been able to ignore my classmates' speaking and limit my own output as much as possible. However, next semester my university is planning to bring back in-person instruction, so I won’t have that option anymore. I want to try and preserve my accent as much as possible, but I feel that listening to other people learning Japanese for 5 hours every week will ultimately affect my Japanese in some way. There’s not really much I can think of to avoid output/bad input, but I wanted to ask if you have any tips since you went through this process yourself (although you were already fluent when you were taking classes). Thanks!

Katie Woodhams

Do you have any tips for those of us listening to content that doesn't have TL subtitles? For reference my comprehension is usually around level 4, sometimes 3 or 5. Some specific struggles: 1. I can usually hear and look up words I don't know, but transcribing sentences for a sentence card I think would be dangerous (and time consuming). 2. I often have the experience of understanding all the words but not taking in the meaning... Feels like by the time the sentence is finished I've forgotten what the start of the sentence was. Because there's no subtitles I can't go back and work it out easily.