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Patreon Q&A - October 9th, 2021 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-09 16:09:18
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro

0:28 - What advice do you have for making time for immersion as a full-time university student?

5:06 - What would lead to more progress: immersing for 1,000 hours over the course of a year, or immersing for 1,000 hours over the course of six months?

13:47 - How did you get into the mindset to immerse when first starting out?

17:19 - Would it be more effective to actively immerse for 2.5 hours every day, or 10 hours once every three days?

20:34 - What was your experience being in full time education and fitting immersion in around classes and study?

24:42 - Do you know anyone who reached a high level in a foreign language and ultimately regretted it?

33:55 - How did you go about cutting out opening and ending songs from your passive immersion audio?

35:55 - I can understand fine when reading or watching with subs, but my comprehension is very low when doing pure listening. Do I need to address this, or will it fix itself over time?

38:48 - What are your thoughts on non-native input?

40:20 - Should I try to imitate the way that native speakers breath?

44:05 - I'm not a beginner in my TL; how should I start learning with the Refold method?

48:05 - What are your thoughts on cloze cards and services like Clozemaster or Lingvist?

52:50 - I'm struggling to make the transition from anime/manga to light novels. Advice?

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Patreon Q&A - October 9th, 2021

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:28 - What advice do you have for making time for immersion as a full-time university student? 5:06 - What would lead to more progress: immersing for 1,000 hours over the course of a year, or immersing for 1,000 hours over the course of six months? 13:47 - How did you get into the mindset to immerse when first starting out? 17:19 - Would it be more effective to actively immerse for 2.5 hours every day, or 10 hours once every three days? 20:34 - What was your experience being in full time education and fitting immersion in around classes and study? 24:42 - Do you know anyone who reached a high level in a foreign language and ultimately regretted it? 33:55 - How did you go about cutting out opening and ending songs from your passive immersion audio? 35:55 - I can understand fine when reading or watching with subs, but my comprehension is very low when doing pure listening. Do I need to address this, or will it fix itself over time? 38:48 - What are your thoughts on non-native input? 40:20 - Should I try to imitate the way that native speakers breath? 44:05 - I'm not a beginner in my TL; how should I start learning with the Refold method? 48:05 - What are your thoughts on cloze cards and services like Clozemaster or Lingvist? 52:50 - I'm struggling to make the transition from anime/manga to light novels. Advice?

Comments

connordapro

Do you think you would have gotten to the level of Japanese you are at now faster if you had all the knowledge you currently do on language learning and how to study?

Anonymous

Hey Matt, I am trying to achieve level 6 comprehension in slice of life content. However, I am coming across less and less new words and sentences to mine in anime and manga. I would like to continue building my vocabulary without sacrificing time towards towards my goal to speak. Do you think the most optimal use of intensive immersion time would be reading novels/light novels/visual novels to build vocabulary, or slow down vocabulary building and focus on solely building automatic comprehension?

Anonymous

Bar simply "immerse more"; is there any way I can improve my ability to hear words I already know. Anki is supposed to get words "into orbit", and immersion should maintain them, but I often don't even know I've heard a word I know. Any tips or strategies to deal with this?

Callum Street

I'm currently doing the JP1K deck and have been struggling with remembering new cards and have dropped the amount of new cards to 5. It feels like I just brute force them in the end because I finish all my reviews and am just left with the new cards, is this fine as I assume early you are just meant to be getting a lot of exposure and this is normal and will improve with more immersion or if it's not would you recommend me change anything about how I review new cards.

Anonymous

I have noticed that a number of Mandarin learners say that they remember the meaning but not the reading of characters. Someone suggested having two cards per word: one card tests your understanding of the meaning and the other card tests your memory of the pronunciation. Is this an effective method for languages like Japanese and Chinese?

Licia Li

It would be great if you could share some settings you have for your daily study. What strategies or techniques do you use to make sure you finish your daily tasks when you feel unmotivated? Thanks a lot!

Arkaaito

No intelligent questions, but I have to say, I'm weirdly glad that I'm not the only person whose inner monologue intones Random Capitalization in particular ways.

Anonymous

I've been listening to more mindfulness type practices, and I'm wondering how you balance heavy immersion (I've been listening all day every day) with getting away from our phones and not having constant dopamine overdoses.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, Given the potential harm that excessive early reading can have on one's pronunciation and accent, when should learners ideally start becoming avid readers in their TL? When is too early? Thanks

BigDaddeyD

How useful do you think music is for immersion/learning? Do you think singing along for fun hurts gains? Also do you have any Japanese song recommendations? Thank you :3

Anonymous

What's your most favorite light novel that you've read?

bonk

How important is practicing writing Kanji? I'm currently going through the JP1K deck (which is amazing by the way, I can't believe how much I've learned) but I usually use Anki on my phone so I don't get any practice actually writing the kanji I learn. Should I make it a priority to write them out or is just recognizing enough?

bonk
>>69810850

I remember in one of his videos Matt said he thinks music is not that important, compared to Khatz. It was something along the lines of music being not very comprehensible input, because even in your native language you won't always recognize a lot of lyrics (It's certainly true for me in english at least). But he said it can be a good way to get yourself to *feel* in Japanese mode

bonk
>>69602865

I believe that's why in the refold Anki deck, you hover over the kanji first to get the reading, and THEN try to recall the meaning.

Anonymous

I'm at a somewhat advanced learning stage of input, and I'm starting to feel like the advice "just immerse more" and "tolerate ambiguity" won't cut it for me anymore. If I don't sit down and analyze complex sentences or repeat what I didn't understand until I get it, then I feel like I am not "gaining" anything. I also feel this need to keep finding harder resources to immerse in, otherwise I'm not learning as much. Have you ever experience this need to sit down and break down more difficult stuff? Do you have any advice for people at my level.

Anonymous

Is there some sort of notification for when these are coming up? I can't seem to find a schedule on Patreon or Discord.

昭和Guy51

Hey, 'Matt vs Japan' many thanks for the answer! And sorry for the use of capital letters when typing 'Refold' I had no idea they indicated shouting.

Anonymous

Do you think it’s advisable to immerse in a certain amount of unscripted content that documents real life where possible, even from the beginning? Not necessarily because of the type of language use, but rather in order to prevent oneself from developing a skewed impression of the country and culture, as you mentioned Japanese learners can have a subconscious false expectation that living in Japan will be "just like anime." When I was learning German, I spent most of my time immersing by watching YouTube vlogs and tutorials, and listening to music and news broadcasts, so when I finally went to Europe for the first time, it was more or less as I expected it to be.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for a good offline Japanese-Japanese dictionary for iOS? I usually like using qolibri when reading japanese, but sometimes I am lazy and like to read Japanese on my phone. However, it seems like all the Japanese-Japanese dictionaries available just connect me to a browser rather than having a large offline dictionary in the app itself. The reason I am avoiding connecting to a browser is because I use an app blocker and try to avoid distracting things like youtube and social media.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, I was wondering what your thoughts were on "forced sentence mining" in which you mine every single unknown word/grammar pattern in an episode of a show you are watching (even if they are uncommon) and then once they are all mined, you listen to this episode’s condensed audio on repeat for several days.. I know that this was one of Stevi's favorite ways to study Japanese, but I wanted to know what your thoughts were as well. I also included a link to Stevi's explanation of this for reference. https://youtu.be/H-ZPI5HCK00?t=470

Anonymous

マット先生, do you remember how long you immersed in anime/manga/easier content before attempting your first light novel or serious book? I'm slowly getting better at reading but not sure if I'm ready for that yet

Greg St. Angelo
>>69599057

I sort of had a similar issue when I first started doing it but once I actually spent the time to immerse more that quickly went away. idk how much time you are actually getting with the language but in my case I was almost exclusively doing anki reps and not leaving much time for things like anime YouTube etc

Fabien

Hi Matt! What are you current thoughts on language education? Is there any value in classes and actively teaching foreign languages at all? And if so what can a classroom + teacher offer? If you were to imagine the ideal language class, what would it look like (unless the answer is "No class at all")? I'm trying to figure out if, knowing what I know about language acqusition, it makes any sense to become a teacher that teaches foreign languages at school or to adults.

Anonymous

Hey Matt, there are some deck options in the JP1Kv.2 deck that have changed, are there any particular reasons for that? I've read the JP1K section in the Refold website and it says nothing about it. The new interval or the leech threshold are some examples of settings that have changed. Should we restore everything back to low key Anki? Also, I've started a new job teaching Spanish as a second language and I don't know what to do to try to implement an input based approach in my classes. I don't want my lessons to be the traditional useless crap that we all had to go through. Although I'm fully aware of the fact that your thing is language learning and not language teaching, I'd still love to listen to your advice.

Anonymous

Heyy Matt, I've been really inspired to start doing meditation as you have suggested but I'm not sure how or where to start. I was wondering if you could go over what you did when you started and any tips/advice. Thank you so much!

Hunter Headley

Do you think the input hypothesis is incomplete? The reason I ask is that Krashen himself in most of his interviews says that grammar is not important ever. However even the most input heavy language learning methods like Ajatt or Refold still recommend reading something like Tae Kim. I think that grammar study can be helpful in making input comprehensible. What are your thoughts on this?

refold
>>70639623

Hi there, Ethan here. Thanks for pointing this out. This was an oversight on my part. I've updated the package to include the recommended settings for lapses which are the same as in the Refold guide except for tagging leeches instead of suspending them. I didn't see any other settings that were different. If you did, can you point me to them? Thanks!

Andrew Colon

Hi Matt, I just started on the Refold method and, so far, I'm enjoying it. I'm using the method for Spanish. From an hours perspective, is there any scale of immersion hours per level? Specifically, I'm interested in approximately how many hours of immersion should I have before I begin the output/speaking stage of the process? I'm using Polylogger to track my immersion time and I think an hours range would be helpful to gauge progress.

Luigi
>>70773082

I think it depends. With languages similar to English you can grasp the meaning of the sentence without much knowledge about grammar. With languages that are a little bit different, I think it could help you to learn a little grammar so your brain can see the patterns in how sentences are structured.

Andrea San Román

Hey Matt, many English learners, myself included, have been forced to output during our school years. Because of this, we tend to develop a heavy accent and some bad habits that are difficult to correct just by immersing. Personally, I have consciously immersed in English for two years now, but when I output I still make some mistakes that are deeply ingrained in my brain due to being forced to output in school for almost a decade. What are your suggestions for solving this problem?