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Patreon Q&A - November 6th, 2021 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-07 00:49:14
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro

0:48 - If Matt knew what he knows now when he first learned Japanese, could he have reached his current level faster?

1:57 - Given that reading can harm pronunciation, when is the ideal time to become an avid reader?

3:31 - How can I improve my ability to hear words that I already know?

6:43 - What strategies does are there make sure you get done everything you need to get done each day, even when you're not feeling motivated

9:07 - How long had Matt been immersing for before he read his first book in Japanese?

12:14 - Is "forced sentence mining" a good strategy?

13:29 - How should I balance trying to achieve level 6 comprehension with continuing to grow my vocabulary?

17:07 - For Japanese and Chinese, is it a good idea to make two cards for each word: one to remember the reading and another to remember the meaning?

21:09 - Are language classes completely meaningless, or would it be possible to create a language class that makes sense under immersion learning principles?

27:52 - I'm struggling with the JP1K; what do I need to fix?

29:10 - Is the input hypothesis incomplete?

34:25 - How many hours of input should I have under my belt before I start speaking?

37:10 - Is music useful for learning a language?

39:01 - How important is practicing writing out kanji by hand?

40:07 - Is it a good idea to immerse in "every day content" for the purpose of gaining a realistic idea of what the target culture is like?


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Patreon Q&A - November 6th, 2021

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:48 - If Matt knew what he knows now when he first learned Japanese, could he have reached his current level faster? 1:57 - Given that reading can harm pronunciation, when is the ideal time to become an avid reader? 3:31 - How can I improve my ability to hear words that I already know? 6:43 - What strategies does are there make sure you get done everything you need to get done each day, even when you're not feeling motivated 9:07 - How long had Matt been immersing for before he read his first book in Japanese? 12:14 - Is "forced sentence mining" a good strategy? 13:29 - How should I balance trying to achieve level 6 comprehension with continuing to grow my vocabulary? 17:07 - For Japanese and Chinese, is it a good idea to make two cards for each word: one to remember the reading and another to remember the meaning? 21:09 - Are language classes completely meaningless, or would it be possible to create a language class that makes sense under immersion learning principles? 27:52 - I'm struggling with the JP1K; what do I need to fix? 29:10 - Is the input hypothesis incomplete? 34:25 - How many hours of input should I have under my belt before I start speaking? 37:10 - Is music useful for learning a language? 39:01 - How important is practicing writing out kanji by hand? 40:07 - Is it a good idea to immerse in "every day content" for the purpose of gaining a realistic idea of what the target culture is like?

Comments

Anonymous

If you were learning based on listening before reading, how would you learn your initial vocabulary? How would you handle a vocab deck in a language with lots of homophones like Chinese? How would you change your approach to sentence mining?

Anonymous

Do you plan to eventually get your Chinese to the same level as your Japanese?

Anonymous

I already have a lot of friends in Japan and im thinking of going to a language school just for the visa. Do you think actually being in japan will override the negatives of being in that classroom environment?

Anonymous

Thanks for answering my question, it's interesting to hear your thoughts on the matter and I'm glad to have brought a new idea to the table :D As a child in Australia I feel like I grew up with a very unbalanced idea about the US because I only ever saw it portrayed in scripted television shows and movies, and didn't even realise how false my impression was until I was older and started making friends on the internet, but it also seems that many Americans are imparted an equally unrealistic depiction of Australia.

Anonymous

I know Refold places a lot of emphasis on using an SRS, but being autistic, I really struggle to stay engaged when learning things out of context or without having an immediate use for them, so the simple act of wrote memorising words or sentences is just not exciting enough for me personally. I work in a play-based early childhood educational environment, and we view music as a fundamental tool for fostering language development, as it helps us remember words, learn about phonetics, and hone our pronunciation in a way that is far more cognitively stimulating than speaking alone. Whether or not you personally find music to be an efficient learning tool, have you considered it from the perspective of it being a natural holistic way of simultaneously sentence mining and exposing oneself to repetition, while also being able to practise shadowing? (Not to mention a vocal stim to help deal with sensory and emotional regulation.)

Fabien

Thanks for answering my question. I feel like I should have specified that I was thinking of teaching a foreign language that I myself have reached a very advanced level in (i.e. English) to natives of my own language, rather than teaching my native language to foreigners (although I could see myself doing that too). But your answer provided great advice on that all the same. I'm taking linguistics as a minor at uni so I'm getting the theoretical knowledge of grammar and phonetics. I'm gonna try and see if I can maybe offer 1 on 1 classes in my area and become a sort of foundations teacher + input coach the way you described.

Fabien

Hi Matt! In March 2019 you said in a Q&A that you were planning on delving deeper into linguistics and wanted to find out more about the current state of the scientific study of language acquisition. Do you have any new insights to share about where linguists are at currently? Have Krashen's ideas been developed further?

Anonymous

I have realised new words have not been jumping out to me anymore since when i started which was less than a month ago. Is there something i can do to try to hear these more often?

昭和Guy51

Hey, Matt are there any future plans for the Refold guide to be translated into Japanese? I haven't run any surveys, but I think Japan is a very big untapped market for Refold or an immersion-based language acquisition approach. Public Junior high schools and cram schools in Japan continue to push the grammar-translation approach and as a consequence, it seems most people I have met believe the way to learn a language is by memorizing verb paradigms, word lists, and sentences or rather the grammatical language equations teachers write on blackboards. Basically, English classes in Japan look and are run very similar to the way classical Greek or Latin classes are run in western countries. All of this seems to be tied closely to the Eiken step tests and the High School entry exams.

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 fix just by immersing. Personally, I have consciously immersed in English for two years now, but when I output, which isn't often, 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? The silent period hasn't been very useful.

suusi

Matt always points out that to keep a language to a very high and native-like level one should focus on only one language. I think this implies foreign languages that are substantially different from your NL but what about similar languages? Let's say your NL is Norwegian and you're learning Turkish as your TL but you also want to acquire Swedish? Will it still hinder your acquisition of Turkish? Will you be able to maintain both to a native-like level? Or let's say your native language is Czech and you want to acquire Russian (different kinds of distances, Swedish/Norwegian are probably really close whereas Russian and Czech are both Slavic languages but are more distant). Basically what are your thoughts on the difference between learning a substantially different TL vs. a similar TL to your NL?

Anonymous

Would you say that jumping around genres is a bad idea for progressing faster in a language? Often times I jump around slice of life, action, live action reality shows, etc. I do this to keep myself engaged, but if it's more beneficial to immerse one domain at a time that would be a different story

Anonymous

How do you deal with flashcards where the +1 word is in katakana or hiragana? When I see a word in kanji and have to recall the reading I feel like I'm proving to myself I actually know the word, as apposed to just reading it and recalling what the card means. Should I kanjify it?

Anonymous

Since focusing on listening comprehension first is better for developing good habits and a good intuition for the language in the long run, is it really beneficial to watch with TL subtitles right from the very beginning, rather than focusing on listening only first, before adding in subtitles at a later point in time? At an early stage, you can't really read that much anyways, so maybe the subs won't get in the way of listening, but even then I feel like you will get a lot of cheaty hints from subtitles (e.g. seeing numbers or easy kanji) and start relying on them too much, instead of properly developing your listening skills. What are your thoughts on this?

Anonymous

With the question about music: Yeah so there's that story of a guy who had a car accident and completely lost his vocal ability, but he was still able to sing songs word for word. My question: Adults can learn grammar as a shortcut to understanding what native speakers seem to just inherently understand. So if an adult learner were hypothetically able to fully acquire the structures and rules of a new language and literally never consciously learn a single rule or point of grammar, do you think that this would lead to a superior subconscious model, even if took longer? Basically I'm asking if grammar is a bit of a trade off where we learn something that helps the process of acquisition, but then we can never full shake free of the conscious understanding (which may be misleading).

Vulcan

Hi Matt. Have you experienced any unexpected downsides to learning Japanese or Chinese. I know that there is an opportunity cost incurred from developing and maintaining language ability, but I'm curious if you've experienced anything else. For example, my Spanish is at a C1 level and I have noticed a slight decline in my English spelling ability. I've always been great at spelling, and seldom needed to consult spell check. Nowadays I will second guess the spelling of a word once every week or two.

Anonymous

Hey Matt! What were some of the mistakes you had when learning Japanese?

Anonymous
>>71474402

Of course it's only a hypothetical, but this is definitely the reason why we find it so much easier to accurately produce languages with similar grammatical structures and concepts to our native ones, because we already have at least some subconscious model to build on, e.g. remembering how to conjugate certain classes of strong verbs in other Germanic languages is quite intuitive if you're a native English speaker because we already internalised a lot of the ablaut patterns as children, but we struggle so much to acquire concepts that don't exist in our native languages (looking at you, grammatical gender...)

Anonymous

Hey Matt, any advice you can give for someone who wants to be able to speak at a conversational level faster than you would traditionally start speaking while learning through immersion? Like using a textbook or tutoring to get basic need-to-know sentences down? Asking as someone who wants to teach english in Japan once things get opened back up, potentially fall of 2022 depending on how things go with Covid. Great content and JP1K v2 rocks!

Anonymous

Hey Matt, any news on when the interview with your friend who learned Japanese through listening will be coming out?

Fabien

Hi Matt! Even after 10 years of nonstop English immersion and having reached a level of fluency that I don’t think could be improved too much further, pronouncing the TH-sound, a sound not found in my native language of German, still requires conscious effort and a few words and word combinations are almost impossible for me to say (especially those where the TH-sound is immediately preceded or followed by the similar sounding s-sound, such as in “with something”). This is despite overall having received a lot of (unprompted) positive feedback on my pronunciation and accent from native speakers over the years. What do I need to do to overcome this deficiency?

arec

Hello matt, so I have gotten a couple of my friends into refold and find myself having to explain concepts and set up technology a lot, since it is something I wish I had in the beginning. But I have realized I can't explain and do everything for them, so I was wondering when would be the best time to stop holding their hand on things, and just let them figure it out on their own? Would you recommend just setting up the tech for them, and after that just let them do it on their own?

昭和Guy51

Hello Matt, one more question: Thus far what kind of interesting and or cool things have the staff at Refold learned from the Quantized user data? For example: card retention rate, cross-card correlation, demographics, population level or usage tends, or anything else?

Anonymous
>>71373416

I have a similar question to this. My NL is English, BUT Spanish native to me in that I learned when I was a kid, but English was predominant so now at best I speak fluent Spanglish. I understand Spanish at varying levels depending on the dialect, how they’re speaking, and what they’re speaking about. Sometimes I understand perfectly, sometimes I understand 10% or even less due to speed and slang. I’m in the process of learning Japanese currently using Refold’s methods, and quite honestly any piece of advice you’ve given from your YouTube. I actually WANT to learn Japanese but Spanish I feel like I need to learn to speak fluently and soon (going to be spending more time with in-laws family who only speak Spanish and I have a hard time with their dialect), but it’s not been advised to learn. Two languages at once. But Spanish isn’t foreign to me it’s just that I’m not that fluent. Do you think doing both is doable? If so, how would you go about that?

Yami

I've been struggling with immersion from time to time when I sentence mine, I look up a lot of words and it's killing me inside. I know you said have fun with immersion, I'm trying my hardest to ignore the words I don't know a bit here and there but it's very difficult, can you give me some tips on having fun and which of the 2 approaches will get me to be able to understand everything faster, the look up everything approache or the have fun approach.

Anonymous

Hey Matt, I started with the JP1K Deck a few days ago, and as I understood it, its comprised of about 1000 words common for slice of life media. Do you think it’s worth doing the N4 Tango Deck, after Im done with JP1K? Or should I just start sentence mining?

Christian Kephart

Given that Refold looks down on early output in TL, what are your thoughts on conversing by listening in your TL and responding in NL? Sort of like what you did with AtsuEigo. I have a friend that is Japanese and studying English, and thought it would possibly be a way to study. In theory, you're getting the "prime immersion" by having friends that speak your TL and also not outputting in TL.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, I had a question about the use of the SRS throughout the various stages of Refold. When learners are still in the beginning stages of Refold and learning the most common words that show up all the time in immersion, use of the SRS subjectively seems to be it's most efficient. However, as learners become more advanced in their TL - learning rare words that show up very rarely in immersion - learners tend to start to devalue the SRS even though it's particularly effective for remembering those rare words. So my question is, does the SRS become more or less useful over time? Is the SRS most effective in the advanced stages, or is it better to drop it after a certain point? Thanks.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, I have been wondering about cannabis and language acquisition. I haven't noticed anything negative so far (lol I think) but if it hinders the process I will gladly drop it for the time being. Thank you!

Anonymous

Let's say I immerse for 5 years in my target language 24/7: 4 hours active, 20 hours passive. I look up 5 words a day and don't use anki at all. Will I be "fluent"?

Anonymous

Hey Matt, I'm 3 quarters into the refold deck but I'm having a hard time trying to recall most of the Kanji readings. Should I be concerned? Also, should I suspend cards that I already know the meaning of (prior JP1K) even if I don't know the reading of the Kanji?

Anonymous

Hey Matt, do you think the sooner one makes the monolingual transition the better ?

Justin

Hello mistər Matt vs Japan, I know you talked about how we should keep our listening and reading comprehension about the same or it is ideal to, So My question to you is about this website called "Language Reactor" Do you think this is a good add on for reading and watching on Netflix and Youtube, Right now I am a weak or two from a quarter of the way through the Refold deck And I notice a lot of words by using the add on, I also color graded the words I know, But I don't know if reading this early is good or not, Even if it's more of just me scanning the words to see how it is pronounce, What do you think?

refold
>>72876337

Hi Justin, Language Reactor (formerly Language Learning with Netflix) is one of our most recommended tools. Watching with TL subtitles is the perfect way to start noticing the vocabulary and kanji that you're learning through the deck. The combination of audio and text will help build your internal pronunciation. Sounds like you're doing everything right.

Justin

Oh, Well then that's great, Thanks