My relaxing language learning routine

it is crazy how people think this is counterintuitive. for the most part that is how babies learn.

One aspect that really help me to improve is to listen to the pronunciations of words. Many times we thought that we know the word as we used it quite often but sometimes if we listen to it very carefully we could discover that there is a slight variations in pitch, tone & duration, which could change the meaning entirely 👌

Even in Japanese and Chinese you definitely can still learn native script in a weekend. Just learn hiragana/katakana in japanese or simplified for chinese. Idk about chinese but hiragana/katakana is used everyday for Japanese and any kanji you dont know youll be able to pronounce better after looking it up just because you know hiragana

fake poly

Lol not watching TV for the practice is why this guy is weaker at listening—the problem is that media that's just someone talking doesn't map well to ordinary social contexts and doesn't have the variety of background noise, ways of speaking such as whispering, and many other factors that you get from TV. TV and movie directors sometimes consciously sacrifice understandability for the aesthetic of the sound of the line spoken, something you'll probably never find with informational podcasts or recorded dialogues. Find a good dialogue-heavy drama and stick with it.

l'm Japanese. l'm learning English from Matt😊 thank you.

私は日本人ですが、マットの動画で英語を勉強してます。いつもありがとうございます＼(^o^)／

Great video and interview! Thanks 🙏

im doing georgian and just from skimming the script and heairing the audio of the words i just figured out within the week that being said everything in the language is completely phonetic

I thought this video was about the 10 rules and not refold.

You say you should watch shows with subtitles. However, when I've put shows into German and also put on the German subtitles, the subtitles are often a bit different to the audio, I guess they are shortened - but it is really difficult to follow like that. Any advice?

In a lot of spanish media, the subtitles are different than what is being spoken, which for me has made it difficult to use subtitles.

It’s really awkward watching something like a Disney movie on disney+ where the audio is different than the subtitles because they didn’t bother translating them together

I think the correct balance to looking up new words is look them up almost every time. Don’t you recommend preventing bad habits? What if you assume a word meaning and just are wrong?

Hi Matt, this video is pretty old so I'm not sure if you'll answer any comments on it, but at what point in Japanese/in a language (I don't learn Japanese) would you recommend switching off subs? You both mentioned high intermediate/low advanced? I know Japanese doesn't use A1-C2, but at what point are subtitles too much of a crutch? Currently at the B2 level and still quite unsure about that. Thanks for any feedback.

mined

Hi Matt, thank you for your share, I study English at School, but I can not to be native level, and sometime is is hard to communicate, I found the way we learn English is not right, Now I use the new rules and comprehensible input to improve my English, thank you for your share.

My big problem is that there are pretty few anime to find coming with Japanese subtitles🥲

On the theme of repetition, I got chat GPT to write texts using only the 500 most commonly used words in modern Ukrainian. It did it very well, and after each idea I had, I thought of a related theme and asked it to write another text the same way (I then imported it into LingQ, on which all features are free for Ukrainian right now, and there I generated audio for it). So this itself created a lot of repeated language, in that it was limiting to those 500 words (maybe 250 could work even), but also that the themes were similar. But then I had the idea of asking it to write about philosophy in Ukraine with the same limitations. It still created a reasonably simple text, but a more interesting one, which was also a positive, but then I asked it to expand on certain areas of what it had said. And there kept being errors and it got cut off again and again, so I asked it again and again, so I ended up with around 40 texts of around 200 words about very similar things, but organising and phrasing it differently every time. So thus I ended up with many of the same words repeated again and again but in various sentences and at least slightly different contexts. Now I know, and will probably never forget, among a bunch of others, the word "відповідальність".

Now you can use Chat GPT and ask it to write texts in the target language at the level you want. I've tried it. It works very well, with a bit of thinking and tweaking of the instructions you give it.

Is Olly a giant? Is his room just exceptionally small? Or is he standing in front of greenscreen?

Is it helpful to read aloud, or silently?

Olly is the Rosetta Stone of the language learning community. All advertising and no substance.

Nobody ever became fluent from duolingo. Give me a fkn break.

My issue with watching with subtitles, especially with Japanese, the translations seem to be approximations rather actual translations. I hate hearing a word that I know has a direct translation but I don't see it in the subtitles. I don't know if I should just be okay with not always understanding what's happening on screen and just absorb the audio or try to find something with more literal translation.

My kids would always ask for the same stories over and over and over. It’s how kids listen to stories. I’m surprised that hasn’t come up as you debate repeating content. I’m over halfway through and it just hasn’t occurred to either host.

thanks

Japanese needs

Matt you should make video shorter :)

👍

Love collabs

Hm.. listening while reading.. "it will cost you no extra time". That really depends. I learned English by reading. But I'm a (very) fast reader, and even though I couldn't, at the beginning, read English quite as fast as my native language, I could still read many many times faster than spoken language. If I read at speech speeds I just lose the plot, the imagery disappears from my mind and without the plot it's just words, and the interest (which is the driver in the first place) goes away and the whole process grinds to a halt. Now, with Japanese it's different.. I'm still building up speed, so at this point I can just barely read at spoken (or sung) speeds and then it makes sense (but I still can't get the plot at that speed, so it's either subtitles or songs at this point. Never mind that I still have a ton of kanji to learn.)

great video guys

i still have a hard time believing this whole "you'll just get it thing" esp with grammar... aint that hard just to look it up and learn it.. and some grammar you'll just never get without looking it up.. if i didn't learn grammar in korean i wouldn't be able to understand anything at all

I wish my University had these rules. I failed my language class because I couldn't speak properly after one semester, even though I could read everything in the textbook, knew 1000 kanji and could understand basic speech. Formal education has such a focus on speaking (and grammar) that they're dishonest and misleading to students who really want to learn. Thankfully, I am doing Refold now and learn from both Matt and Olly all the time.

Tried to watch bakemonogatari with Japanese subs. After a brief switch back to English, I realized I couldn't even understand it with English subs on.

Olly's pronunciation of "raison d'être" is perfect, as a native speaker I'm really impressed !

Great interview! I agree with the points that were made and have found them to be true in my own journey. I just wanted to share one observation about learning the script of your target language. I'm studying Jordanian Arabic and I know the Arabic alphabet and its markings for vowels, doubling consonants, etc. I find understanding all of this to be very helpful for understanding why words are pronounced the way that they are. . . But most real-life Arabic writing does not contain any of these markings, a lot of Levantine Arabic TV content has subtitles in Modern Standard Arabic (no help), and, consequently, I find reading to be a VERY SLOW, unenjoyable process. . . I wish that there were more resources where there was the Arabic script alongside a romanized transliteration so that learners like me could focus on the goal of learning how to listen to and speak the language and acquire the language naturally, rather than on how to decipher a foreign writing system (which is a different set of skills). I really think that scripts matter a lot in terms of what learning techniques are most efficient and what resources learners have to choose from. There's no one size fits all. If I were learning French or Spanish, subtitles and story learning would take me so far!

How does one learn vocabulary in languages like Japanese where all the plot in the world ain't gonna help you learn that Kanji?

That dude has nice hard wood floors

The problem with subtitles is that the quality and accuracy will vary wildly and there aren't necessarily set standards. I used to do translations in Spain with my gf of American TV shows and movies. We were often given scripts (or even no script and we'd have to do our own transcriptions- old Westerns, for example) at the last minute and we had to turn them over in a few days. We did a pretty good job but some other translators were horrible.

If grammar were critical to learning, then every student with a year of high school foreign language would be better speakers than 5-year-old native speakers the day before they enter kindergarten (or equivalent). Just like native speakers, learning grammar helps them improve and control the language better, not acquire fluency in the first place.

"Don't look up words." Matt said he doesn't really care when he doesn't know an English word, and I know what he meant; I, on the other hand, often look up words, especially on my kindle which makes it super easy. Nevertheless I find that the rule holds for learning foreign languages. When I lived in France our teacher recommended carrying around 'un carnet,' a little notebook, in which we could jot down words from books, newspapers, tv shows, and in-person conversations we struggled to understand. LATER we'd look them up and note down some related vocabulary as well. I recommend one of those little note pads a bit smaller than a wallet so that it fits in a back pocket. An appropriate app can be useful, but writing is faster. Also, pull it out when real-life conversation presents new vocabulary. Had I my carnet on me at the moment of my conversation with my French host mother about 'culture' I would have improved my pronunciation and not completely discombobulated her as to whether I meant 'couture', 'culture', and a couple of other near homonyms. And there was the time she mentioned eggs (plural) and I had no clue what she meant, for in plural the 'f' disappears, conditioned by the addition of the 's'—which is counterintuitive coming from a language where the only exception to pluralization being phonically additive is when a word morphs (e.g. foot -> feet) while in French that added 's' generally silences ending consonants that are pronounced in the singular. o.O Back to reading, the carnet permitted me to note words in the book I didn't understand so I could still carry them around later should I need them or want to review them. Now, if you read physical materials and don't mind writing on the pages, you can just mark a word you want to write up, or copy the word in the margin to look up later; then still later copy the words that seemed useful to the carnet.

Each morning in our in-France French class we'd all share some of the vocabulary that had come up for us. As a result, more of us benefited from the same technique, like sharing any other kind of class notes. The point is minimizing disruption to the flow of language experience while committing to filling in the encountered gaps. Sharing reduced the incidence of confusion, for text books couldn't give us ALL the nuanced vocabulary that might come up in topical conversation, yet many topics would eventually come up for everyone. Idioms! Regional slang. Can't plan for those but you can certainly share them and learn to use them.

I've studied French intensively for more than 3 years and I'm only now beginning to understand basic grammar. I'm just beginning to assimilate the syntax. I grudgingly accept weird constructions, one at a time. My knowledge progresses letter by letter. The weight of the language is crushing.

I would say a good rule for when to look up words on the dictionary is if the word is showing up often and you still don't know what it means.

I still don't get this stuff at all and I can't find anyone explaining it in a way that makes sense to me. I don't understand ANY japanese, so I don't understand how I'm supposed to learn through comprehension when I can't comprehend ANYTHING. Am I supposed to just look up every word I see? Am I supposed to just listen to the same word and suddenly magically get it after the 50th time?? If I don't know what a word is, how am I supposed to just magically get it? Like I just don't get it.

It's essentially this: I have 0% understanding of ANYTHING in Japanese, so I can't just magically read a text or listen to someone speaking and suddenly jump to 1% understanding. And I can't find ANYONE explaining to beginners like me how the hell I'm supposed to bridge the gap. You say don't look up words, but then how am I supposed to cross from 0% comprehension to 1% and start improving?! I just want someone to explain it to me but everyone seems to think this is just obvious when it's not.