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I feel like you've convinced me to drop Anki again. I've been using picture front cards to memorise many nouns and visual verbs, I've found it's helped me to know the names of tons of things.. not sure if I should drop this. But I also just started up my sentence card deck again, but now you're making me thing it's pointless, cos important words will make themselves known through the content. But what do you think about the picture front cards?

I've been studying Khmer (Cambodian) for about 2 months now. My vocabulary is growing, and I can put together sentences OK. My listening comprehension is my biggest weakness. I try listening to native speakers, but I can barely understand any of what they're saying. A couple of days ago, I did a RUclips search for 'Cambodian ads'. Bingo. The language used in advertising isn't very complex, and I could actually understand some complete sentences. The next step is going to be watching Khmer TV and movies.

this is awesome thanks for the synthetization of the idea !

hey, this is an awesome technique !! Ive been learning german and ive been running around what this ambiguity tolerance means, and how it helps. I didnt really know why it felt better, but it did, and you explained it perfectly !! I think i am already at the reading stage since ive been reading throught some middle school level books without needing to look up more than 3 or 4 words per page (which i am going to try to do less), could you do a video of your take on the reading stages ?

I’ve only recently super focused on immersion - I’ve been studying Korean for 2.5 years and I hope in the next 2 years with 5ish hours of input per day I can increase my level from high A2 to high B2 or better! Always thankful for your videos + wisdom!!

I like this approach. I’m a few weeks into learning French and if I ask ChatGPT to write a short story at my level, I understand most of the words, even if I’m unfamiliar with them. I feel I’m learning quicker by doing this rather than constantly looking up words (which I was doing at the start).

My ambiguity tolerance fluctuates with my mood and the day. Some days I want to look up every word and other days I don't want to look up a damn thing. I like your rule though. The fewer words you look up the higher the chance that you'll actually remember that word. If you sit down to listen and read a foreign language and you only look up one word then after you're done you'll think about that word at least a little bit later on that day or even the next day without even writing it down. If you look up a small amount of words probably the same thing but the more words you look up the more likely your brain will feel overwhelmed and just filter all that information you looked up as not important. Of course you probably will understand and remember the story better by looking up every word you don't know but if your goal is to learn new vocabulary then you prioritize that by looking up less words. (edit) Although I like your idea I don't do it this way - I can't. As I mentioned my tolerance is dictated by my mood. What I end up doing is sitting down to read something using an app like LingQ and look up every word. Until I get tired of looking up words. Then I challenge myself to look up NO words for the rest of the day.

(when you have a big ego..) びっくりした！ "You think I'm pretty? " 😀😀

Are you going to give this a try? Share your thoughts in the comments! Check out my Korean RUclips Channel here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/johnskoreanchannel My Nord VPN affiliate discount link (plus a 1 Month Free Trial) 👉nordvpn.com/john0518 Sign Up for my 1:1 (Live Online) Language Immersion Masterclass here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/coachingwithjohn2

For context As of typing this comment, I am only learning Mandarin through watching shows/movies without subtitles, so it is VERY easy to track the time spent on Mandarin. Mandarin is not my top language priority. Are you tracking the time spent on your target language? Is it getting in the way of your immersion learning?

Check out the full podcast here 👉 #TheISpeakKoreanPrettyWellPodcast

Check out the full podcast here 👉 #TheISpeakKoreanPrettyWellPodcast

Thanks so much for making this video! Watching it almost single-handedly changed the way that I approach language acquisition, and I'm enjoying the process so much more than I used to.

37:11, 😂why do think it’s an accent ? If anything, it sounds clearer and you opened your mouth more

Do u like there’s also beauty in just pure listening (👂 by itself ) not watching, in my defense, u can imagine stuff in your head. I feel like sometimes, The visuals can be distracting and it sucks away my attention completely. Like instead of focusing on what’s actually being said, my eyes are glued on the visual.

I spent 2 or so years on learning Japanese, then i started learning French for my significant other for 2024. I stopped Japanese completely. Although now i feel like increasing both. I can pretty much give 2 hours to each if i do both, more on weekends. For French its basic conversations to speak with family For Japanese its just to indugle in media tbh Thoughts?

Great video! I've been thinking about that concept a lot. I'm currently learning Amharic, my parents' native language. I've been exposed to it a lot but was never taught so I only knew a few basic words. When I was younger it stressed me out a lot but right now, I realize that it's fairly easy for me to listen to content for hours I barely understand at all. I think that's mainly due to the habit of it. It's like meditation, it's such a valuable skill, for language learning and many other challenges in life.

Allow my two cents if you will, I'd say look up words ONLY at the beginning to get your first few words, hopefully some common useful verbs that you can use to help you get your start, the rest is Krashen, that is all! 😉

Maybe lightning can strike twice.

You might not finish many Korean books this year. 😂

What is your litmus test for "reading level"? I heard you say it and I was thinking does it feel like I'm hearing the language in my head when I read or not so much. But now I'm wondering if you have a different idea like maybe the ability to understand well enough to guess the meaning of unknown words from context which would probably mean I'm not at a reading level in Korean yet. I usually need the dictionary or I could just skip it and move on.

Watching Korean without subtitles gives me a headache. If I keep going anyway does that mean I have good tolerance or I'm just a masochist?

I'm going to give this active watching and listening approach another try. We'll see how long I stick with it. With Japanese I can at least understand enough that I don't get bored but with Korean I'm not so sure. In the past my comprehension was literally totally based on watching what happened and their tone of voice.

It's weird. It seems like you're doing it completely backwards from me - I want to read a lot before I watch TV/movies etc without subtitles. I think part of that is because I just really like reading books but also because you can look up words while you read so you understand better and read slowly etc. But I'm going to give watching videos without subs a try. Even though I can't understand much.. 😅😅

I might go back and watch your interview on Didi's channel again and see how much I can get without the subtitles. I don't think it's all just input but rather a combination of many activities including lots of input. And I don't know if you saw my other comment but I finally am giving Anki (and SRS in general) the boot. It's been so many years - I think I've been an SRS addict since around 2011. But I'm not ditching memorization as a tool to help improve - just spaced repetition. I think memorizing and practicing complete sentences is really good. Just don't put it into Anki and torture yourself. It's ok to forget.

The quoting culture is real. I haven't seen friends since it broadcast in the 90's or 00's or whatever. I totally need to brush up.

I feel like I'm too old now to learn two languages at the same time but I think I could totally have done it back in college or in my 20's. Or teens. When I was in college I caught the language learning bug and tried adding Spanish and French to my routine/repertoire in addition to German which I had a good intermediate level of. I didn't mix the languages up or anything. It seemed very doable but just like you're talking about time being a thing - language learning is slow and so if time spent in a language is basically your level in the language then you can just divide by three pretty much lol. So I gave up on French and Spanish. Now it's not the time so much as I just don't think my brain can handle it. It gets tired.

What is going on with pickleball? How did this become a thing? They built pickleball courts at my apartment and people are using them constantly. I didn't even know this sport existed until a few years ago...

I saw your interview on Didi's Korean learning podcast channel and I was really impressed. Is this a new channel? I've been studying Korean for 5-6 years now and I'm not sure I could achieve a level 3 on the TOPIK never mind a 6 lol. But my Japanese is ahead of yours I'm pretty sure (thank goodness I have Japanese to redeem me). I like your idea of a reading level. Reading is a huge part of learning a language to me and I think there's a point where I feel like I'm able to read the language whereas before I couldn't. It doesn't necessarily have to do with my vocabulary and grammar skills although they do play a role. Rather it's a sum of my whole language ability and the litmus test is do I hear and feel the language in my head when I read or don't I? A few years ago if I read something in Korean I could know every word but still it didn't feel like language to me if I read it and so I would say I was not at a "reading" level for any content but it does now so yeah, I'm at a reading level in Korean. If the content isn't too hard for me. Most content is still too hard but it fluctuates so if I read a book parts of it will be a near waste probably but other parts I'll tune in just fine. I suppose the big question is how do you go about getting to a reading level if one agrees that if you're at a reading level the sky is the limit. I'm going to look for any videos where you talk about Anki and see if you can convince me to quit. I am old enough that I studied languages before Anki was a thing and I tried rote memorization and gave up and just read a lot and listened a lot instead. And read a grammar book just a little bit while I did all that immersion. No rote. It worked pretty well I think. Then in 2011 I decided to learn Japanese and I had no idea how to read Japanese but I found this great thing called spaced repetition and Anki online and it seemed like a solution. I've never been able to stop using it or some other SRS apps since. However, it seems to give you the illusion that you can pick and choose what words you learn (as in you know them forever) and I have to say that I don't think that's case. If I'm studying something in Anki AND it comes up in my immersion or conversations then it works as intended but if not.. I think I will retain some of it anyway but maybe 1 to 5 % or something really terrible. But I'm not sure. And I keep wondering if I just need to tweak the SRS formula - maybe the standard method of increasing the interval into infinity isn't the right one - maybe you should set the max interval at 2 weeks (or 1 week?) and do that for a few months and THEN it will go into your long term memory whereas if you let the interval get too big instead of going into your long term memory as intended it would just eventually get deleted.... you can see I am a bit obsessed with spaced repetition. If I can find a way to pick and choose and force words in my long term memory without an Elon Musk chip implant I want to do it lol. But I think if I'm being honest SRS has been every bit as inefficient as when I briefly tried rote memorization before Anki. Anki just hides the fact that it's inefficient because you can get it into a sort of mid term memory that is definitely longer than a day but isn't long term memory really because you're going to forget it (and the SRS formula won't really save you - unless you encounter it for real outside of Anki enough). So Anki does help but only if you're combining it with lots of reading/lilstening/speaking and if you're doing a lot of Anki then it's taking time away from those things... and just how much does it help anyway... ugh.

I really enjoy your videos because I learned a lot. Many people say that it is impossible to study several languages ​​at the same time, but I agree with you that if you don't have a specific target language, you won't learn both well.

Nice 👍

Hey, man.. thanks for this video.. as part of my spanish learning process, I’m gonna start american series (unnaturally dubbed in spanish). I chose it since I already watched it before and familiar with the story. Even so, I tried the ep1 of HIMYM and only about 1% of what they say I understood. Is that OK? Also I set the subtitle on which by the way, can be a bit different to what the audio says. But after 5 mis of watching, even though I know the story, I felt really lost. I just wanna know if this is OK? Thank you!

I love your post! Also I love how you're reframing my innate laziness as a skill. How bout a hybrid/ balanced approach...for a given time take notes of things you'd like to look up or which interest you... Later on...maybe in a week... Whether scheduled or ' just when you feel like it". Go through your notebook and Pick some of them and look them up. As a separate activity from developing ambiguity tolerance. When you do this, the lookup period will be an activity unconnected to the text or video/audio you were mining or collecting or noting or extracting things from. Now go back and reread or rewatch something ( not everything! Just half an hour of omething). Enjoy or just notice the increased comprehension that comes with the newly increased background knowledge.

I’ve been watching Netflix with subtitles for 20 years and I have trouble understanding when they talk fast, and I don’t speak fluently. That’s the only way I learned English at my level, I guess I will stop using subtitles from now on. And the. I’m gonna experiment with Spanish watch and listen from the total beginning

I live in U.S. in grad school, English is my second language. I’m amazed that I can understand 100% what you say without subtitles but why can’t I speak the same? My priority language learning is English and I try to learn Spanish. I work in healthcare and the majority of my patients speak Spanish. Such a dilemma I’m in. I want to be fluent in English 😅

Is English your first language??

I totally understand the rationale behind learning Korean via immersion and comprehensible input, but I still fail to see it practically. If I watch a Korean podcast and I don't understand anything, how will watching more podcasts make me magically begin to understand? That is unless I'm stopping every few seconds to search up the words. Shouldn't I at least have some level of formal training in the language and it's grammar and vocab before just taking in raw input like that?

I always want to learn other languages but whenever I start - I always know I’d rather be studying Korean. And I do want to be as good as a native like you are - so I’m going hard core!! And I love every minute of it

This is relatable…using a tracker was too much for me. Lately I’m trying to have a priority language each month but I still spend time with the others too. My languages are not brand new though…just trying to level up and maintain

Hey i'm already learning English. i understand the majority of the things, and when i came to speaking i frustrate and miss and alot of words 😢

I love this. I love your methods, your advice, your study mindset. I completely agree and I’m thankful for your RUclips channels! 💙

Love the pod. Keep it up! 👍🏽

Language learning gives me an excuse to listen to Disney songs on repeat 😂 and feel like im doing something useful. Ive got the ambiguity tolerance covered lol.

When learning several languages at once, you might find that your habits can determine your favorite language!

I love language learning. This seems to be a good approach for me.

Can you go 3 straight months without looking up a word in your target language? Check out my Korean RUclips Channel here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/johnskoreanchannel My Nord VPN affiliate discount link (plus a 1 Month Free Trial) 👉nordvpn.com/john0518 Sign Up for my 1:1 (Live Online) Language Immersion Masterclass here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/coachingwithjohn2

Tracking your input hours vs habits: Which is better?

This is actuslly something i do. Im learning spanish and french at the same time and they have similar sounds anf vocab so im sort of learning to hear them together

너무 좋아요!! 다시 봐도 재밌네요 ㅋㅋ

Are you learning several languages at once? Check out my Korean RUclips Channel here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/johnskoreanchannel My Nord VPN affiliate discount link (plus a 1 Month Free Trial) 👉nordvpn.com/john0518 Sign Up for my 1:1 (Live Online) Language Immersion Masterclass here 👉 johnteaches.mykajabi.com/coachingwithjohn2