Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Matrix ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register
The Offical Matrix Groupchat is online! >>CLICK HERE<<

Patreon Q&A - September 11th, 2021 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-11 15:02:02
Edited:
2021-09-11 15:11:55
Imported:
2022-01

Content

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro

0:33 - If passively listening to content that's 100% incomprehensible actually beneficial?

9:03 - What are your thoughts on the comprehensible output hypothesis?

26:31 - How should I deal with homonyms in Japanese audiobooks? Are Japanese audiobooks inherently difficult to understand because of homonyms?

35:06 - What would you recommend someone do if they want to learn a language but are not tech-savvy enough to use Anki?

39:03 - Is it OK to sentence mine during free-flow immersion instead of intensive-immersion?

40:29 - Is it a good idea to watch immersion content on .75 speed?

43:55 - What advice do you have for people who are starting an L3 but want to keep improving their L2?

49:46 - Are there things from immersion-based language learning that could be applied to general skill acquisition?

54:44 - Is Refold working on a new Japanese deck?

Files

Patreon Q&A - September 11th, 2021

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:33 - If passively listening to content that's 100% incomprehensible actually beneficial? 9:03 - What are your thoughts on the comprehensible output hypothesis? 26:31 - How should I deal with homonyms in Japanese audiobooks? Are Japanese audiobooks inherently difficult to understand because of homonyms? 35:06 - What would you recommend someone do if they want to learn a language but are not tech-savvy enough to use Anki? 39:03 - Is it OK to sentence mine during free-flow immersion instead of intensive-immersion? 40:29 - Is it a good idea to watch immersion content on .75 speed? 43:55 - What advice do you have for people who are starting an L3 but want to keep improving their L2? 49:46 - Are there things from immersion-based language learning that could be applied to general skill acquisition? 54:44 - Is Refold working on a new Japanese deck?

Comments

Jahayra

I can't watch the video as it is set to private. I'm at the monthly live stream + supporter tier.

Anonymous

I'm not able to view it either

Anonymous

Do you have advice for trying to immerse while doing college? I'm a mechanical engineer major, and I feel like I barely have time to immerse. On weekends I grind like crazy but during weekdays I only get like an hour of active immersion. I do listen to as many podcasts as I can while driving, but I feel like the lack of active immersion will hurt my progress.

Anonymous

What are your thoughts on non-native input?

Markus

Matt, for your passive immersion when you where listening to the shows you´ve watched, what did you do about the opening and ending songs? Did you cut them out? I have the possibillity to do so but its quite annoying because very often they aren´t right at the beginning or end.

Anonymous

What is the driving force behind you learning Japanese and now Chinese?

Anonymous

Do you think it would be more effective to actively immerse 2.5 hours every day or 10 hours once every three days? Assuming the person can easily focus for long periods of time.

Anonymous

Hey Matt! Lately you’ve been talking about people who build there foundation through either reading, or listening, and the pros and cons of each of these. My question is how does one know when they start to become too reading dominant? Are there any particular signs to watch out for?

Anonymous

Which is best in a 1k deck for beginners, audio front or text front? (assuming the audio is accurate)

Indi H

What was your experience being in full time education (high school/uni) and fitting immersion around classes and study? After 1.5 years of my time being 90% free(due to covid), I'm going back to uni and thinking about how my immersion hours will be impacted. Commuting will take care of passive listening but I'm not sure if I'll fit in my usual 3-5 active hours on top of everything else. Thanks :)

Anonymous

One of the requirements for choosing a language parent is choosing someone of the same or similar age as you. As you age, do you need to adopt a new language parent every 10 years or so, or will you be able to easily mimic and tell the sublte differences in speaking styles of people of different ages?

Anonymous

Hey Matt, how much do you think the passage of time in general, regardless of the amount of hours spent immersing, affects language acquisition? What I mean is, if two people both get the same 1,000 hours of input, but one person spends a year and the other spends several months, do you think their abilities would end up being roughly the same, or would the person who has been immersing for a longer span of time end up better at the language? Is it possible to say whether or not the increased intensity that the several-months learner has outweighs the extra time the year-long learner's subconscious has to process the language?

Anonymous

I downloaded MPV to try it out, but as a long-time VLC user I’m feeling a bit lost. The interface is extremely minimal and appears to be geared towards people familiar with programming. Is my impression correct? Can you elaborate why you prefer it over VLC and how you use it?

DJ Picard

Hey Matt! How did you get in the mindset to immerse when you were just starting out? I'm currently learning Japanese and I have no problems doing the jp1k or reviewing the kana decks but for some reason I can only get myself to watch maybe 20 minutes of anime and if I'm lucky an hour. Was there anything you did to get yourself in the mindset to immerse or did the mindset just come naturally to you?

Ashir0gi
>>67781544

I'm not really tech savvy and I use mpv. Here's a video Matt made about it. Hope this helps https://youtu.be/bbg6ztWecbU

Anonymous

Matt, I have been on the MIA/Refold method for a little over a year now. I have been floating in the Stage 2 for quite a while now, and have achieved level 3-4 in my reading of SOL content and can understand about every sentence to a decent degree. When pure listening without subs I feel like I am constantly translating (mentally) every word as I hear it and quickly fall behind with the audio. This doesn't occur with reading regular text or subs. Is continuing to watch with subs going to make this worst? Or should I just assume that I can continue with subs and it will all work out?

Anonymous
>>67872415

He wrote (in the complicated version of refold roadmap) that by stage 2 you should be watching TL content without subs. (https://refold.la/roadmap/stage-1/a/active-immersion)

Anonymous

Hello, Matt, thanks for another insightful Q&amp;A. I recenlty rewatched Kaz's "How good is Dogen's Japanese? Dogen NitPicked by a Japanese guy" video from 2018. At the 1:38 mark (https://youtu.be/XE5M-MP5ngg?t=98), he offered these remarks: "Ok, did you hear Dogen breathing really harshly like *huuurrrf* but that's what Japanese people do NOT do in between sentences and that's actually why Japanese people look so silent and shy, and we look like we have nothing to say when talking with foreign people so I always teach people, Japanese people, to breathe in if they wanna say something because everyone is gonna look at you and expect you to speak if you go *huuurrrf*" I know this can differ between people , but do you think we should worry about not breathing as heavily when speaking Japanese or is that just a nitpick and not so important in the grand scheme of things?

Anonymous

Great Q and A this month! Yeah so to clarify what I was saying in that video of mine that you mentioned: I think that learning a language actually IS like learning anything else, and is especially like learning music EXCEPT for one big thing: In the normal language learning world, we haven't heard the language at all when we first start learning it. It would be unusual for someone to try to learn Beethoven on the piano without having heard Beethoven, but this is normally what we try to do with languages (unless following something like Refold). So basically it's not that languages are learned in a different way, but that the context is totally different because when 20 year olds decide to learn the guitar, they have heard a lot of guitar music. In fact, thinking about it now, that is generally what seems to dictate their success: How much music of one kind they've listened to. When you think about this in terms of language learning and input, it starts making a lot of sense. Someone who had heard Chinese all their life would pick up Chinese very quickly too.

Vulcan

Getting good at a foreign language is a huge investment. Do you know anyone who reached a very high level in a foreign language, and ultimately regretted it? If so, can you elaborate on some of these cases and provide your thoughts? (to whatever degree they are comfortable with)

昭和Guy51

Hello Matt, (and sorry if this question is a bit odd) however, do you have an particular advice for someone beginning Refold/Immersion who has had some experience with his/her L2 but is still far from fluent? For example some who can read Japanese and has decent listening comprehension (enough to pass the JLPT N2 and maybe N1) , BUT who still struggles at speaking it? Where, should he/she be placed or start on the Refold levels or what can he/she do to improve his/her conversational ability?

Anonymous
>>68178455

Hey there! I'm not Matt, but maybe I can provide some insight to your question. I think it was a pretty good one. There is a lot more background then I really want to type out here, but the short version is that I went from being able to speak zero of my L2, you getting through about lower intermediate in 45 days after an insane process I would absolutely recommend to no one. In this case, we're talking about Spanish which is substantially easier than in Asian language like Japanese. But, your question was about whether or not someone ever got to a pretty high level and then regretted it. By the time I reached over intermediate level after the 45 day period, I started tutoring people taking college Spanish classes. And at the time, I was also tutoring and ESL learner, who was majoring in sociology. And it was through that experience that I met a girl that I did it for five years. Half of her family was from Guatemala, the other half of her family was from Guadalajara in Mexico. I forget exactly what city. But, I distinctly remember when her grandmother's sister came to visit from one Guatemala. She was an elderly woman who spoke absolutely zero English, and we were talking for two or three hours while taking tequila shots and eating a ton of great food. And I remember somewhere near the end of that conversation, she turns to me and asked me what part of Mexico my family was from. And I told her that half of my family is from the Philippines and the other half is from Hawaii. She didn't really believe me, and asked who taught me Spanish and then. I told her that I taught myself. This woman still thought I was from Mexico. That was when I feel like I was finally freaking "fluent." The girl and I were together for about five years, and then our relationship turned into a complete shit storm. It was because of that aspect of my experience with the language, that after we broke up I didn't speak Spanish again for about six years. And for a long time I regretted after spending that much time on it. When I wasn't interacting with her family, I was learning new stuff, constantly. And when we broke up, suddenly, a language that I used to super enjoy learning and using began to feel really heavy, and that's when I slowly started to pull back on speaking Spanish daily. And after six years of not speaking it, what ended up happening was that I went from basically flowing to lower intermediate in terms of my ability to produce Spanish, my reading comprehension was still really high… I could read most college-level textbooks on subjects that I knew a lot about in English from, but over time my listening comprehension became really terrible. The only reason I wanted to share this story is to kind of underscore the fact that psychology has everything to do with it. There are plenty of people who I'm sure have similar or even worse experiences that I've had that have given up the language altogether. The funny thing about it is, about two months ago I got lost somewhere. I'm in a wheelchair, and I was rolling my self home. There were some new housing developments with some walls that for the existing, I got a bit turned around in the only person who was there to help me was doomed to had a lot of difficulty communicating English. So, I ended up talking to in Spanish. Surprisingly, everything I needed was still there. My comprehension was shaky. But from that experience, I realized that when you get to a certain point, a language never really leaves. I decided to accept it and own it. After that, I spent about a month just immersing in Spanish-language content, and got most of my skills back to where they were before the six year hiatus. I don't regret it anymore, but I hope me sharing this shed some light on your question. I'm sorry but I'm not Matt but have a good day!

Anonymous
>>68178514

Once again, I'm sorry I'm not Matt but I'm hoping I can hope a little bit. You can read my post above for a little bit of background. As someone who was in the very same boat not that long ago, I would say it totally depends on your situation. I'm super stereotypically Asian in a lot of ways, so personally, I would want to double check my foundation depending on how shaky I felt my conversational ability was in my target language. If you're using a refold style deck, with the JP1K or the ES1K ... Or really anything like it, I would recommend going through the deck and deleting the cards you are 100% certain you already know, so you don't waste any unnecessary time. That being said, if you are using a sentence deck of any kind, and since you're part of refold, I would assume you are, I would say that after doing that, if there's anything in a particular sentence that you don't wait understand, I would highlight the portion of the sentence that you don't get. And as your understanding grows either through immersion, or maybe looking at the grammar point in a targeted way if you that kind person (I am LOL), undo the highlight when you feel like you understand the piece of the sentence that you didn't. And when you fully understand the card in you may be three or four times, after your pretty sure it solidified, just get rid of the card. All that is provided that you understood the word on the front of the card. I hope that helps! Other than that, just immerse. Many things will become clear as you go on I'm not really the kind of person that likes to do the same shit over and over that I already know, unless somebody asks me for an in-depth opinion on something that has a specific use case. For example, somebody recently asked me for a thorough opinion on Rosetta stone that are in the process of writing. Hope that helps, have a good day!

Anonymous

Hi Matt! What are your thoughts on cloze cards (such as Clozemaster &amp; Lingvist)? They seem to prioritize production over recognition, but do you think the cloze format might be useful as a supplement to expand vocab beyond the first 1k words, or as a starting point if there aren't good pre-made decks in your L2? I'm also thinking of the Ultimate Spanish Conjugation deck (currently the most popular shared deck for Spanish on ankiweb: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/638411848 ), which uses cloze but might be an efficient way to learn all conjugation patterns (including irregulars) thru SRS. Thank you!

Anonymous
>>67799874

I struggled to watch 1 to 2 episodes of raw anime per day for the first few months but slowly ramped up to 3.5 hours per day at the 1 year mark as I got better. I wouldn't sweat it to much early on, its really hard to enjoy watching gibberish for hours from day one, you will naturally enjoy immersing more and more as you get better

Anonymous

Hi Matt, do you have any advice for someone who is working from home and has to manage their own time working and immersing. I have developed this problem where whenever i'm working I feel guilty for not immersing and whenever i'm immersing I feel guilty for not working more. This is leading me to not be able to focus on my immersion because i'm stressed thinking about work and its really hard to switch mindsets back and forth without them interfering. I already work and immerse in 2 different rooms and try and work in the morning and immerse in the afternoon/evening. I also get work calls randomly all day that completely kill my concentration when watching raw shows (level 3-4 comprehension so requires a lot of careful attention). Thanks.

Anonymous
>>67715045

I know you're after an answer from Matt but I might just chime in quickly. Matt has said that it's best if they're within 10 years of yourself. Even if we're strict and make that 5 years, that's a full 10 year range then. If you're at a stage where you are shadowing and trying to sound like a particular native speaker and you do that for even TWO years (let's not even talk about 10), then you'll probably be so competent at the end of that 2 years that it wouldn't matter. After that it's more going to be a matter of "acting your age", and a lot of people don't do that in their native language - and I don't mean that in a judgemental way. I mean, for example, Tony Hawk, he's 53 and he still talks like a skater... because he's a skater. If I, at 34, started doing that, it would sound weird not because I was talking like a teenager but because I'm not a skater and it doesn't fit my personality. So I think if you follow the parent rule for long enough to be a competent speaker, the way you talk will just naturally develop with your personality. Hope that helps.

Anonymous

Hi do you have a good subtitle font for Japanese i could use for MPV that I can format to the settings notepad?

Anonymous

Hey Matt and everyone, any video game recommendations? I have a Switch, and I'd love to stock up on some story games that have Japanese dialogue and subtitles. Open to suggestions, thanks!

Anonymous

hey mat. I am currently working through jour JP1K deck. I have noticed that I am better at remembering the kanji through the reading. My habit is now that I first look up the reading via the hint you established in your cards and then recall the meaning of the kanji from that. Is that a bad habit in your opinion? I do notice that It is fairly hard for me to remember some kanji by the looks of it alone.

Anonymous

Hi matt, Is it wise to add new words I learn into my refold jp1k deck or should I add those words to a new anki deck

Hunter Headley

Hey Matt. I have been trying to get into light novels and even short stories but am having trouble going from manga or anime, which is 100 percent dialogue that you are listening to or reading, to listening to stories where people are talking about something occuring. I'm even having trouble figuring out who is talking or narrating at any given time. Do you have any advice about making this jump? Thanks!

Anonymous
>>69075130

Follow up to my own question: for anyone interested, I've found that the Witcher III is an excellent choice on Switch. LOTS of dialogue with subs in the cutscenes and during gameplay.

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?