Choosing Immersion Content¶

Start with something familiar. For listening use sub-titled material in your target language at the beginning.
Keep a 70% reading / 30% listening split.
Immersing is both the reward and reason why you learn the language. Ultimately you want to consume content (immerse) in your target language so don't treat immersion as merely a means to an end.
Prioritize sustainability: If you dread todays' main immersion activity then change the material so you can sustain yourself doing it. Think about whether what you are currently doing with the language will make you more likely to keep learning the language in the future.
Analyze and break apart most of the time but move on after a max of 3 minutes per sentence.
Reflect on difficulty every week: If you want to improve (learn more words, grammar) then challenge yourself.

What you can expect from your first immersion experience¶

booksumeruimg

It will suck. You will spend a lot of time pondering on basic grammar patterns and easy words. Almost every sentence you encounter will have something new for you to analyze and think about and to mine, most often multiple things at once. This is normal! The key is here to trust the process based on what you have read so far in this guide. The more you read the easier it will become. Same goes for listening or speaking.

Similarly, the first time you sit down to watch a show in your target language will probably be more difficult than reading. If you are not rewatching, then you have to focus more on whats going on in a scene, people are talking fast and you just can't keep up or properly parse what you are hearing yet. But by repeatedly doing it while also doing reading your listening ability will improve.

Immerse!!!

Trying to understand something you are interested in as much as you can and failing is discouraging. But as long as you keep immersing you are making progress, at the very least unconsciously. As long as you continue to put in effort in immersion that you can enjoy you're gonna make it!

How to keep going - Enjoyment, efficiency and "optimal"¶

Immersion encourages optimization. This is good but it gets to a point of people following the persuasive belief:

"Efficiency is the absolute good."

This makes learners chase the "optimal path". Be it optimizing their Anki's SRS, creating better Anki templates or smoother mining workflows. All certainly have their raison d'etre but often at the expense of time, enjoyment and sanity.

What do you actually gain from it?

Efficiency is meaningless unless it improves the total amount of high-quality engagement you sustain with your target language over the long term.

Total life time utility model¶

Your immersion journey can be perceived as a system aimed at maximizing what keeps you the happiest and makes you going forward the longest. Maximize total life time utility (TLU). TLU isn't not just your final proficiency level, it's the sum of all good and bad experiences along your journey weighted by their duration and intensity. More precisely it includes:

Immediate Utility: The enjoyment, drive to learn more about your target language, being in zone (flowing) while immersing.
Cognitive cost: The effort you put in, time invested, stress, doubt, motivation dropping.
Long term utility: The benefit you get out of learning your target language, what you get out of comprehending, learning and access to culture.

All of these components are at inter play with each other all the time. They feed into your central engine of high-quality engagement. This here determines whether you immerse for months or years or burn out in weeks.

Input is the reward not the means¶

There are people who do immersion and just see immersing as in reading or listening as just another step towards fluency. But you have to remember that immersing in itself is your primary reward. You have to celebrate yourself. The pleasure of enjoying a good story in your target language you couldn't have otherwise, the connection and dynamic between characters, the really cool and impactful scenes, the moment of understanding something new, all of these are Immediate Utility that makes this whole endeavor worthwhile.

Treating immersing in itself, treating enjoyable input as a mere means to learn some vocabulary is detrimental. Referring back to the paint brush analogy from home:

The immersion is the painting you are creating, how you view and understand each connection how your target language functions. The grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening skills are the pigments and different brushes. They are essential tools, but they are not the painting.

If you only focus on grinding color theory and picking the right paint you never step back to appreciate the emerging picture you create. You run danger of turning the creative process of language acquisition into a joyless chore.

Value the experience

Remember you picked up this "paint brush" (the immersion method) to create your own beautiful "painting" (your experience with the language). Don't get lost in the technical mixing of colors that you forget to paint. Don't over optimize the process at the expense of experience.

What does "getting lost in the technical mixing of colors" mean?

Things like "optimizing" your Anki SRS or "improving" your Anki template's design or JavaScript more than you need to. Basically tinkering over immersing.

How to prevent this?

Just go immerse.

Cost of "optimal" methods¶

Let's compare two different activities:

Reading a bookAnki

For example you feel like you are learning as you progress through each sentence learning more and more about your target language. You're making progress. You have fun and what you are immersing in is interesting to you. This is positive Immediate Utility. You maybe breezing through and feel challenged at times but its not too hard for you. This a cognitive cost varying from low. All of this fuels your motivation. It directly adds to the TLU model while you are reading a book, and it builds skills for the future as in improving your comprehension.

For example you feel bored or frustrated doing Anki. This is negative Immediate Utility. It's taxing on your mind (Cognitive cost) as it drains willpower. The value you get out is promised in the long term utility like better retention or knowing more vocab.

Does the long term utility gained from doing Anki justify its cognitive cost?

For some learners it does! Those who find structure energizing or gain a sense of security from a systematic workflow will have a low cognitive cost and the payoff is high.

For others, doing Anki is an energy draining torture needed to engage with activities like "Reading a book".

There is no universal optimum. Even if a method is 100% "efficient" at teaching the most common 1000-1500 words but alienates like 20% of learners making them quit after a month is on a systematic level inefficient.

This is why you have to figure out what works for you and what you can sustain.

We can denote the TLU model using the following formula

$$ \Large \Delta(\text{long-term utility}) - \Delta(\text{cognitive cost}) - \Delta(\text{motivation loss}) > 0 $$

The Δ(Long-Term Utility) must be greater than the Δ(Cognitive Cost) and Δ(Motivation Loss). In layman's terms: The value you get out of immersing with something like getting better at comprehension, which also leads to more choice for content to immerse with, that value must be more important to you than the potential negative aspects, like stress or the time you invest to get there, affecting you. You must be able to stomach what you immerse in otherwise the stress becomes to much and your motivation depletes.

See the TLU model be applied in Trade of between enjoyment and efficiency.

Sustainability is only the meaningful metric¶

Building upon Cost of "optimal" methods, the only criterion that matters is sustainability.

Does whatever I'm immersing in make me want to pour in more time such that I will realistically and willingly spend more time engaging with my target language in the future?

If you dread something in your immersion, it is inefficient. When to drop things you are immersing with
If watching a difficult show without subtitles would make you improve but you are barely keeping up, feeling anxious, stressed or dumb then forcing yourself to do it is less efficient than watching something more enjoyable and easier with tools that let you enjoy the plot.
If reading a difficult book you are interested in but spend more time digging through different dictionaries to understand just one word more than actually engaging with the story then this is inefficient. Might as well be a signal that whatever you are immersing in is too hard.
If reading something you are interested in with a dictionary is slow but captivating to you, then it is wildly efficient. You can sustain it since it captivates you and you are making progress. It builds skills and reinforces the habit that you will keep going.

How to practice sustainability¶

I'm not suggesting you to drop doing things like Anki because you maybe dreading it. Anki is important and you should continue doing it unless you are more advanced.

You need to find out what you can sustain i.e stomach on your day to day basis to improve at your pace in the long run. Routine management in Immersion

Am I looking forward to my main language activity today?

If the answer is consistently no, then in most cases change your activity, unless you can sustain it, considering Cost of "optimal" methods

Use as little optimization as you can

The bare bones are Anki, Yomitan and a basic card template. You may adjust them with some starter quality of life settings, but don't obsess over optimization. I don't want to see you immersing in the Anki manual and SRS-addons till 3am.

Being carefree - Just immerse

If you can just enjoy your media you are immersing with and stop being pedantic about method, optimization and progress, you win. It's mostly mental.

How to make immersion easier¶

Start with familiar stories¶

By doing so you can reread or rewatch media and have an easier time picking up your target language because you're already familiar with the story and can now see how your target language expresses something you are already familiar with. This will be sort of like mapping what you already know to something new i.e your target language.

The more context the better¶

Visual Novels
Shows with subtitles in your tl
Comics (visual + text)
Pure audio / pure text

The more auditory and or visual aspects a piece of media provides the more suited it is to immerse with. With immersion you basically try to use every piece of context to infer what you don't understand, this also includes audio and seeing something. Especially shows are great for this because you see whats going on, you have things like acting or characters you can see and music you hear as well as sound effects.

All of these add to the immersion of your immersion, and help you make scenes more impactful for you to remember more words easier.

There are many different kinds of native media you can use for your immersion. A few popular ones include: Video platforms like Youtube, streaming websites like Netflix, books, novels and comics, podcasts, music and video games. Like discussed in earlier sections, the best thing you can spend your time with to improve is something 80-85% enjoyable/comprehensible and 15-20% challenging, basically something you can stomach and don't mind spending a lots of time on.

How much should you be reading and listening¶

For the beginning, it's a good idea to make your immersion more reading focused so you can quickly learn more vocabulary to get the most out of your listening as well. Aim for a 65-70% reading-based and 30-35% listening-based split. For more in-depth look in Why listening is hard.

Generally this ratio changes a lot based on what you currently like to do. In the beginning you won't have many options in what you can immerse with, which can make immersion less appealing. However, your interest in learning your target language and the actual process of doing so should carry you through the initial stage.

Use subtitles¶

If subtitles are available for your target language then use them. As a beginner always use subtitles and mine according to the mining process.

How to improve your listening as a beginner¶

Look read more. If you pause and try to relisten to things you heard and still don't understand them, don't be discouraged this is normal. Just move on.

When to stop using subtitles¶

Intermediate Learners

This section is targeted at "intermediate" learners.

Stop using subtitles if you already know most of the vocabulary and grammar you encounter in your listening material. You achieve this by reading more. Disable subtitles but keep them along you when listening so you can check yourself whenever you are unsure about what you heard. You will probably have to pause and relisten multiple times to a word. That's normal.

If, during this process, you are mining more than you are actively training your listening ability i.e parsing the sounds, then thats a sign to hold off listening without subtitles for now and instead return to moving on and reading more and subtitled listening immersion.

Passive vs. active listening¶

Passive listening is listening to your target language without paying active attention to what you're listening to. You are not following the story or thinking about it, you are just taking in the sounds while doing something else actively like cleaning or driving. It's not entirely clear to what extent passive listening helps you learn language. Even listing to audio at very low comprehension but still paying attention somewhat when doing a different task has unclear benefits. There are people who did a lot of passive listening and or very low comprehension audio based listening when starting out and they feel like that helped them to get used to listening itself while some say it didn't help them at all.

However it is pretty clear that active listening does helps. Active listening requires you to focus on what is being said and to properly understand what is going on. Due to insufficient evidence we drop the argument and conclude you can do passive listening if you like to, but you probably shouldn't expect to get massive benefits from it.

A disclaimer for grammar¶

To start immersion, it is enough to familiarize yourself with basic grammar patterns and sentence structure of your target language. Feel free to jump between different grammar resources and see what works for yourself. The goal of the building foundation stage before immersion is not to understand grammar completely and fully. What matters is a basic enough foundation to get you started. Don't get lost in the technical of choosing the best grammar at the beginning, and just pick something you like. You'll solidify and acquire grammar later through immersion anyways because of the "magic" in immersion.

Further grammar study

Further grammar study should be done periodically as you encounter new grammar structures through immersion.

Intermediate Learners

This section is targeted at "intermediate" learners.

If you plan to sit an general language proficiency exam in your target language that tests you on grammar, then I'd recommend to do some traditional grammar study, by using books and online grammar guides for your language.

Usually you won't need to do this after having done immersion for months because you will have acquired most if not all nuances in grammar, word usages and reading already. After doing months of immersion you get a feeling of what feels right and what not, the same way you can feel out what feels and sounds right in your native language. This happens because of the magic in immersion. But I would still recommend to brush up grammar formally for examinations that test it.

How to improve¶

Challenge yourself. Set higher goals. The ratio we have discussed intends you to challenge yourself to improve. Meaning you need to expose yourself to things you don't know, go through the mining process, and optimally do Anki to learn and remember things in the long term and most importantly do immersion where you are exposed to the things you learned in a more complex and nuanced way to build upon them thus acquiring them and repeating this whole process over and over.

More concretely this means referencing media recommendation sheets for your target language based on difficulty. Let say you read a book with difficulty 4/10 then try to find something that is one or two steps higher while letting your interest guide you.

If the community of the language you are studying doesn't have these reference sheets, then you can do the following:

For example for reading:

Find something to read that interests you.
Make sure it's something you can justifiably stomach based on:
- Not too hard as in something like i+n:
  
  Examples what challenging can be:
  - Being familiar with a domain like fantasy but then immersing in something that has nothing to do with it like baseball or architecture. Consuming content of other domains will expose you to different and new vocabulary you can mine that is in a completely new context.
  - Reading something more difficult of the same domain (=genre).
- Such that you can reasonably check your own understanding.
- basically something you can sustain.
If not then find and repeat the process with something else.

If you think you found something that meets these criteria, then keep in mind having fun and start mining.

What to expect

Finding something to immerse in is a process by trial and error. Expect to drop media, switch mid way through to something different, starting something but never coming back to it. Don't feel bad about doing this and rather feel good about yourself that you are not immersing in something you cannot sustain i.e forcing yourself. As long as you keep immersing you're good. But remember to improve in the sense of consuming more difficult content you have to challenge yourself.

What a "hard" word really is

If you don't know a word then that's not a hard word. It's just a word you don't know.

Focus on comprehension and not reading speed¶

Don't focus on reading speed, focus on comprehension. Reading speed reflects how much you comprehend and will naturally improve the more you comprehend. You focus on comprehension by paying more attention while reading and reading more.

Why people plateau¶

Either they are comfortable at their level meaning they reached their goal. For example they want to be able to read novels in their target language and reached a level where they can read them without needing a dictionary. So they are satisfied and don't need to challenge themselves with listening, harder reading material or pronunciation, because that wasn't their goal in the first place.

On the other hand people plateau because they immerse with media that is similar in difficulty, thus not challenging themselves. Immersing with media that is easy for you is not necessarily bad for you, it's actually good to solidify your knowledge and everything you know up until now. But if your goal is to actually make progress i.e learn more words, grammar, get better at listening you need to challenge yourself.

When to drop things you are immersing with¶

If you are having fun, then generally don't drop whatever you're immersing with. I'm saying generally here because there are times when you might want to switch to something more "efficient". Reference the tradeoff between enjoyment and efficiency

If you are not having fun with your immersion content, then that can mean one of two things:

You comprehend it but it's genuinely uninteresting to you
You don't comprehend it so you have no fun.

In any of these two cases I would recommend you to drop whatever you are immersing with and switch to something easier or something thats more fun. For reference see enjoyment as a metric for comprehension.

How to get the most out of immersion¶

How hard should you pay attention when immersing¶

bookattentionimg

The golden rule

The more carefully you break down and fully try to understand every part of what you're immersing with before moving on the more you get out of it.

If you do this you consistently you will progress insanely fast. People who do this usually have outstanding reading skills, passive vocab and listening comprehension, compared to people who just casually read through everything and are comfortable with just getting the gist.

Beginners that do this are usually very slow at first, painfully slow actually, breaking down everything to understand each piece before moving on. It's boring at first but eventually the most common words run out, same for grammar. This usually happens after multiple months if you are doing Anki every day and thinking about what you read. It's not really natural to analyze every sentence and break it down fully but there are people who reached a high level by following this approach.

This approach would put you more in the problem solving mode in the mining process meaning you spent more time during the following steps: Everything after:

Step 3 (Use Yomitan to look up what you don't know).
Step 4 (Reread the sentence or the part where that word you just looked up appears in and try to understand the sentence).
Step 6 (Spend more time on the sentence to understand what it's trying to say).

This is per se not harmful, but rather draining, because you end up spending more time per sentence. If you can motivate yourself through repeatedly doing this then great, but keep in mind getting just the gist is fine if in moderation.

For the people who would like to hyper analyze every sentence, which is not bad, I want to remind you of the ambiguity problem. There is only so much you can learn from a sentence. You can look up unfamiliar words and analyze sentences, but you'll reach a limit. For this reason, after spending time (at max 3 minutes) on a sentence be it by hyper analyzing everything, if you can manage that, or by reading more casually but not settling for just the gist, you move on to the next sentence. More actually massive exposure (reading a ton) trains what matters more for language acquisition; intuition and pattern recognition. You will learn way more by reading more (after you spent your time on a sentence).

Flowing when immersing

The "magic" in immersion

Reading more but putting in the cognitive effort that is trying to understand as much as you can. How to do that is detailed in the mining process.

Generally don't get comfortable with reading just for the gist. What actually improves your language ability is putting effort into understand whatever you are consuming i.e breaking things down and analyzing it put to a "time limit". The difference is in allowing yourself to get the gist sometimes but not make it become the baseline, don't settle for just the gist.

You can get by with just the gist but you'll miss a lot of small details and nuances which are crucial for actually getting the most out of your immersion time. These details only unravel themselves if you don't settle for just the gist but actually pay more attention and break things down. These details are sometimes the difference between understanding what's going on and not understanding. It can be not enjoyable but it's a more straight path to get most out of your immersion time.

You can totally just read casually for the gist and break down things only when you really don't understand things, but if you want to get good fast then consistent, deep and focused reading is the way.

Trade of between enjoyment and efficiency¶

Something you can sustain is important. If you're not enjoying the process then making compromises on efficiency to make it more sustainable and enjoyable for you is always worth it.

Using the TLU model:

not enjoying the process = high Cognitive cost.
making compromises on efficiency = reducing Long term utility.
make it more sustainable and enjoyable = increasing Immediate utility meaning immersing instead in something that is fun to you.

On the other hand, if you're at a point where you feel very motivated to get better and are willing to make slight compromises on max enjoyment to up efficiency then that's also fine.

Using the TLU model:

feel very motivated = high motivation, sustainability and energy and low motivation loss
willing to make slight compromises on max enjoyment to up efficiency = reducing Immediate utility meaning immersing instead in something less fun, but having higher Long term utility.

Small episode from experience

I used to think that passive listening was helping me out and really efficient so I would swap sitting down to watch a show for listening to audiobooks of books I was reading while running at the time. Although I stopped doing that after a few weeks.

General things to make things easier¶

Care for your health as in sleeping and drinking enough.
Make sure too sleep enough
Do some exercise. Even standing up, working around, doing something quick like a walk or situps in between your 5min pomodoro breaks are game changers. Breaking up prolonged sessions of sitting down is crucial. Same goes for your posture; your next posture is your best posture.