The 10 Laws of Effective Immersion w/ @storylearning

Sorry if I seem a little low energy in this video! Due to the time zone difference, I had to wake up earlier than usually to film 😅 Olly has a lot of insight into the psychology of people learning languages, so I think you guys will find this video really helpful. Enjoy! Check out the video we did on Olly's channel as well! https://youtu.be/c21-nCVmieA

Timestamps 0:00 Introducing Olly Richards 1:45 #10 - Read at your level 4:25 #9 - Focus on plot 7:55 #8 - Door closed, phone off 9:35 #7 - Learn the script/writing system 10:55 #6 - Don't look up words 13:30 #5 - Listen while reading 15:50 #4 - Read it, then read it again 22:40 #3 - Don't study grammar 28:40 #2 - Learn everyday 30:05 #1 - Trust in the process 37:20 Conclusion

Focusing on the plot is so underrated. I really struggled to find content "at my level" when I started learning Korean. But then I changed the definition of "at my level". My new definition was: can I follow the plot? If yes, even just barely, then that's good enough. My progress is much faster when I get things that are much closer to my level than that, but even then. The lowest threshold for me is "can I follow the plot?".

my TL is korean and I was just watching a korean guy giving a lecture on language teaching/learning as immersion as I felt that it was a topic I would want to be able to talk about in korean too, and he started talking about 학습(learning) vs 습득(acquisition) and namedropped krashen and input hypothesis, i really felt like i had come full circle haha. thank you Matt for your videos; if I hadn't come across your channel a year ago, my korean would be nowhere near where it is now, if i'd even know any at all. ✊

Yeahhhhhh. Almost 6 months of Refold 😎✋. Just keep doing everything until the fluency. Thank you so much for everything.

Putting output so far back actually really makes sense to me. It's how I learnt English. As mentioned in the video, I'm one of those Europeans who "just happened" to learn English. Looking back, I was basically just reading things to begin with. Games, Forum posts, eventually even the first book of Harry Potter. During that, I did also write a little bit, but it was pretty terrible. I don't think this actually contributed much to me acquiring the language, but more something I did out of "necessity". Eventually, I got to watching English TV shows. Stargate Atlantis, in particular. There was one character who always mumbled and I couldn't understand a word he said, so I watched it with English subtitles first. On my second go (there was quite some time between these), I could understand everything even without the subtitles. It still took some effort, but it was fine. A couple years ago, I got invited to a TeamSpeak call by an English person. I was a bit hesitant, considering I never really spoke English before, but it ended up being perfectly fine. He could barely believe I had never actually spoken English before that time. (Sure, there was the occasional time in class, but a grand total of like 20 sentences doesn't really count for much) Apparently I didn't even have that much of an accent. Though, granted, I always made that, when reading, I'd always speak in my mind - and tried to pronounce things in my head as accurately as I could. Not sure that helped, but that is what I did. Said English person has been a friend for a couple years now and apparently my accent has improved even more, but I basically started out with barely an accent, which I thought was pretty amazing. Refold takes a similar path. When I first read through it the other day, I basically thought "yup, this is exactly what I would recommend, were I to try and come up with a method"

Olly's bit against TV at 21:48 reminded me of an aspect of my own acquisition of English that I hadn't previously thought about. I did not learn English through games or chatting with people online, the way Matt talked about earlier in the video. Instead I learned English by watching a staggaring amount of TV after school. I would watch sit-coms and MacGyver, or whatever was on the Discovery Channel, all aired in the original undubbed English (yay Norway). Importantly, there would for some shows (like The Simpsons, Friends, and others) be two episodes a day, where the first of the two would be a repeat of yesterday's second episode. Obviously, since there was nothing better to do, I would watch both. I wonder how much worse my English would have been today had the networks done things differently.

Loved it! Immersion is definitely key to get to a really high level in any language. Great job!

It's important to note the difference in the types of language learners they are. Olly is a polyglot who has gotten 8+ languages up to at least (im not sure to what extent he is fluent) upper intermediate level. His goal is not to speak like a native speaker. Matt is learning like a child (not an insult, lol). MASSIVE INPUT for years and then grammar study, like a child learning to read in school, though the process is a little quicker. Both of these types make for great language learners, and it is interesting to compare, contrast, and form my own methods to aid my personal journey.

I've been experimenting with reading something several times without lookups, before I finally allow myself to look things up. It's been almost shocking how much more I understand the second and third time through, even without looking things up. I generally have to do this specifically as a "study" activity, though, because if I'm reading for pleasure I can't be bothered to read the same thing multiple times. (I also never re-watch things back to back. I only do this with pure reading or pure listening.) I have also experimented with - looking nothing up, ever, and - looking basically everything up, and - looking some things up on my first read through. In the end, all of these seem to have a different purpose/use. Though I must admit that I almost never look everything up anymore. It's just too tedious, and generally means that I'm reading too far above my level.

It's time that I admit my problem of looking up every word I don't understand. "This needs to go into Anki immediately."

This method reminds me of "natural method", which my Latin teacher used in our classes. It's basically a book (Lingua Latina by Hans Ørberg) with stories, and you progress from "Italia in Europa est." to more complex sentences, with little to no grammar. It was fun learning that way, but it's maybe more useful for a living language that one would actually speak in. Would be interesting to compile such texts for other languages as well.

Came from Olly’s channel, I think your attitude towards language learning is very inspired and you seem to have a no bs approach.

I think the hardest part is the begining. When I listen to podcasts and watch anime without subs. It's just meaningless giberish and i feel like I'm wasting my time sometimes lol.

Wow, good timing. I'm reading his book "Short Stories in Swedish" right now! It has been very helpful. I didn't realize that's who this was until he held up his "Short Stories in Spanish" book.

Always a pleasure to listen to a deep and smart conversation about language learning. Thanks a lot, Matt! And Olly!

This video was a great motivation boost that I'm on the right track honestly. I actually found that I'm already doing a lot of the laws already either on accident or by reading about them on refold (or previously mia). Really informative video thanks Matt!

Hi! Language immersion always has been around and here in Finland it's very common thing at schools. It is also something you take it further, meaning that you actually study other languages in your seconde language. I study French by using almost material in english and then also study French language in French. Input is all you you hear or read and comprehensible input is that you understand the message and meaning. Krashen has talked about this since 70s. You do great guys!

This is amazing. I enjoy Olly Richards Japanese courses (I have just about every course he offers. Adding refold to the mix has been nothing short of fantastic. I'm glad you both were able to make a collaboration with each other. Learning Japanese by immersion has been an amazing experience fueled by the work you guys have put out. I'm so fortunate of what we have available now for studying Japanese. I wish we had these resources years ago when I was first studying but I'm glad we have it now. Thanks for all the work you guys have put into this.

Thank you guys for this very insightful and highly motivational talk about language learning approaches! I've been learning Korean at university for about a year now and just recently got into learning Japanese and Mandarin Chinese as well, often finding myself in doubt of the progress I've already made, due to me having acquired bad (language) learning habits during my school years up until my mid 20s and ending up becoming something I'd like to call a 'lazy perfectionist'. Came to realise I've been stuck in a 'spiral of doubt', eventually subconsciously sabotaging my own learning experience, despite already being aware of all/actively applying most of the learning principles/strategies you guys discussed but the one GOLDEN rule (, which therefore rightfully is mentioned as rule №1 in this video in my opinion,) to TRUST THE PROCESS... What started with questioning the efforts I put into learning my target languages, the progress I made thus far and therefore the pace I've been learning with, ended up with me almost completely putting a halt to my learning endeavours, simply because I lost faith in the process... Fortunately I'm on a good way slowly getting back on track, immersing myself in content about the cultures I love and practicing again on an almost daily basis! Therefore a little reminder to everyone out there: Take your time (, especially when learning multiple languages simultaneously), don't push yourself too hard, you CAN and WILL accomplish your goals IN TIME, if you keep learning persistently - even if you just engage in learning for half an hour (almost) each and every day! Becoming proficient in any language is just like learning any other (more tangible) craft - it takes years actually becoming good at what you do, decades to truly master the art and a lifetime of commitment being a true virtuoso some day! We are all humans, we are not meant to be perfect, neither is any form of our learning experience - we make mistakes on a daily basis, but with enough perseverance only the sky's the limit! ;)