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Refold. Simplified
0A: What is Immersion Learning?
Most language teachers instruct you to memorize words and grammar and then combine them to construct sentences. This way of learning is called the “skill-building” approach.
Skill-building is the right choice if you need to speak quickly. If you are planning to travel to another country soon and need to be able to speak, we recommend using Benny Lewis’s courses. Benny Lewis is a master of the skill-building approach.
However, the skill-building approach doesn’t work for attaining fluency. When speaking fluently, you don’t have time to conjugate verbs and construct sentences. You need the right words to pop into your head the first time.
Fluency requires an instinct for the language; the same instinct you have in your native language (NL). You probably don’t know the grammar rules of your NL. You just speak and the words come naturally. This instinct is the result of language “acquisition”. Once you’ve acquired a language, you will be able to speak the language without thinking.
Immersion is the tool we use to acquire language. Immersion simply means exposing yourself to the language by watching TV, reading books, and browsing the internet.
How Does Acquisition Work?
“We all acquire language in the same way: by understanding messages.“
–Stephen Krashen
Learning the definition of a word is just the first step in the process of acquiring it. To acquire an instinct for how a word is used, you need to see and understand it hundreds of times in hundreds of different situations.
Through immersion, you expose yourself to those situations. Each time you see the word and understand it, you train your instinct. Eventually, your instinct becomes so strong that you will intuitively know how to use the word.
Time and Effort
Acquisition takes a lot of time, but that time doesn’t need to feel like work. The key to staying motivated is to make your immersion fun.
You can watch TV shows, YouTube, and TikTok videos. You can read tweets, blog posts, or books. Any media you enjoy in your NL you can also enjoy in your target language (TL).
The average American spends per day watching TV, streaming videos, and browsing social media. The more media time you convert to your TL, the faster you will become fluent.
The actual time it takes varies depending on the language you’re learning and many other personal factors, but the most important piece is to spend a lot of time with the language. As long as you consistently spend time with your TL every day, you will eventually acquire it.0A: What is Immersion Learning?
Most language teachers instruct you to memorize words and grammar and then combine them to construct sentences. This way of learning is called the “skill-building” approach.
Skill-building is the right choice if you need to speak quickly. If you are planning to travel to another country soon and need to be able to speak, we recommend using Benny Lewis’s courses. Benny Lewis is a master of the skill-building approach.
However, the skill-building approach doesn’t work for attaining fluency. When speaking fluently, you don’t have time to conjugate verbs and construct sentences. You need the right words to pop into your head the first time.
Fluency requires an instinct for the language; the same instinct you have in your native language (NL). You probably don’t know the grammar rules of your NL. You just speak and the words come naturally. This instinct is the result of language “acquisition”. Once you’ve acquired a language, you will be able to speak the language without thinking.
Immersion is the tool we use to acquire language. Immersion simply means exposing yourself to the language by watching TV, reading books, and browsing the internet.
How Does Acquisition Work?
“We all acquire language in the same way: by understanding messages.“
–Stephen Krashen
Learning the definition of a word is just the first step in the process of acquiring it. To acquire an instinct for how a word is used, you need to see and understand it hundreds of times in hundreds of different situations.
Through immersion, you expose yourself to those situations. Each time you see the word and understand it, you train your instinct. Eventually, your instinct becomes so strong that you will intuitively know how to use the word.
Time and Effort
Acquisition takes a lot of time, but that time doesn’t need to feel like work. The key to staying motivated is to make your immersion fun.
You can watch TV shows, YouTube, and TikTok videos. You can read tweets, blog posts, or books. Any media you enjoy in your NL you can also enjoy in your target language (TL).
The average American spends per day watching TV, streaming videos, and browsing social media. The more media time you convert to your TL, the faster you will become fluent.
The actual time it takes varies depending on the language you’re learning and many other personal factors, but the most important piece is to spend a lot of time with the language. As long as you consistently spend time with your TL every day, you will eventually acquire it.
0A: Activities Explained
The Refold method is made up of three main activities:
Each plays an important role in the language acquisition process.
Active Immersion
Active immersion is when you pay full attention to a piece of content in your target language (TL), whether that’s watching a TV show, reading a book, or listening to a podcast.
Active immersion is the most important activity in the language acquisition process. This is where most of the acquisition happens. When you’re paying full attention to a piece of content, your brain is hard at work deconstructing the language.
There are two types of active immersion: intensive and free-flow.
Intensive Immersion
Intensive immersion is when you use a dictionary to try to understand your immersion content. As you immerse, you look up each unknown word and try to piece together the meaning of each sentence. This process is great for learning new vocabulary and building comprehension.
The challenge with intensive immersion is that it takes a lot of effort. If it ever feels like a burden, it’s best to switch to free-flow to avoid burning out.
Free-Flow Immersion
Free-flow immersion is when you pay full attention to a piece of content, but you avoid interrupting your immersion with lookups. The goal is to get into the flow of immersing. You can still do the occasional lookup if a word is bothering you, but avoid stopping frequently.
Free-flow helps make comprehension more automatic and effortless.
The challenge with free-flow is that you will understand much less than with intensive. As adults, the sensation of not understanding can be uncomfortable, but it’s a necessary part of the learning process. There’s no way around it. It’s best to embrace this discomfort.
Balance
Some people prefer intensive while others prefer free-flow. However, both are important parts of the acquisition process. You should do more of the one you prefer, but make sure you do some of each.
Intensive immersion tends to be more mentally tiring than free-flow, so it’s best to do it first when you still have energy.
Passive Listening
Most people can’t spend all day actively watching TV or reading. However, most of us have time in our day where we can listen to our TL.
Passive listening is when you pay partial attention to audio. You can passively listen to audio in the car on the way to work, or in your kitchen while you cook. Driving and household chores don’t require much mental energy, so you can listen to your TL while doing these activities.
Passive listening is a great way to increase your total amount of immersion time. It’s not as effective as active immersion, but it still helps a lot.
Not all passive listening is equal. The more attention you pay while listening, the more benefit you’ll get. Choose passive listening content that is interesting to you so you can stay engaged.
One way to make passive listening more interesting is to relisten to content you’ve already actively immersed with. Because you already know the story, it will be more comprehensible and more interesting to you. Relistening also gives your brain another chance to acquire things you missed on your first watch.
Active Study
Refold is an immersion-based learning method but that doesn’t mean we only recommend immersion. Active study is when you spend time learning about your TL to make your immersion more comprehensible.
Acquisition happens when you understand the meaning of sentences in your immersion content. Active study gives your brain extra information that it can use to decode the meaning of those sentences.
There are four parts of each language to study:
For most languages, phonetics and the writing system take less than a week to learn, but vocabulary and grammar study continue throughout the acquisition process.
In Stage 1, we’ll explain how to get started with all four aspects of active study.
0A: What’s My Level?
There are four stages In Refold’s Roadmap:
Each stage is broken into substages. Each substage has different goals, strategies, and advice to help you focus your effort on what’s most beneficial for where you are in the process. We provide self-tests at each substage to help you determine if you are ready for the next one.
Stage 1: Get Started
In Stage 1, you will learn the basics of your target language (TL) and what tools to use to learn directly from immersion. You will focus on building habits, learning the writing and phonetic systems of the language, and learning basic grammar and vocabulary.
Stage 2: Learn to Understand
In Stage 2, you will build your comprehension until you can fully understand a genre of native content. Stage 2 is broken into three substages:
2A: Understand Simple Content
In Stage 2A, you will focus on simple content, such as children’s TV shows. Children’s shows help you acquire the common vocabulary and grammar that you started studying in Stage 1. Once you can follow the plot of simple content, you’ll graduate to Stage 2B.
2B: Follow Your Interests
In Stage 2B, you have enough of a foundation to start pursuing your interests. For example, if you’re interested in fashion, then you could start following fashion vloggers on YouTube that speak your TL.
As you explore your interests, your comprehension will grow until you can follow the ideas in your immersion content. You will start to truly enjoy the content you’re immersing in. At this point, you can move on to Stage 2C.
2C: Narrow Your Focus
When you reach Stage 2C, you will be enjoying your content, but there will still be gaps in your comprehension. To fill those gaps quickly, you will narrow your focus to one genre (aka “domain”) of native content until you can fully understand it.
Native content means content originally created in your TL for native speakers. It does not include translations or learner content.
You can choose any domain you like (e.g. science fiction, fashion, cooking), however, we recommend focusing on slice-of-life TV first because it’s most relevant to daily speech.
Stage 3: Learn to Speak
Stage 3 focuses on converting your comprehension into speaking ability. Stage 3 is broken into three substages:
3A: Understand Casual Conversation
The style of language used in everyday conversation is a little different from what you mastered in Stage 2, so the first step is to build up your comprehension in this new domain. Once you can understand casual conversation, writing and speaking will come easily to you.
3B: Practice Writing and Pronunciation
In Stage 3B, you will practice writing and pronunciation as separate skills. For pronunciation practice, you will choose a language parent and copy their manner of speaking so that you can sound native-like.
Twitch streamers, podcasters, and YouTubers are all good options for a language parent.
3C: Start Speaking
In Stage 3C, you will combine your writing and pronunciation skills and start speaking. By the end of Stage 3, you will have achieved basic fluency in your TL.
Basic fluency means that you’ll be fully functional in your TL. You will be able to speak about daily life and any other domains that you’ve chosen to master. The best part: you won’t be translating from your NL. Your thoughts will go directly into your TL and you will be able to speak naturally and comfortably.
Stage 4: Expand Your Ability
Once you’ve achieved basic fluency, it’s your choice how to continue your language acquisition journey. You could choose to expand your comprehension abilities by immersing in new domains like biology, business, or politics. You could also choose to deepen your fluency and focus on trying to sound more native-like.
In Stage 4, we explain different approaches to expanding and deepening your language ability.
Where to Start?
Many learners already have some experience studying their target language and won’t need to start at the beginning of the roadmap. No matter what level you are at, we recommend reading the entire guide so you don’t miss anything.
Once you’ve read the guide, use the following test to find your level and which stage to start with:
Can you read the writing system? Do you know 1000 words?
If not, go to Stage 1. If yes to both, go to Stage 2A.
Can you recognize most of the words in a TV show for children (7+ years old) while watching with TL subtitles?
If yes, go to Stage 2B.
Can you follow the plot of a TV show for adults (16+ years old) while watching with TL subtitles?
If yes, go to Stage 2C.
Do you have a near-perfect comprehension of a TV show for adults (16+) without any subtitles?
If yes, go to Stage 3A.
Are you conversationally fluent in your TL, but want to continue deepening and expanding your fluency?
If yes, go to Stage 4.
It’s important to be honest with yourself when answering these questions. It’s better to underestimate your ability than overestimate. If you are unsure of where to start, try starting from Stage 1A. You can always move up later when you feel comfortable.
1A: Language Basics
The purpose of Stage 1 is to create a foundation for comprehension so that you can learn directly from target language (TL) content in Stage 2.
As described in , active study helps you build this foundation much faster than immersion alone.
There are four parts to active study:
Phonetics
Each language has a unique set of sounds that are different from other languages. There are sounds in your TL that aren’t shared with your native language (NL).
When you first start learning, you won’t be able to hear many of these sounds. Your brain literally cannot make sense of them and you will hear them differently from how they actually sound.
The ability to hear these sounds comes from hundreds of hours of listening practice. You can speed up this process by learning about the phonetics of your TL.
To learn the phonetics of your TL, search online for YouTube videos or blogs that explain the sounds and also provide listening examples.
Don’t practice pronunciation until you can accurately hear the phonetics of the language. If you do, you may get a bad accent that will be hard to undo later.
Writing System
To accurately learn words, you need to read them in the language they were written in. If your TL uses a phonetic writing system, then learn the characters and connect the symbols to the sounds you learned about in your phonetics study.
Chinese and Japanese have character sets that represent meaning. If you are studying one of these languages, you will need to start learning these characters.
Each language has different tools for learning the writing system. Join the to find the best learning resources for your language.
Don’t try to perfectly learn the writing system through study. Just learn the basics. Reading is a core part of the Refold Roadmap, so you will have plenty of opportunities to master the writing system over time.
Vocabulary
When you first start learning a language, you won’t be able to understand any of your immersion. The fastest way to boost your comprehension is to learn the 1000 most common words. The 1000 most common words cover 70-80% of daily speech.
Once you have a foundation and can comprehend some of your immersion, you will start to study vocabulary directly from your immersion content instead of from a vocabulary list. This method is extremely effective because it focuses your vocabulary study on the words that are most relevant and useful to your personal learning experience.
There are many tools you can use to study vocabulary. You can use a simple tool like paper flashcards, but we recommend using a spaced repetition system (SRS). An SRS is much more efficient than regular flashcards because it automatically adjusts your study to focus on words you are struggling to learn.
In the next article, we’ll explain what an SRS is, which one to use, and how to start studying the most common vocabulary for your TL.
Grammar
There Is No “Why”
When new learners learn a new piece of grammar, they often ask, “Why does the language work this way?”. They are looking for a concrete rule that explains the language.
Unfortunately, there is often no answer to their question. The truth is that language is too messy and chaotic to be explained by a simple set of rules. There is no why and it is pointless to ask why a language is the way that it is.
It’s important to realize that grammar “rules” aren’t actually rules. They’re just guidelines for how the language is generally used.
Grammar study is not useful for speaking fluently because it’s impossible to memorize every rule and exception. Even if you were able to, you wouldn’t have enough time to use that knowledge while speaking.
Fortunately, our brains are really good at learning grammar intuitively. Through immersion, you will gain an intuitive understanding of the language so that you can speak correctly without needing to think about grammar.
Comprehension Focus
Although grammar study isn’t useful for speaking, it is very useful for comprehension. While vocabulary study helps you understand individual words, grammar study helps you understand full sentences.
Start by reading about the basic grammar of your TL for 10-15 minutes per day. As you see new grammar structures in your immersion, read about how they work.
Most of your grammar study probably won’t make sense until after you’ve immersed and seen many examples. If something doesn’t make sense, then skip it. You’ll eventually figure it out through immersion.
1A: Immersion
Immersion is the foundation of language acquisition. Through immersion, you expose yourself to each word, phrase, and grammar structure in many different situations until you can intuitively grasp their nuance.
The amount of time you spend immersing is the single most important factor in how fast you acquire your target language (TL). It’s important to start immersing from day one so you can start racking up immersion hours and kick start the acquisition process. Even if you don’t understand anything, your brain is hard at work decoding the language.
Tolerating Ambiguity
New language learners often fall into the trap of not feeling “ready” for immersion. Immersing in content you don’t understand feels uncomfortable. New learners try to avoid this discomfort by putting off immersion and focusing solely on active study.
That approach does not work and never will.
It doesn’t matter how much you prepare and study and learn, when you make first contact with real language, you will not understand it.
Instead of avoiding the discomfort of not understanding, we strongly recommend that you dive headfirst into the language and learn to embrace the ambiguity. The better you become at tolerating the discomfort, the more you will enjoy your immersion and the faster your brain will absorb the language.
Reducing Ambiguity
When you first get started, it can be difficult to build up a tolerance for ambiguity. If you find it too difficult, here are a few strategies you can use to make the experience more comfortable.
Spoil the Plot
One way to reduce ambiguity is to read the plot summary of the TV show or movie before watching. Another option is to rewatch a TV show or movie that you’ve already seen in your native language (NL). Both of these approaches allow you to follow the story without needing to understand the words.
Native Language Subtitles
We generally don’t recommend using NL subtitles when consuming content. You won’t learn much from it.
However, if you find yourself completely lost and struggling, then it’s OK to use NL subtitles to keep yourself engaged.
As an exercise, try to watch as long as you can without subtitles before turning them on. Another option is to watch a piece of content without NL subtitles and then watch it again with them.
By the time you reach Stage 2A, you should no longer consume content with NL subtitles or NL translations.
Immersion Endurance
Immersing in a new language is exhausting. You will get tired very quickly. You may even get headaches as your brain accommodates the new language.
Make sure to take frequent breaks and naps to recharge. Over time, your endurance will grow until you can immerse for multiple hours straight.
Finding Content
Throughout your learning journey, you will spend thousands of hours immersing in your TL, so it’s important to find content you enjoy. The more you enjoy the content, the more you’ll want to immerse and the faster you’ll learn.
To maximize your time spent with the language, convert as much of your media consumption as possible over to your TL. This includes TV shows, movies, YouTube, and blogs. You will need to explore what content is available for your TL and find what is most interesting and enjoyable for you.
Make New Accounts
One great way to explore TL content is to create a dedicated TL account on all your social media and video streaming services. By having a separate account where you only consume TL content, you can take advantage of the recommendation algorithm to find new and interesting content. We recommend creating TL accounts on YouTube, Netflix, Tiktok, and Twitter.
To help seed your TL content recommendations, Refold has collected lists of channels and content for each language across YouTube, Netflix, and other content sites. You can access these through our .
Netflix
Netflix is a great place to find TL content. Netflix offers different content in different countries. With the help of a
, you can trick Netflix into thinking you are in a different country and get access to all the content for that language.We recommend using the . This makes it easy to search for and find Netflix content in your TL and tells you which country you need to set your VPN to in order to watch.
TL Streaming Services
Netflix and YouTube are great places to find content in your TL. However, don’t just limit yourself to the sites you already know. Every country has different streaming services. Search Google for the streaming sites most used by natives of your TL.
Refold Content Collection
Our community has collected a huge amount of content that’s perfect for beginner learners. Make sure to join the official to get access to thousands of content recommendations across 45+ languages.
Passive Listening Content
As explained in , passive listening is a great way to increase your immersion time when you’re on the go.
Podcasts and audiobooks are the most straightforward way to start passive listening, but they will be very difficult for new learners. The more difficult the content, the harder it will be to stay engaged. You can make your passive listening more engaging and comprehensible by re-listening to the audio from TV shows or YouTube videos that you’ve already actively watched.
To make passive listening a habit in your life, it’s important to make it easy and effortless. The easiest way to start passive listening is to turn on Netflix or YouTube on your phone and just listen. If you are more technically skilled, you can download the audio and put it on your phone or a separate digital audio player.
1A: Vocabulary
When getting started with language acquisition, your first goal is to build a foundation of understanding. You need enough comprehension to start learning directly from your immersion. As mentioned in the last article, the fastest way to build this foundation is to memorize the most common vocabulary.
Study Tools
There are many different memorization tools and techniques. In our opinion, spaced repetition systems (SRS) are, by far, the most effective memorization tool.
An SRS is a flashcard program that attempts to track how well you know each flashcard and intelligently shows you the cards it thinks you’re about to forget. This means you can keep a huge amount of information in your head while minimizing unnecessary reviews.
The best SRS tool currently available is
. Anki has many features and add-ons that help with language learning. It’s free on the computer, web, and Android, but it costs $25 on iOS.Anki is a bit complicated so it’s best to set aside some time to install and configure it. You can find a full guide about how to get started with Anki
.Study Strategy
In immersion learning, your goal is to understand; not speak. That means that you only need to build your passive vocabulary: the set of words you can recognize and understand.
You don’t need to practice recalling words from memory. By the time you reach Stage 3, your brain will naturally start converting your passive vocabulary into active vocabulary and you will be able to recall the words without extra effort.
Choosing a Word List
Anki “decks” are premade collections of Anki flashcards that you can download and study. The Refold community is hard at work building Anki decks that are ideal for new learners.
If there’s no Refold deck available for your target language (TL), you can either use a premade deck from a different source, or you can create your own deck.
Choosing a Premade Deck
In a good premade deck, each card will have a word, an example sentence, a definition, and ideally, audio for the word/sentence.
The Refold community has compiled lists of the best existing decks for each language. Join the to access these recommendations.
Creating Your Own Deck
If you can’t find a good premade deck that fits the criteria above, you can create your own and share it with the community.
The first step to creating a deck is to choose the words you want to learn. The best way to do this is with a frequency list. A “frequency list” is a list of words sorted from most common to least common. You can find frequency lists for any language by searching on Google.
When choosing a frequency list, make sure that it’s a list of root words, not conjugated/inflected words. For example, “walk” and “walking” should be treated as the same word.
If your native language (NL) and TL are related (like English and Spanish), then there will be a lot of shared words between the languages. These shared words are called “cognates” and you don’t need to study them.
Once you have your list of words, you will need to gather the necessary information for each word and load it into Anki. There are many types of cards you can create, but we recommend that you keep it simple.
On the front of the card, put the word.
On the back, put an example sentence and a definition.
Beginners may also want to put a translation of the example sentence on the back to help them understand. However, as you improve, you should avoid using translations because they are nearly always inaccurate.
Also, remember that you are only studying for recognition and understanding. Make sure that the front of the card does not have any of your NL on it; only your TL.
SRS Best Practices
Every new word you learn comes back as multiple reviews later on. One of the most common mistakes new learners make is learning too many cards too quickly. Too many new cards leads to too many reviews, which often leads to burnout.
Focus on consistency over quantity. We recommend adding 10 new cards per day. With 10 new cards per day, you should expect to have about 70 reviews per day. It takes about two weeks for your review count to reflect changes to your new card count.
If you ever start burning out, then stop adding new cards until the number of reviews drops down to a more manageable level. Feel free to drop down to 5 new cards per day, or whatever you find manageable.
2A: Intensive Immersion
Intensive immersion is a great way to build up your reading ability and vocabulary. When first getting started, books and blogs will be too difficult to read. Instead, we recommend reading target language (TL) subtitles while watching a TV show.
There are four main reasons why we recommend starting with subtitles:
How to Intensively Immerse
During intensive immersion, your goal is to understand as much as possible. To do this, stop after each subtitle line and try to understand the sentence. If there are unknown words in the sentence, use a dictionary to look them up.
As you immerse, some of the language you come across will be easy to figure out, while other parts will be hard. There will be many sentences that you won’t be able to understand, even with the help of a dictionary.
Focus on learning the things that your brain is ready for. If you can’t figure out a sentence after 10 seconds of thinking, then just move on to the next one.
In traditional education, you’re told to exert lots of effort to learn the hard things. In immersion learning, it is a better strategy to only focus on the easy things. As your comprehension grows, the things that used to be hard will become easy.
What Content to Watch
Subtitles
Without strong listening ability, looking up words from audio alone is very difficult. It’s important to find content where the TL subtitles match the TL audio. Without subtitles, you won’t be able to intensively immerse with TV and movies.
TL subtitles for native content usually match the audio, but this usually isn’t true for dubbed content. As a beginner, matching subtitles are important so you can hear the correct pronunciation of words. When you’re more advanced it’s ok to watch with mismatched subs.
Most common languages have a lot of subtitled content. The Refold community is compiling a list of this content to make it easy for beginners to get started.
However, less common languages may not have any subtitles available. If you can’t find any TL content with subtitles, then we recommend doing intensive immersion with comic books instead. We’ll explain more about reading comics in Stage 2B.
Children’s Content
Native content meant for adults (16+ years old) is difficult for new learners. It’s easier to start with children’s content instead.
We recommend starting with TV shows for children aged 7 to 14. Children’s TV shows have simpler storylines and dialogue, which make them easier to understand.
We don’t recommend TV for babies or toddlers. There is very little language in these shows and they are boring for adults.
Rewatching Content
Increasing comprehension is the best way to accelerate acquisition. The more comprehensible something is, the more engaging it will be and the more your brain will be able to learn.
One great strategy for increasing comprehension and engagement is to watch content twice: once free-flow and once intensive. Because you’ve already seen the show once, you’ll have more context, higher comprehension, and your intensive immersion will be more engaging. The second pass of intensive immersion allows you to fill in the mystery of everything you didn’t understand the first time through.
For shows you haven’t watched before, you can boost comprehension by reading plot summaries before/after watching. This will help your understanding of the story, give you hints about words, and help keep you engaged.
Avoiding Burnout
Intensive immersion can be mentally exhausting. It takes a lot of energy and focus. When you get tired of intensive immersion, switch to free-flow immersion.
If a piece of content ever starts to feel like a chore to watch or read, then change to something else. There’s no point in forcing yourself to immerse with content. Enjoyment is the most important part of the process.
Immersion Tools
Pop-Up Dictionaries
When watching or reading something, you will be looking words up in a dictionary. Using a digital dictionary is much faster than using a physical one, but it still requires you to switch application windows to look something up.
Pop-up dictionaries allow you to look up words right inside the application you’re using to watch the TV show.
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