Refold/Mass Immersion Approach: Spanish ~4-6ish Month Update
Background: The mass immersion approach(MIA) is a language-learning method based on the input hypothesis developed by linguist Stephen Krashen. The input hypothesis basically states that language is acquired through exposure to comprehensible input. Improvement comes from when you advance your comprehensibility frontier by exposure to content you can almost understand. MIA codifies this approach into an actual language learning method, which consists of mainly listening/watching/reading native content, and “sentence mining” Anki cards (basically finding sentences you can push your comprehensibility frontier forward on with active study). Outputting (writing/speaking) is left until you have a strong base of knowledge to work from. Explicit grammar study is explicitly optional.
I will not be reviewing the validity of the input hypothesis or MIA/Refold here. The research and the logic look good to me, and I am not a linguist. For more info, you can watch Krashen’s lecture on the topic, or visit the refold website.
My Background: Been interested in language learning since forever. Took Spanish courses all throughout secondary school (quit junior year of high school because of one particular teacher), and never got particularly good. Tried to self-study Japanese, Dutch and French at various points and failed because of a lack of resources and motivation. Went to Israel and became ashamed of the fact that I could only speak English. Enrolled in Latin in school to assuage the shame and fulfill some of my degree requirements. Got exposed to the power of Anki and text-based immersion in Latin class, but realized after the semester ended that I would really be more satisfied working on a language I could actually speak. So I picked up my old Spanish books from high school and began.
Components of Fluency
This next section is split into five parts. Reading, writing, listening, speaking and grammar. I’ll talk about my progress in the first 4–6 months of learning. I say 4–6 because while I began reading around 6 months ago, I only started seriously listening 4 months ago at the end of August.
Reading
Most of my reading during this time consisted of the seven Harry Potter books, although you can see the full list in the immersion data at the end of the document. Overall I read ten books, eight of which were designed for native speakers, during these 6 months. Harry Potter, though translated, was actually a really good choice for me. I like the books a lot, although I’ve soured a bit on them since I was a kid (that’s a tale for another time), which helped me stay motivated to read pretty much every day. I knew the story, which made it hard to get lost. The books are slightly age-graded, so my comprehension was challenged every time I moved onto a new book. And surprisingly the translation was pretty decent. I do think from now on I will be trying to read native content. It is much more similar to what I would be likely to encounter in real life.
Reading was definitely very difficult at the beginning. Despite my high school Spanish background, it was a complete slog getting through the first Harry Potter book. On the immersion spreadsheet, I estimate it took about 16 hours based on page count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took much longer than that. It certainly felt much longer than that.
However the improvement curve was quite sharp, and by the time I was reading Goblet of Fire, I could enter a flow state, much like reading in English, although I was often missing the exact meaning of a word or two every paragraph. This did not impact my enjoyment of the story much, however. It’s amazing what your brain can pick up with context clues, although I do wonder how I will hold up when I go to a story I don’t know as well.
I also began to sentence mine n+1 Anki cards (i.e. find sentences where I didn’t know one word, define it, and make an Anki card with the sentence and the unknown word highlighted on the front, and either a definition in English or Spanish on the back or a picture), in Order of the Phoenix. Although I was only finding 5–10 new words per day, I found this surprisingly helpful in improving my comprehension. If I was not so busy with school I would have made more of these per day, but the creation process is fairly time-consuming.
Total Immersion time: 190 hours
Future Plans: Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Open Questions: How good are translations? What is the best “back” of a sentence mining card? (picture vs. English text vs. dictionary definition)
Writing
I’ve done book reviews on Goodreads for all the books that I’ve read. This was very challenging at first but has become easier with each book. However, I still think my vocabulary is too low to write effectively. Will hold off on deliberate writing until I reach ~1000 hours of reading.
Listening
Listening is hard. It’s not helped by the fact that the primary method of listening involves watching TV, which my parents raised me to think was a waste of time, and I don’t find enjoyable.
However, if you do enjoy TV, Netflix is honestly the only resource you really need, if you’re studying a fairly popular language. VPNs also help to access more native content. Start off with shows you’ve seen before, except that you won’t be able to 100% understand things, and before you know it, understanding will gradually trickle in. Dreaming Spanish on YouTube is also a great resource.
I started off with the wrong show, El Reemplazante, a Chilean show about a financial fraudster turned math teacher, was very difficult for me to understand. When I switched to dubbed content, things became much easier, and I found myself subjectively improving much faster. Now, most dubbed content is fairly easy for me to understand, and I’m mainly watching a Mexican telenovela called Enemigo Intimo.
However, I certainly have a long way to go. I think I need another 900–1400 hours of listening to really get comfortable in the language.
I’ve also been doing about 5–10 hours a month of passive listening to Latin Rock. Not exactly sure how to count this.
Total Immersion time: 122.5 Hours.
Future Plans: More Enemigo Intimo.
Open Questions: Dubbed vs. Native content? How to count music/passive listening?
Speaking
I have done no speaking. I am itching to start, so I may begin doing lessons on iTalki at around 500 hours. This may be too soon. I am not sure
Explicit Grammer
Also none. If I end up reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I may begin to look up some stuff as I read.
Overall Impressions
I’m very happy with my reading progress, and decently happy with my listening progress. I think ideally I should be shifting towards more listening, but this is tough during COVID because I would like to reduce my screen time, which is not conducive to watching more TV. I will update again in three months!
Full immersion link data link.
