#ci method

Whether you're just using CI Lessons as a supplemental practice, or as your main study material! Either way, I'd love to hear from you!

Whether you're a beginner building a foundation of understanding in the language, or you know some Mandarin and CI Lessons are helping you improve.

What’s the best way to learn if I already speak another Romance language?

If you are a native or proficient speaker of another Romance language, your journey will look very different.

An initial easy win will be getting used to the way the language sounds. Romance languages have many cognates, but at the beginning they will be hard to recognize. Once you get some familiarity with the pronunciation and with the patterns in which words change from one language to the other, your comprehension will skyrocket in a very short amount of time. Just by watching just a handful of hours of intermediate or advanced videos about topics that you are familiar with or that interest you, you will get used to the pronunciation enough and will have learned some of the most common connector words, and that will help you increase your comprehension a lot in a very short time. This phase may be slightly longer if instead of Spanish or Italian you are learning Portuguese, or especially French.

After this, you may find that some native media is already accessible. We recommend you start watching or listening to things about topics that you are already familiar with. Presentational content like podcasts, TED talks, or nonfiction audiobooks will be some of the easiest things for you to understand.

Once you can understand native media well, we recommend you continue watching our advanced videos only if you are genuinely interested in the topic that we are discussing and if you find them more engaging than the native content that you can understand well.

Pretty soon you’ll get to a point in which you can understand most native media outside of very specific things like very slang-heavy conversations in movies.

‍Crosstalk is also a great thing to do no matter your background.

Production is a whole different thing, though. Even though you’ll be able to understand most things thanks to the similarity of the vocabulary and grammar, you still need to specifically acquire the words, expressions, and the grammar of the new language. You'll still learn to speak the language faster than somebody who doesn't know another Romance language, but don't expect your speaking to improve nearly as fast as your understanding. Even if you can understand most things after a few dozen hours of input, you’ll still need to get a few hundred hours of input to be able to have conversations without too much trouble.

This is very applicable to me (I can read in French so not a proficient speaker but I have noticed this learning pattern in my own learning Spanish).

So if you already know a romance language, once you notice cognates you CAN use them to understand stuff. As far as Dreaming Spanish method is concerned, this way of understanding is fine (so instead of tons of images and gestures at the beginning). So ANY content you understand, from ANY prior experience (such as knowing cognates or - I wil extrapolate, from prior class study or anki study etc of a language, from being familiar with the topics the video is about, from seeing/hearing it before in a language you understood), will work fine for learning a language.

ANY content you understand the main idea of, no matter what is contributing to that understanding (in terms of past experience, visuals, cognates, topic familiarity), you can learn from.

I was curious what DS had to say about this, since for Beginners the lessons are typically visual heavy and made to be understood from visuals alone. But many people who switch to using extensive comprehensible input to learn are upper beginner or intermediate learners (with some vocabulary from prior learning, some media they can already understand) who are transitioning to simply doing more in ONLY the target language and less intensive study with textbooks/flashcards/lookups etc. So from my interpretation, it looks like DS is simply suggesting (for those types of learners): simply find stuff you understand, any stuff, and watch and read and listen. (Which is like a lot of advice for intermediate learners in general, no matter what they did to study the basics).

The other FAQ question I found interesting was the one on how to learn a language with very little CI. I think Peter Foley's paper on learning French with only audio visual materials is a good example of *the most extreme way* to try and do something like DS when there's no CI Lessons for beginners. However, the recommendations DS gives are much more similar to study methods like Refold (or, more broadly, like study plans MANY people end up doing - a mix of explicit explanations so they can UNDERSTAND some stuff, and then a mix of intensive and extensive listening/reading).

"What can I do to learn a language for which there are no easy videos like yours?"

The first thing that you should do is to try to find partners to do Crosstalk with. Crosstalk is the most efficient way to acquire a language, even more than our videos.

Other than that, you may have to use native content and use some of these techniques to make the input more comprehensible:

Watch content that you have already seen before in your language.

Look up words you’ve encountered several times.

Use translators to help you figure out the parts that you can’t understand.

Use parallel readers. Parallel readers are books that have been translated, and in each page one side is in one language, and the other side is in the other language.

Accept that since your level of comprehension of the input you are receiving is low, you’ll make slower progress.

My comments: you may notice all of these are recommendations Refold gives for making immersion more comprehensible. Refold would just add *study the most common words* (often with anki deck but any way) and possibly *study sentences/grammar* (often also with anki decks but not always, sometimes it's reading a grammar reference, sometimes its just looking things up while immersing like one of the points above says).

You may also notice a lot of these strategies are intensive reading (reading and looking things up, comparing the original with translation), and intensive listening (looking things up in shows and audio-only when you don't understand enough to grasp the main idea).

You are allowed:

1. To use ANY resource that includes translations to study a few hundred to a few thousand common words. Good resources include: free anki common word decks, free anki common words in sentences decks, free common word lists online, textbooks (and textbooks in libraries), Teach Yourself books, Berlitz Self Teacher books, Pimsleur, Glossika (I prefer the old cd versions - which you may find in a library), Innovative Language course (free in library apps like Hoopla, or the paid version LanguagePod101), Coursera courses (free options). Sky is the limit to be honest. You can find many resources that present the most common couple thousand words, and translations. You can study them in depth, or just cram study them (read quickly in a few weeks then reread/review a week later, then another week or month later, then move on even if stuff isn't memorized). Any vague familiarity you get with a bunch of words, after doing some study of words with translations, WILL make Comprehensible Input Lessons like Dreaming Spanish (and Lazy Chinese, French Comprehensible Input etc) feel much easier. Because you'll recognize a bunch of words vaguely, after studying translations, and then those CI Lessons are review instead of the first time you encounter many words.

2. You are also allowed to just study from translation resources instead! Some people prefer using textbooks, classes, or free anki decks and grammar references online. You will eventually need to practice reading and listening, and at that point one day you may find Graded Readers, CI lessons, and Learner Podcasts useful as "comprehensible" input to practice recognizing all the things you studied in those other resources. Then you'll eventually move into reading and listening to materials made for native speakers that you understand, over time. This is also a perfectly valid path to learn - and one many people take.

3. You are allowed to not know ANY individual words when you start using CI Lessons. If you do want to use CI lessons immediately, as a beginner, I'm begging you to get used to ambiguity. You are supposed to be able to learn from CI Lessons designed for beginners even if you know 0 words. Those lessons are designed to understand enough from ONLY visuals, so if the lesson was muted you'd still know what happens in it/what they're about. If you are learning from just CI Lessons, or CI Lessons first, you are going to take several hours to learn a few dozen words! It is going to be many hours before you can actually recognize every individual word being said. That is normal. It's not too hard to use because you don't know all or most of the individual words - if the CI Lesson is marked for Superbeginners, Absolute Beginners, or Beginners, and if you mute it you can follow (or guess) from visual context what it is about, then it is a lesson you can learn from. LATER, once you have learned a lot more words, then CI Lessons for Intermediate learners with less pictures will be understandable, with a combination of the words you know and the visuals to help provide context for the words you aren't expected to already know. Once you have learned a lot of words, Learner Podcasts and Graded Readers also become more understandable and can be used - the 95-98% comprehensible (every 95/100 words you know or more) statistic is more important when you've got no visuals for context, such as in reading only or listening only. When you have visuals, if the visuals explain enough, you CAN know 0 words heard. If there are enough visuals related to what's going on, you can understand the main idea of something, even if you know 0 individual words. You will still learn from a material, if you can follow what's going on. No matter how you follow what's going on - by words you know, or visuals you can interpret. So please don't be scared to use Beginner CI Lessons just because you don't know any words. (Or alternatively, if you hate figuring out whats going on from visuals, it is FINE to study words with translations first, then use CI lessons and other learner materials made to be understandable as practice materials instead).

4. Peter Foley (i am a broken record about his self-experiment) proves to me that you really COULD just learn the basics of a language from Cartoons for Toddlers. Cartoons for Toddlers tend to have 5000 words and be MUCH HARDER than CI Lessons made for beginners. Since CI Lessons are made for people who don't know the language yet, whereas Cartoons for Toddlers assume the toddlers know some words already and are comfortable with guessing from everyday situational contexts. But you could use cartoons for toddlers. It's been done successfully for an English speaker learning French. It would presumably work just as well as it did for Peter Foley, for anyone learning a language with some similarities with a language they already know. It's HARD. It's not ideal. CI Lessons for Beginners and Crosstalk is way easier, as language teachers can put a lot of effort into ensuring they provide you enough visuals to understand them. But it can be done. What I take from his self-experiment is that if you really want to learn a language from audio-visual resources, you can. Whether you start with cartoons for toddlers where the visuals are related to what's being talked about, or you start with even more visually understandable stuff like CI Lessons. Cartoons for toddlers are the bar for what is useful, at minimum and most incomprehensible as a beginner, to my mind. So if you understand something at least AS MUCH as a cartoon for toddlers, you'll be able to learn from it. If you understand something MORE than a cartoon for toddlers, you will likely learn faster and easier. (And learning from translations is the easiest and least mentally taxing, if you dislike or struggle to figure things out from context, so feel free to use translation resources like textbooks or pimsleur! You can always use media you understand as practice to reinforce what you're learning from other resources!)

I am so easily mm how do I say it. I started Death Stranding 2 and there's some spanish in it and now I'm like "well you know, it would be so useful, I could help more students at work, more people in libraries, just generally would be pretty useful" idk idk

Not that usefulness has ever motivated me particularly much. 79 languages are spoken in my city's school district, so statistically most any language studied could help students, could help in random public situations. The french I knew in college actually helped a ton, all the middle school kids I tutored spoke French from childhood so it helped if English wasn't understood. Korean, Arabic, Spanish, French, Swahili, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, would all be extremely useful in terms of how much it would help with community events locally.

Nah I am more motivated by what the fuck do I want to read/watch/listen to. I'm nosy. Translations just do not tell me all the information as it was originally intended. Translations always change something. Reading in particular I am very motivated by....

Idk idk we'll see. There's a lot of Spanish stuff lately I'd really like to understand. So I guess if I want to understand enough, I'll spend some time on it...

In other news - yes I will continue studying Mandarin, I really am serious about the goal to understand any audiobook I want. I am getting closer. I also have several cdramas on my to watch list...

And for Japanese. Well. It is going to take a huge time committment. I have found lots of cool stuff lately. I guess it depends on if I can just watch the lets player I like, and understand the games I'm playing enough to be happy, or if I'll feel I need to cram study for a while to see the improvement I want. My favorite japanese Lets Player has just started Kingdom Hearts 2 which I'm super excited about. I also have many an audio drama cd I'd like to understand... mmm.

Okay final topic change: my opinion on learning ONLY from Extensive Listening to Comprehensible Input, based on my experiment results so far this year

1. I do think speaking NEEDS to be practiced as it's own skill

2. That said, doing a lot of listening practice seems to help the words be closer to Active Vocabulary, to be able to switch words into Active Vocabulary faster with practice. Compared with reading, where I rarely felt the words were easy to recall when I wanted to speak.

3. Reading skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Dreaming Spanish Roadmap acknowledges this. I already have some reading skills, so this is not an issue for me.

4. Writing skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Obviously, you say. Who the fuck wouldn't know this, you ask. Well a lot of people apparently.

5. CI Only study plans (like Dreaming Spanish) are heavily criticized for developing good passive skills (listening, reading) but almost no active skills (unless one practices them). CI Only learners sometimes claim with enough input (passive skills practice) they'll output better. While I do think to a degree this is true, in that more listening practice and learning more words makes speaking easier, it seems most people need 100-300 hours of specifically Speaking practice to speak at a B2 level. So even with tons of input, expect to need to practice speaking (and practice writing) if you want to be competent at those skills. I do think between reading and listening, listening definitely puts words easier to "recall" in the mind to then go practice speaking and writing. At least for me.

6. CI Only study is GREAT for building an ability to passively understand the language, I have now done a lot of reading AND a lot of listening, and I definitely have built up my passive skills for understanding a LOT. It's fine if this is your goal, and if you're happy once you can understand what you want. It's a very achievable goal. If you either A. Study the basics of grammar and 2000-6000 common words, then intensively read/listen to regular stuff (look up words) or extensively read graded readers/listen to learner podcasts, you will eventually build reading and listening skills. Or B. Just extensively read/listen to content made for learners (CI lessons, Graded Readers, Podcasts for Learners) and pick up the basic grammar and words through those, then extensively read/listen to regular stuff you understand.

7. You can intensively or extensively listen to/read things you understand JUST the main idea of, and over time you will learn more purely from the context of what you understood. This means that while you may feel frustrated, over time (hours of practice) you will see improvement. As long as you're using a material you understand the main idea of - or even just SOME main ideas. You can either look up words (intensively study) to understand the main idea, or just already understand the main idea (extensive) of the materials you pick.

8. Progress seems to be noticeable every 20-40 hours of listening practice. Sometimes every 10 hours if you're in the beginning. As you learn more, there's a 20-40 hour cycle of "recognizing more and feeling you understand more" and "recognizing how much you still don't know and feeling you understand less."

9. For reading the time to notice improvement may be less. I noticed an improvement in reading skills around every 50,000-100,000 words read. Similar cycle to the above one - first you notice more and feel you understand more, then you realize what you don't know and feel you understand less, and the cycle repeats.

Some useful terms below. I will not define comprehensible input and related terms in depth here, as I already did that on this post (I will summarize on this post though).

Comprehensible Input generally is anything you understand the main idea of - literally anything. It's any experience in the language you understand. (So textbook dialogues with translation and grammar notes to explain what the dialogue means, conversations where someone gestures to get the main idea across, cartoons for toddlers where the visuals make what's happening clear, bilingual texts, learner podcasts with translations or explanations, graded readers, CI Lessons, etc... and then once you understand more of the language, most things become comprehensible input as you understand more things).

Comprehensible Input Lessons are TRPS lessons, Learner Podcasts, Graded Readers, and anything designed to be completely understood to a learner for their level of knowledge, typically CI Lessons for beginners are audio-visual lessons where all of the meaning can be understood from the visuals alone - Dreaming Spanish is an example, or the teacher provides a short word list-summary of things the learner needs to understand to follow along - Lazy Chinese is an example.

Automatic Language Growth is a theory of language learning Marvin Brown came up with, and he made an ALG Thai school that followed the theory. ALG theory is that people learn language only by meaningful experiences in the language. And that any explicit study, any thinking about the language features, or speaking or reading before you have a good grasp of the language, causes issues. ALG Lessons are a subset of CI Lessons, stricter requirements for ALG Lessons as they MUST be entirely in the target language and must not contain text until the learner is higher level, must not ask the learner to speak until they're a high level, and must not contain translations. ALG Lessons are Comprehensible Input Lessons, but CI Lessons are a broader category of things. The general term comprehensible input is even broader still, as it is anything you can understand the main idea of in the language you are learning.

CI Method - this is how Dreaming Spanish learners tend to refer to Dreaming Spanish's method of learning. The method is ALG, with some relaxing of the ALG recommendations. The method can be boiled down to: you learn by extensive listening to CI Lessons (particularly ALG Lessons if you're being strict about ALG), and by extensive listening to Learner Podcasts (particularly ones that use zero translations if you're being strict about ALG), and then eventually extensively listening to media made for native speakers that you can understand the main idea of. So the entire "learn by only comprehensible input" learning method is to learn entirely by extensive listening to stuff made for learners, then stuff made for native speakers, that you can understand.

Learner materials/materials made for learners - any learning material designed with a learner in mind. So graded readers made for learners who know X amount of words, learner podcasts made for learners who are beginner/intermediate/advanced, CI Lessons made for beginners with many visuals, CI Lessons made for intermediate learners where they assume the learner knows X words, dialogues with translations, textbooks, podcasts that include explanations of new words and grammar, classes. Usually a learner material will contain whatever it expects you to need - so if it's made to be studied intensively then the material will include any translations and explanations it expects a learner at that level to need, and if it's made to be studied extensively then it will use mostly stuff it expects the learner at that level to already know and enough context to guess/figure out the unknown bits.

Extensive - this word is used to refer to extensive listening and extensive reading. All it means is that you listen or read without looking anything up, without relying on any explanations or needing any language learning tools to help. Extensive reading is what you do in your native language now, any time you read. Extensive listening is what you do in your native language now, any time you listen. Extensive reading or listening is usually done with things you understand the main idea of, because it can be frustrating if you do NOT understand at least that much. Typically learner material that is made to be read extensively uses 95-98% words they expect you to understand already, as if you know less words than that you tend to feel frustrated reading extensively.

Intensive - this word is used to refer to intensive listening and intensive reading. All it means is you look up words/explanations/use aids to understand something. You usually look up at least enough unknown words/grammar to understand the main idea, you may look up every single unknown word if you want to. You did this in your native language back in school, when your textbook would define a bunch of terms for you in a glossary and you had to read the definitions before you could read the chapter. You needed to read those definitions, to understand the chapter. Intensive reading is just doing the same thing, in new languages. Some intensive reading materials are already-made for intensive reading with ease: Parallel texts, Graded Readers with vocabulary lists you must read in advance, a learner podcast episode with a list of vocabulary translations in the summary (or that translates when speaking when they figure the word will be new to their audience), textbook dialogues that define all the words before you read the dialogue, textbook passages where they give you the word definitions in advance. Typically learner material designed to be used intensively is 90-94% words you know, and then it defines the key words you don't know. Typically learner material designed to be used intensively that uses less than 90% words you know feels exhausting, even if they define many key words, and that is why for example an Advanced Textbook excerpt feels exhausting if you're a Beginner - despite the Beginner and Advanced textbooks including some intensive reading. Any time you ever listened to a technical podcast, or read a technical text, and looked up a bunch of unknown words that seemed key to understanding the material, you were intensive reading.

Typically in our native language, we did a mix of intensive reading (teacher providing us vocabulary lists, textbook defining vocabulary) and extensive reading (the novels the library suggested were at our reading level, the reading material our teachers gave us that they did not expect us to need word-definitions to understand). Eventually, in our native language, we probably switched to reading and listening to most things extensively, and just looking up a key word once in a while if we hear a word we don't understand and feel particularly frustrated or confused because we can't understand it. The same eventually happens in the language you are learning - you'll look up a word occassionally, but you won't strictly need to. This could be called extensive listening/reading while looking up a few words, or intensive listening/reading while looking up a few words, as it's a bit of both. Different language learning materials will define the activity of "reading/listening while looking up only a few words" differently. I feel at the point you're understanding most stuff, whether you look up a word once in a while or not doesn't particularly change the primary activity which is just reading/listening for long stretches.

In traditional language learning, using classrooms and textbooks, grammar guides and flashcards: comprehensible input are the dialogues/paragraphs in your textbook that you get a vocabulary translation list for and grammar explanations for so you can comprehend it. It can also be tutoring sessions, where you talk with the tutor and they use translations and gestures and visuals to make sure you can understand them. Once you reach a decent level of understanding the language, comprehensible input becomes any regular material for native speakers you can understand the main idea of (or more). So if someone who took classes for years is telling you to immerse in materials for native speakers, they probably assume you have some prior knowledge about the language and can understand the materials for native speakers to a degree. If a teacher is recommending you immerse in the language, they probably mean to immerse with content that uses words/situations you've studied in class at some point. These people do NOT mean for a brand new beginner, who knows nothing, to just go sit and watch movies for adults in the target language and magically learn over time.

In Refold/Mass Immersion Approach community, online communities where the study method involves a lot of flashcards/anki/SRS/apps with vocabulary/making word or sentence lists with translations: when they say comprehensible input, they mean material you can understand the main idea of, with the help of looking up word translations and grammar! They usually expect you will at least look up some key words once in a while, or immerse with stuff that uses words you've recently studied (in anki). When they say "immerse a lot and often" sometimes they do mean to immerse with input you do NOT understand, but when they're saying to get mostly comprehensible input, they mean either stuff made for learners to be understandable OR you using tools like word translation to be able to understand the material. There are people who did try to immerse with input they did not understand (maybe because they didn't understand the advice to immerse in materials for native speakers), without looking up words or using any tools to help them understand, and thousands of hours later they still were beginners. The people who successfully have used anki and immersion to learn a language, usually mean using immersion material that you can comprehend the main idea of (with tools/aids if necessary like word translations or word definitions in the target language). Notice that for these learners, comprehensible input MAY NOT BE comprehensible if you're relying on ONLY what you already know, and may require TOOLS to be comprehensible. They're expecting you to USE TOOLS to make the input comprehensible! (Flashcards, definition lookups in target language, word translation lookups, grammar explanation lookups).

Comprehensible Input Method/Automatic Language Growth/Nature Method Learners: By comprehensible input, they mean only materials you can understand the main idea of (without needing tools/aids). This will initially be materials MADE FOR LEARNERS, like the Nature Method textbooks with illustrations to explain the meaning, and Comprehensible Input lessons on youtube where the teacher shows you pictures and uses gestures to communicate the main idea. Then the materials may be graded readers made with a vocabulary a learner is expected to know, and possibly a vocabulary list in the back. And podcasts for learners, that use a limited number of words they expect the learner to know and define new words. Eventually, this can mean cartoons for toddlers where the visuals about what is being said, in addition to the words you already know, makes the main idea understandable. Then eventually cartoons for older kids, and shows, novels for kids, and novels for adults, etc as you learn more words and understand more (without needing tools/aid). So the key here, is this kind of learner usually means MATERIALS you can understand without any tools! This is a huge difference from the Refold learners, who often mean comprehensible input as ANY input if you're using enough tools TO comprehend it.

ALL of these learners usually mean, by comprehensible input, materials you can understand the main idea of - with or without tools. If you cannot understand the main idea - use tools! If you can understand the main idea, cool, you comprehend it enough to learn from it! None of these learners are trying to suggest beginners trying to learn a target language just listen to adult radio in the TL for 2000 hours and somehow 'learn.' All of these learners think a beginner NEEDS either a lot of visuals to allow for understanding (comprehensible input lessons, nature method), so the learning aid is built INTO the materials initially. Or these learners think beginners NEED to use tools to make materials understandable (translations, dictionary entries, anki to memorize words, textbooks), to be able to learn from materials. In either case, the advice to use comprehensible input assumes you are comprehending the main idea being conveyed in the material, and if needed you're using additional tools/aids/resources to figure out the main idea being conveyed.

There's a guy on youtube who keeps making these videos about using input to learn japanese, and I overall agree with him. But he only mentions a few times he uses anki to study (so uses tools to understand more), and he learned a decent number of words before using audio-only as input to study with (so he could comprehend the main idea to a degree), and the impression I get from comments is that some people sincerely think he's saying to listen to regular japanese materials for adults for thousands of hours and that itself will be enough to learn. I don't think he necessarily makes it clear how much initially VISUAL input is better if someone is going to just watch materials in japanese, how much his explicit study with anki may be increasing what he can comprehend, and how much using materials-made-for-learners works better in the beginning (he does recommend learner podcasts like Nihongo Con Teppei and Learn Japanese with Shun). I think the guy's heart is in the right place, and he's got good advice. I just get frustrated with how MANY people are misunderstanding his advice. Especially beginners, who may think when he says immerse in content you only understand 10% of... he is assuming the beginner is looking up key words, and making new anki cards of words they're hearing to study more.

Information about the old Nature Method institute's textbooks. Note: Lingua Latina is still being published and can be bought from the official publisher. The other nature method textbooks are either out of print (and can be found online if you look), or are being printed by a few companies making them easier to access again (I found a company printing the All Spanish Method since I wanted a print copy badly). This rather long page also mentions some newer books which have come out since for Russian in a nature method like style, which is the first I've heard about: "In addition, we have Marianna Avery’s Сорока (Soroka) children’s books, as well as Stanislav Chernyshov’s Поехали! (Poekhali!) books. There is a new course entitled Дорога в Россию (The Way to Russia) by V.E. Antonova, M.M. Nakhabina, and M.V. Safronova, too. There is also Ignaty Dyakov’s series of books, Рассказ Сенсация (The Story of Sensation), Рассказ Провокация (The Story of Provocation), and Рассказ Канонизация (The Story of Canonisation), to which learners sing praises. Still, though, darn it, I want to find Uncle Oleg’s course!"

I deeply appreciate this experiment one person did with their own language learning, Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning, and it's free to read if anyone else is curious.

The writer did the following: attempted to learn French by watching TV shows in French with no subtitles, and no word lookups or translations, for 1200 hours. They started with shows for adults, and realized children's cartoons were much easier to learn new words from initially as the visual context and slow speech helped them figure out word/phrase/grammar meanings, and then watched children's cartoons for a while until gradually increasing difficulty of shows again. While in the first several hundred hours, they watched some cartoons by repeatedly watching certain sentences and scenes over and over, attempting to understand as much as they could, such as with the cartoon Calliou. After 1200 hours, they started reading French, talking to people in French, and reading some grammar explanations at that point. They passed a B2 test at the conclusion of 1500 hours, with the first 1200 being watching French TV with no tools/explanations and then the last 300 hours including speaking and finally looking up some explanations and seeing french writing.

This account of their experience is incredibly interesting to me. It shows a few things which (at least for me) can be learned from.

1. That a goal of aiming for over a thousand hours spent trying to understand materials in your target language is useful.

2. The time they spent engaging with French is (very roughly) similar to FSI estimates if you include the hours of outside-class study recommended, 750 class hours plus time spent studying outside of class (2 hours outside of class per class hour is the FSI recommendation - which would be 2250 for French). The time it took him to pass B2 is in the 1000+ hour range, which is similar to classroom time plus outside study time expected. Automatic Language Growth type courses tend to suggest 1000-2000 hours to speak on an adult level and understand others, with 1500 being the suggested study length Dreaming Spanish suggests and ALG Thai programs recommending 2000 hours. Some learners who've done DS and ALG Thai programs suggest they feel they can understand people and discuss things on a basic level at those hours, but feel they need more hours to really be 'fluent'. I think that aligns well with the 1500 hour French study linked above, where he felt 1500 hours felt intermediate and capable of talking with others/working/understanding others but by no means fluent. So my personal thoughts on this is... the French 2250 hour estimate (FSI class-hours estimates added to 2 outside-class hours per hour as FSI suggests) is probably roughly in line with people's experiences.

And the earlier goal of 1500 (1000-2000 depending on the individual, and the target language) being a good initial goal for basic ability to do all things in the language (but not necessarily well and not mastered). Perhaps this number could be several hundred hours, and less than a thousand, if your target language is similar to one you already know or you have experience learning languages already. But the thought I am concluding from all of this is: expect 1000 hours or more trying to understand stuff in your target language if you wish to be able to understand the main idea (or more) of most things, and communicate your main idea with others.

(And for the sake of curiosity, FSI estimates 2200 class hours for Japanese and Chinese, so 6600 hours total, for an English speaker. So probably...at minimum 1000 hours to start speaking, like ALG Thai learners notice, at minimum 2000 hours to start understanding the main idea of most things, and based on FSI estimates... perhaps 3000-3300 hours minimum to start feeling similar to that level achieved after 1500 hours studying French or Spanish).

3. He studied French with zero aids like grammar guides or translations or even the French alphabet and a pronunciation explanation. He mentions in his paper, that being able to look up translations, or even see French subtitles on the TV shows, may have potentially sped up his progress. (Or perhaps not, as he didn't try those tools until 1200 hours in). Many of us learners HAVE used such tools already. The lesson I take from his experience is...even if you use NO tools or aids to learn, if you dedicate 1000+ hours to attempting to understand visual-audio situations (videos or classes or your life experiences in a country) you will make progress and increase your understanding of the language. If you initially focus on more-visually understandable things, like children's cartoons or ALG teachers who visually attempt to explain or a person helping you through a situation (like a native speaker talking to you as they help you grocery shop), then your initial progress as a beginner will be FASTER. And it may well be necessary to understand a certain amount, as a beginner, for the target-language input to be useful. You don't need to understand 100% or even 90%, but you do need to understand enough to hear at least 1 word or phrase or grammar piece every couple minutes that you can GUESS at the possible meaning of. At least, to learn in a timely manner.

So as a beginner, visual-audio input is much more useful than audio only - especially if you don't have cognates to use to make guesses. And visual-audio input where the speaking is ABOUT something in the same scene/experience/event so it's easier to guess what bits of the language mean. And if you choose to use tools like a translation app/site, if it's helping you figure out meaning of bits of language then it may be particularly useful as a beginner. (There's certainly language learning camps that think using translations lessens your actual learning of the language, but based on his paper... I at least think, what I take from it, is that those beginning few hundred hours it's most important you find a way to UNDERSTAND the main idea of the target language material. My take is that, even if that involves translation tools for 300 hours initially, it's worth it. You can abandon translation tools once you understand enough stuff in the language - like a few hundred key words or pronunciations etc - to start understanding really basic main ideas from kids cartoons. But if you can't even guess "cartoon character is pointing to bike, seems to want bike, even though I have no idea what words they're saying, maybe one of those words was bike..." then you aren't going to comprehend enough to guess word meanings. It seems like after the first few hundred hours, the need for translations and/or kid cartoons is less. Once you have some small base of words/phrases you've guessed the meaning of, then it's possible to start guessing the meaning of conversations even when there's no visual context to indicate what's going on - such as adult shows where they discuss off-screen abstract topics, and audio only materials).

4. There is no huge need to pick the 'perfect' study method or materials. After the initial beginner stage of learning some key words/phrases from visual context (a few hundred hours), you WILL continue learning and make progress as long as you keep engaging with the language and trying to understand the main idea. So study/watch/listen to whatever you like that, that you can get yourself to engage with for 1000 hours or more. Some people will want to keep looking up word-translations, do that. Some people will love cdramas or anime or shows and just want to watch tons of shows. Some people will feel more comfortable watching/doing easier things like a tutor that matches your comfort level (like crosstalk), immersion with someone helping you navigate, watching cartoons, watching stuff for learners (like Comprehensible Input youtube channels). Some people want to jump into the deep end and go for audiobooks or podcasts. If you are able to even just GUESS a word/phrase/grammar point meaning every 1-3 minutes (or more often) then you'll likely keep improving your understanding. No need to be perfect, just figure out a way to keep yourself engaged. Because it'll take a thousand hours or more.

5. I hate to say this because I love reading... but to develop listening comprehension... you need to listen. Having visual-audio materials as a beginner is critical. Even if that means graded readers you read paired with an audiobook. And you'll need to keep listening for at least 1000 hours to build good listening comprehension - it takes time to get used to hearing the pronunciation, to mentally separating it into phrases/words, to adjusting to various speeds, to emotional meanings and implications, to adjust to understanding various accents. His paper indicated he struggled with understanding faster speech until he'd studied enough hundreds of hours, and then struggled with slang and accents much longer. Listening comprehension is critical to: conversing with others, speaking and being understood, listening to shows and audio. So it must be worked on. That is not to say you can't study by reading - I sure did! And still do! But that the hours spent reading WITHOUT audio will not contribute to some of those critical listening and speaking skills.