#comprehensible input method

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).

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.

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.

https://beta.openai.com/playground/p/default-chat you can type in your target language, and it will generate text based on it. I just chatted with the ai for a while! It's good writing/reading practice and prompts!

https://jzohrab.github.io/bidiread/ bidiread can make parallel texts for you. Just input your target language text, and input a translation (I usually just use deepl.com to make a machine translation of the text so the sentence numbers are equal, different sentence number will mess up bidireader formatting). I did this with Silent Reading by priest and it worked well.

https://bearlang.app/text/ just paste in target language text, and it will generate sentence by sentence translations. You can then read in the site or export as html. I am very intrigued by this site because: it seems to have credits for translations but hasn't prompted me to pay yet (so I plan to just use it until I get a request to pay if ever), the translation for chinese is actually incredibly good (better than Google translate or deepl so I'm wondering what machine translator is being used), I'm not sure if it's still someone's project in development and maybe that's why it's so useful but incomplete at the moment (as in its sentence translations are great but it has no actual click word definitions like it says it does), I'm wondering if the project was abandoned (as I found it linked on Reddit but now on a Reddit search see no mention of it or links to it anywhere). In short, it's a phenomenal sentence by sentence parallel text generator. I'm just extremely curious as to what it's current situation is.

https://ichi.moe/ a great japanese translator I've found

https://github.com/IvanovCosmin/awesome-natural-approach a collection of a bunch of comprehensible input study resources, including many great ones I've mentioned before

If interested in learning primarily using comprehensible input, I suggest checking the Dreaming Spanish roadmap and site for an explanation and guidance. Dreaming Spanish so much friendlier and open to varied ways of studying than the more niche ALG community, and r/DreamingSpanish on reddit is very open to both people doing purely comprehensible input (purists), and people who've explicitly studied before and are still doing so (so also using textbooks, classes, translations, explanations, flashcards, etc).

If interested in trying to learn primarily with comprehensible input (materials you understand the main idea of), then I suggest you try it out for 50-100 hours. You can use comprehensible input as extensive listening material, and use it to practice listening, as that's something many people would be doing in a study plan eventually anyway. So just adding 30 minutes to 1 hour a day, and seeing if it significantly improves your listening. You can focus entirely on comprehensible input, or just fit it into your usual study routine, depending on what you want to try. In particular, I recommend trying out some time with Comprehensible Input Lessons (like Comprehensible Input French, Dreaming Spanish, Lazy Chinese youtube channels), as watching something entirely in your target language without needing translated subtitles to understand really Builds Confidence and Listening Stamina.

I think in 50-100 hours you will have a VERY clear idea of if it's helping you with your goals: if you're an Absolute Beginner it may take 50-100 hours to start understanding short phrases like 'eat cake' and 'run away' so if you don't give it that much time then you won't know if it works for you, and if you're NOT a beginner then you'll likely see a SIGNIFICANT improvement in your listening comprehension after 50-100 hours. I see a significant improvement every 50-100 hours of listening. And the experience will, hopefully, show you if your listening skills could still improve more than you though, and show you the importance of adding some extensive listening to your study routine.

A note about extensive reading, which I also think helps tremendously - with reading skills and overall comprehension of the language. Extensive reading is like extensive listening, in that it takes at least a few dozen hours to notice significant improvement. But then you see that jump in improvement, and it makes new things understandable to you, and it's very motivating and exciting. So if you want to read, and you've perhaps been doing a lot of intensive reading (looking unknown words up) to push into reading what you want, then I suggest also carving out a portion of time for extensively reading things you can understand the main idea of without looking words up (Heavenly Path Notion Site recommendations is a good place to find things below your intensive reading level, that might be a good extensive reading material for you). You can start with extensively reading Graded Readers, if you're now able to intensively read novels. That's what I did. It took a few months to build up to extensively reading a regular story. Extensive reading builds reading stamina, improves how quickly you recognize words/grammar so you review what you know, and lets you learn some new stuff through context.

The Dreaming Spanish roadmap, based on my chinese listening experiment so far, is fairly in line with how many hours it's taking me to hit progress milestones, what I'm learning at each 'level,' and what materials I can use that will be comprehensible at my level. Note: for an English speaker like me, learning Chinese, the roadmap suggests doubling the hours - this has matched my experience well so far. (I would not have checked out learner podcasts without the roadmap's suggestions, and learner podcasts really helped with going from upper beginner listening skill to lower intermediate listening skill).

If you just need to get more extensive listening practice, to build listening stamina and quicker-recognition of words you know, then looking for listening material you comprehend (understand the main idea of) will be ideal materials to work on that. So far, anything I could read, has been excellent extensive listening material for improving listening skills. So if you understand a learner podcast with subtitles or a transcript? Try listening and relistening to it without text. If you understand a cartoon, movie, show, youtuber, with captions? Try listening and relistening without captions. If you can read a novel? Try listening and relistening to the audiobook. If you can't read much yet: Comprehensible Input Lessons (like Lazy Chinese, Blabla Chinese, and Xiaogua on youtube) will say stuff and use pictures and gestures to help you understand, so you can start practicing listening skills with those. See Comprehensible Input Wiki for Comprehensible Input Lessons for the language you're working on.

I think the advice itself is fine - wait to speak, you might have a better pronunciation and might ingrain less grammar mistakes in your speaking.

But once people do start speaking, so few people have gotten to the point they have, and so little guidance has been given to them from the method's resources/guides, that they kind of have to figure out for themselves how the fuck to improve their speaking skills.

Being in an ALG class like AUA Thai helps, because since it's an actual class with teachers, when it is time to learn to speak, you have people to practice speaking with and guidance on how to improve. If you use a tutor and have been doing crosstalk with them, then once you start speaking IN the target language the same tutor can now continue conversing with you and give you guidance for speaking.

But if you're using comprehensible input alone? Studying on your own with videos? Well then it seems like signing up for a tutor or a group conversation class is the thing most people do - things that require other people, and a teacher, to start practicing speaking.

If you're doing refold on your own, with SRS flashcards and immersion? When it's time to speak... you can practice with writing journals and correcting yourself, and shadowing audio. But eventually you also may seek out a tutor to practice speaking with, who will give you guidance.

And that's all fine - speaking involves other people, it makes sense it would need other people to improve.

What's frustrating is that I wish there were some guidance shared by refold and CI methods on their roadmaps/guides on what to do to improve speech when it's time. Especially because many people WILL try to improve by speaking with people for free like friends, language exchange partners, people who do NOT want to spend much time correcting and teaching them and probably won't give much guidance on how to improve unless asked. Something like:

Shadow audio, relisten to yourself and see where you made mistakes so you can work on identifying and correcting.

Particularly do shadowing of audio like podcasts, conversations, situations you'd like to be able to talk through easily

Read aloud, so you get used to saying sentences with correct grammar

Write journals, find writing correcting websites that will make corrections on any grammar mistakes you're making. Read the corrected journals aloud, to practice correct form

Find language exchange partners on X sites and apps, ask that you talk half the time in the language you're practicing and half the time in the language they want to practice in, have a list of topics so you two don't flounder saying hi how are you/good and not much else. Ask language exchange partners to please correct you in X ways. Like repeating a word or phrase you said wrong, in the correct pronunciation, when they respond to you. Or mentioning to you 'hey X is usually said like Y' if you word something with weird grammar. It would just be nice to have SOME advice of what to ask language exchange partners to give a you guidance on, instead of having no idea WHAT to ask them to correct or help with.

If you are not familiar with Dreaming Spanish, the method is basically Comprehensible Input Method or ALG, and a decent portion of the people who learn using Dreaming Spanish just follow that method (purist approach) or use other study methods in addition to the Dreaming Spanish Method (non-purist approach). I find the subreddit for r/dreamingspanish quite friendly because it is welcoming to people who've taken traditional classes before/currently, who've studied with flashcards/anki, and anyone else who does things outside of Comprehensible Input for study. The subreddit r/dreaminglanguages is also friendly of people studying with mainly Comprehensible Input that have also done other methods of study before/may be doing other methods at the same time.

Comprehensible Input Method is basically watching videos (or taking in person classes or livestream classes) of a teacher speaking your target language only, and using visuals like images and gestures to give you enough context to understand what the main idea they're conveying is. So you learn the target language entirely IN the target language. You go through lessons for 'beginners,' 'intermediate' and 'advanced' learners (the lessons tend to be labelled or named for the level of learner they make the lesson 'comprehensible' for). Eventually you engage with other content in the target language - other stuff made for learners that's entirely in the target language (like learning podcasts for 'beginner' 'intermediate' 'advanced' and graded readers).

Then eventually you engage with content in the target language made for native speakers - whatever you can comprehend the main idea of (vlogs, shows, comics, stuff with visuals tends to be easiest). Anything you already know the context for, such as shows and books you've read before in a language you know, may be easier to comprehend sooner since you already know the main idea of the material. Over time, the amount of content made for native speakers that you understand increases, and you expand the content you engage with (like novels, shows that talk about abstract subjects, podcasts, audiobooks). Once you are using content in the target language made for native speakers that you comprehend the main idea of, you are basically 'immersing' and can look up immersion study tips. To do a pure comprehensible input method like Dreaming Spanish advises, you would look up no word translations, you would look up words in a target language dictionary if you wanted to look something up.

Many people do Comprehensible Input alongside other study methods, such as looking up word translations and making flashcards because they don't actually care if some of their study activities involve non-target language material. (I don't use purely comprehensible input method to study, I do other stuff, I look up translations often, and I sure read a bunch of grammar guides as a beginner). Like I mentioned, the subreddits r/dreamingspanish and r/dreaminglanguages are fairly friendly to people doing a 'non purist' approach, such as people who continue to use translation tools and flashcards, or people who took traditional classes in the past/currently (which tend to explain grammar and vocabulary meanings not in the target language but in the language the learner is assumed to already know).

For the purpose of this post, I am going to be reflecting on how to study in the Comprehensible Input Method way, like Dreaming Spanish suggests to study (more or less), and how to apply that to various languages.

For languages using the latin alphabet, if you already know the latin alphabet? Or for any language where you already know the symbols of the writing system. Follow the study suggestions as Dreaming Spanish lays it out, it should work fine. So whether you study Spanish, or French, or Portuguese, find beginner-intermediate-advanced comprehensible input lessons and complete them, use children's shows with a lot of visual context as additional comprehensible input, use podcasts made for learners (who are at your level of understanding - so for beginners etc) entirely in the target language (or as close to only in TL as you can find) as additional comprehensible input. Eventually use TV shows with a lot of visual context (like action shows or slice of life) or TV shows you've seen before (and already know the context) for additional comprehensible input. Optional: I would suggest you also find a Comprehensible Input Lesson video that goes over the alphabet/writing system and the name and pronunciation of each letter, ideally find a lesson video IN the target language. If you cannot find a lesson video on the writing system in the target language, finding a video or website that shows a chart of the letters and pronounces them will work. If you have to read some non-target language text, I guess that'll technically not be pure comprehensible input. The main point is to see the target language writing system and hear the pronunciation. This part is not recommended/necessary in Dreaming Spanish, but since children learn the alphabet when they start school or beforehand, it might be useful to also learn it to make your efforts learning to read easier.

Dreaming Spanish suggests you can start learning to read around 600-1000 hours of comprehensible input - and I suggest you start learning to read WHENEVER you want (if you don't care about strictly following the suggested roadmap Dreaming Spanish has). When you're ready to learn to read, I suggest starting by turning captions on the videos and shows you're watching. I would suggest not counting time with captions on as 'comprehensible input hours' in terms of listening skills since you will develop reading skills more while watching the captions, but ultimately your decision what to consider this activity. Reading the captions will allow you to learn to read words you have already learned in listening. Additional activities: if you listen to any learner podcasts or regular podcasts, if you can find the transcript then read along to the transcript, this will also allow you to learn to read the words you can understand in listening. Find Graded Readers, particularly any graded reading material with audio files included (or use Text To Speech tools) and read along to audio. Find audiobooks, and read along to the text version of the audio. Finally, once you feel you've read-listened to enough material to feel you can usually recognize the spelled version of words you know, practice reading without listening to audio.

If the language is a writing system that is phonetic, but not one you already know - so for example if you're an English speaker learning Russian or Korean: Mostly, do what I suggest above. The additional parts will be highly recommended: if you can find any Comprehensible Input Lessons for learners that go over the writing system sounds and pronunciation, watch them and rewatch them. For example here's Korean Hangul lessons in Korean. You can look up videos or webpages that just list the writing system and play the audio such as this video for Russian. Alternatively if you cannot find any video lessons in the target language that explain the writing system, go break the rules and watch a quick video that explains the writing system sounds in a language you understand - yes it's not pure Comprehensible input method, but children are taught X symbols have Y pronunciation when they start school, and you'll want that same basic knowledge to start reading. After learning the basic writing system pronunciation, you'll continue to learn to read the same as the other suggestions above: graded readers with audio, captions on videos, audiobooks with text, podcasts with transcript, and eventually practice reading with no audio.

If the writing system is not entirely phonetic (such as kanji in Japanese, or hanzi in Chinese): Do the same as above suggestions, with a few additional steps. If the language has a phonetic writing system it ALSO uses, learn that first - so Hiragana and Katakana if learning Japanese, pinyin or zhuyin if learning Chinese. Learning those phonetic systems, do the same as suggested above, find any lessons IN the target language that go over the writing system sounds, and if you can't find something entirely in the target language then just use any video/chart/resource that includes the writing system and pronunciations. For the parts of the writing system that are not phonetic, you have a few options. First, you can research how native speakers learn the non phonetic portions - for kanji I've seen the methods of learn by rote memorization and phonetic equivalent tests (write kana for the kanji you see), for hanzi one friend I have studied by writing them a lot and another friend learned a lot of information about each hanzi (the components that make it up, the radicals, a few example words that use the hanzi - since hanzi meanings vary a bit depending on word they're in). If you are not going for a pure comprehensible input approach, it may be time to research the 'fastest' or 'best' way people suggest studying the writing system, and then do trial and error until you find the method that works best for you. You might see some people suggest rote memorization, writing a lot, mnemonic stories, SRS flashcards or apps, sight reading. In foreign language classes, which were not pure comprehensible input, I've had classes mnemonic stories used to teach kanji, and pinyin/hanzi equivalent writing hanzi over and over.

If the language has no phonetic writing system, things will get tricky - if you'd like to do a pure comprehensible input approach, it may be time to research how native speakers learn the writing system. Then do that. If you don't care about doing a pure comprehensible input approach, you will want to research how other people learned the writing system. Then try different methods people have used successfully, until you find one that works for you.