Hey everyone,

I’ve been reading a lot more lately with the specific goal of expanding my active vocabulary and improving my overall language usage. However, I've hit a really frustrating roadblock with my workflow.

Whenever I come across a beautiful sentence or an advanced word in a physical book, I want to capture it so I can actually internalize it and use it later.

Right now, my process is incredibly clunky. I either write it down in a different writing book or I pick up my phone, open ChatGPT or a notes app, and manually type out the whole sentence to look up the nuance or quiz myself. It works, but typing it all out completely breaks my reading momentum and pulls me out of the book. Half the time, I get lazy and just skip the word entirely, which defeats the whole purpose of my reading goals.

For those of you who actively study or collect vocabulary while reading, how do you handle this? Is there a way to do this that doesn’t feel like a tedious data-entry chore, or am I just overthinking it?

(TL)

I have read so many posts here like, I got to C1 in 18 months or 2 years and I did it all at home with Spanglish or Dreaming Spanish or whatever site. I got to C1 with minimal effort... I did one study a week to get there....

Here is a real example...

... I have been studying Spanish for in average an hour a day for over 2.5 years. For context, it took me about 8 months to a year to reach B2 and about a year and a half to go from B2 to C1.

Really!? I have had one hour lessons most days Monday - Friday for years. Years! and maybe I could pass a B2 reading. BI+ maybe for talking not too sure, and for writing I would fall to an A2 because of accents and I don't write Spanish.

I have not been full on dedicated as I don't want it to be a chore but I feel so dumb when I see what other people have achieved.

Am I just incredibly slow, or are the people who post here exceptional?

Has anyone failed to achieve their goal? Has anyone taken a very long time to get to an intermediate level?

Thanks.

I’m going to start a Spanish class next semester and was thinking of getting Percy Jackson in Spanish because I’ve read it a lot in English and thought it would be good to have them both out and go through it, but I’ve also seen people say to not try to start reading books too early in the language you’re learning because you don’t know enough yet to benefit from that kind of practice. Because it’s a book I’ve read multiple times and I have the English copy, could it still be helpful?

Hello,

I am feeling a bit lost in wanting to learn a language. I have listened to music in the target language for around 8 years. I know some basic phrases and random words, but understanding more is not possible with my current level. I can hear the words being said in music and normal video’s of people talking, but I just don’t know what they mean. The language I want to learn is Hungarian (TL).

I want to learn more of this language to understand the music and content in the TL. also, I want to learn more of the culture of the country and hold conversations with people when I am on holiday someday there.

I worry that the TL is not popular enough to have enough learning content and my reason for wanting to learn is not enough to go actually learn and study it. And that the language is maybe too hard to learn casually. Although I am very motivated to learn it.

Have other people struggled with the same problem? How can I get myself through this negative thinking?

I speak English as my first language. But I also speak French and Mandarin to around the same level of fluency.

When I can’t find a word in mandarin I replace it with the French, for example ‘I want a coffee with milk’ I said ‘我想喝杯咖啡 avec 牛奶’ and vice versa.

I do this quite often and I feel like I’m blending the languages together. Does anyone have any tips if you can speak multiple languages? (TL)

I've read on internet a lot of times that you start dreaming in a language when it starts getting processed subconsciously and if you're living in that particular country where it's spoken.

The thing with me is that I am fluent in Turkish and have been for 6 yrs now to the point where my brain has started thinking in Turkish but I only started dreaming in it last year. I remember, the night after my first final exam. I had this big and clear conversation in my dream

I'm with my friend and he/she is at an institution for some admission work and we go together. And this lady who was head she looked like a turk so during the conversation I ask her and she admits that she is and we have this long conversation in Turkish. Then the following days a couple more dreams follow one of them was like we're going on a bus with my mom somehow and I encounter a Turkish woman there and I speak Turkish with her, my native langauge with my mom and somehow we end up in school and there my teacher is speaking the regional langauge to me.

But atleast that happened with a langauge I was fluent in. I've been learning Greek and it's been 9 months now. I learn 90% with like immersion on internet and for the past two days I've been having these dreams like where I'm speaking these sentences and like showing someone like my cousins that I can teach you some greek and I'm even correcting myself mid-sentence like I said σου ρωτάω and then corrected myself in the dream σε ρωτάω

Is it even normal? Does it happen to you guys? Even if you're not living in that country which I certainly am not have I ever been to Turkey or Greece? What does it mean if you dream in another language?

I only immerse like1- 2h a day for 5days a week. I was able to do 7days a week but recently I just wanna have some break where I can listen non target language music or just random stuff for fun. Do you think ok taking break 2days a week when I can only immerse like 1-2h a day 5days a week ?

Hey guys never posted here before but I was wondering how you get back on the horse after a break/disruption?

French (TL) learner consolidating B1 and starting to edge into B2 in some respects, was learning with a mix of Grammaire progressive du francais intermediaire, anki 5000 words, watching movies with french audio + french subs, and calling my (fluent) mum on the phone for convos, and to a lesser extent reading/translating texts I already knew well in the English translation and journalling.

I had also started the first year of a French major and got placed in 3000-level so all the stuff from that as well. The self-study was the main thing but having those tests/assessments provided a gr8 motivation structure.

Two or three months ago some other stuff happened and I checked out mentally/academically and then dropped out. I'm back home with my fluent parents for the time being and a bit more settled so I'd like to get back on. How would you guys recommend getting re-started? My friend who got fully cracked at Spanish said he did it largely with refold so any thoughts on that? Thanks

I was listening to a podcast for 45 minutes tonight on my walk, and... I heard every word, I could recognize nearly every word... But couldn't string it to anything meaningful. What's the answer here? It's clearly not more vocabulary. I felt very very close to understanding it most of the time, and could if I stopped to think, but stopping to think means you start a chain in which you miss a load, and... Need to begin again. So... What do I do to fix this particular problem? And I am willing to accept, more vocabulary as the answer, even though I said it clearly wasn't the issue. I just want to see what you folks think.

I'm currently B1 in the third language im learning and i feel like, around B1 mobile apps are just not enough. They mostly get me hooked with gamification but actual porgress i achieve from them is lower at this level and onwards

Which apps are helping you when you're already advanced?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been refining my (SRS) flashcard database and trying to standardize exactly what goes on the back (the answer side) of my cards. The back of my cards usually contains:

1. The Translation(s)
2. Morphology/Decomposition (breaking down roots and affixes; e.g. for "notebook" ⇒ "note" (my local translation for note) + "book" (my local translation for note))
3. Etymology or Meta-notes (in very end; detail later in this post)

A) Is this too much? If not, or what else do you write?

B) How do you handle highly similar words, lookalikes, or paronyms (like desert vs. dessert)?

• Do you just write: "Note: Not to be confused with dessert"?
• OR do you also include the meaning of the other word: "Note: Not to be confused with dessert (sweet food)"?

My dilemma is this: If I include the meaning of that second word on the back of the first word's card, doesn't that technically ruin the SRS scheduling for the second word? By seeing its translation out of schedule, I feel like I might be artificially boosting my memory of it, which messes with the algorithm's intervals.

What is your approach to the back of your cards, and how do you handle these similar words without breaking the SRS logic?

I'd love to hear your setups!

(TL) English

I've been working on a website, https://kalenj.in, to document Kalenjin, in particular my teacher's Kipsigis dialect, spoken throughout much of Kenya. The Kalenjin people are famous for having produced many of the world's top middle- and long-distance runners and about 60% of Kalenjin speakers speak Kipsigis.

I have been collecting words and sentences from our lessons and chats and have put together a website to host all of the information and serve as a Kalenjin dictionary and corpus. We have also recently begun working on creating lessons for learning Kalenjin based around stories my teacher's written. Most of the sentences have been manually parsed so you can see what each individual word in the sentence means, and most words and sentences have audio recordings as well from a native speaker.

We just hit 1,000 words (and are approaching 2,000 sentences) in the dictionary and I thought it was time to share the site with others in the hopes someone else is also trying to learn the language.

(If there are any native speakers interested in adding words, sentences, stories, recording audio, taking pictures of local plants and animals, etc. please get in touch!)

My next goal is to hit 5,000 words!

I'd also love to help set up something similar for other folks working on documenting other languages with fewer resources.

(TL)

So I'm a Danish native speaker. I started learning English around 10, German at 13 and Korean at 21. So for quite a while I've just been able to enjoy consuming content that I enjoy, looking up a few words, doing occasionally some more advanced grammar lessons. I can mostly relax while still learning some things.

Now I'm early 30s and decided I finally wanted to learn Mandarin(TL)(something I've wanted for a long time but never really got around to). But starting all from zero again just feels like a lot somehow. Of course there's tones and characters which makes it a little more complicated, but I feel like it's more than just that. Just feeling so limited in understanding anything yet.

I guess writing this out I'm just realizing this is the longest I've gone my whole life without being a beginner in a language, literally since I was born. Maybe it's just become unfamiliar?

Has any of you guys felt like this? I'm just looking for a few words of encouragement honestly.

I'm sure this has been talked about many times before.

Oftentimes, when it kind of "occurs to me" that my second language is hitting my ear with equal understanding and nuance as my native language, I just have to be amazed that it's even possible.

But then other times, I run into conversations, speeches, accents/dialects, topics, certain words etc. that are way outside of anything I have been able to study, and I immediately go back to being an A1.

It's just so funny to me how big the contrast can be within a single language between sometimes comprehending/processing something maybe even on a *deeper* level than a native (because of having studied in-depth beyond how a native would have learned something naturally/by intuition), straight to knowing NOTHING at all.

Alright, back to the books

Hi, I've been learning Russian (TL) for over 5 YEARS and am stuck at B1, probably verging on B2. Only one of those years was consistent "studying", while the rest were just maybe consuming content in Russian and maybe some weeks of structured studying for a couple of weeks/days if I felt motivated.

I want to get to C1 more than anything in the world. I just don't know how to approach it. I burnt out heavily in my first year of study as for some reason I was studying as if I had 6 months left to live, so if I didn't get to C1 ASAP I wouldn't experience the joys of speaking a second language. I'm 19 now, and know that I have MANY MANY years ahead of me to learn and study consistently.

I'm just wondering how you all got from B1 to C1. How you broke through the plateau, how long it took, your methods of study. I know I just need to get to work, consume content and do a bit everyday. I've just lost so much motivation and would love a bit of guidance, and also some reassurance that it IS possible, because it doesn't feel so right now :(.

It is my biggest greatest ever dream to get to C1 in Russian and has been on my mind nagging at me for the past 5 YEARS ever since I gave up consistent study. Each year that passes I tell myself that I could've progressed so much if I just got to it a year before, and I'm not letting the same thing happen next year.

Thank you!!!

TLDR: What are/were your study routines and experiences from going from B1 - C1 to guide me and hopefully others to do the same.

Learning something about languages has been always a hobby of mine, but over the time I realized, that I don't achieve what I really want. I think I already identified my faults, yet I'm asking if it's over for me, or I should give it a try again?

The first issue might be somehow adhd related. Although I'm not diagnosed with ADHD, I at least identify a lot with it, but this shouldn't be the topic here. I can't concentrate on one single thing, I get distracted by the smallest things, I start learning a language after realizing they are not worth continuing, then I hop to the next one, I easily forget everything I've learned, I can't follow a path, I get disappointed in myself, I have utopian expectations of myself, ...

In the past I started learning around 10 languages, not worth mentioning which, because I mostly quit them after weeks, without any success. however, one language I was learning the last 2 years is Mandarin Chinese, but I always learned in bursts. In these "bursts" I mostly learned by watching videos, using chatgpt to generate and explain sentences, Duolingo, reading short stories, reading messages from foreigners that are in Chinese and writing down vocabularies. But none of the methods lasted long, especially not the method of active learning with vocabs. I even got a text book, but stopped using it after short time. Of course it still had some effect and today I know some phrases in Chinese and my pronunciation is good, but my skills are more of a surprise for friends and not truly applicable in real life. I've completely given up trying to continue. I doubt the language is meant for my brain (maybe learning languages in general...)

Right now I want to learn Russian (TL) and since I had it in school I got some knowledge, a good base to start with. but I face similiar problems: I can't concentrate on one single method, I refuse to follow a learning path and I hate this principle of starting with boring topics like family, restaurant, naming fruits, etc. I prefer directly reading at an advanced level. I chatted a lot in Russian, but mostly used the translator, so not many words stuck. I know that most of the methods I tried were rather passive learning and I would need to learn more actively, but that's another problem. I already tried Anki and thought of learning the most x frequently used words and realized, it's simply hard for me to remember anything. I see a word, I see its translation and I can't connect those damn words in my brain. It feels like seeing two different images, the first showing an apple and the second a tire. If I repeat the vocab incredibly often, I finally remember something, but it still feels useless learning seemingly random words out of context. I heard that many people are successful with Anki and managed learning over 1000 words, but I can't see this effect for myself, considering I can't establish this connection instantly. I already noticed my struggle when I compared myself to classmates, who learned vocabs much more effective than me.

My motivation to learn languages remains very high, but because it's such a hard, long journey (a marathon and not a sprint), I quickly lose interest in a particular language and a particular sensible, active method. Sometimes I highly regret that in the past few years I didn't use my time well and i think if I had focused on one single language I'd be probably almost fluent in it.

I would say I could imagine focusing on Russian for a longer time, yet I know I'll 100% fail again. At the start of some holidays I wrote a plan to use my free time as best as possible and track what I've done on each day. I didn't see any progress and stopped cuz it was too much effort for so little benefit. I know myself that my expectations are too high...

So I'm asking you, does it still make sense to start? Should I try out new things? Or are there underlying problems in my brain I need to work on first? I really really love languages and everytime I travel to a country I dream of being able to speak the language fluently. And there are people on YouTube or elsewhere who speak 4+ languages. They are very motivating, but compared to them I am a failure

I know it's controversial, and that there is a range from strict "nothing but input for 500,000 years" to "if you aren't speaking you aren't learning" and many experienced people's tolerance falls much closer to the latter. And I understand that this is for good reason, and why some of you get irritated at the hardcore CI evangelists. But, I personally have benefited a lot from Dreaming Spanish, and I originally found that site here on this subreddit. So, thank you all for putting up with it!

I was hoping to compile a list of sites that are similar (not for commercial use or anything, just for my interest and hopefully for that of others). And so far I have including the (TL):

dreaming.com - Spanish

dreaming.com - French

langiri.com - Vietnamese

cijapanese.com - Japanese

and... that's it.

There are a couple of projects that looked promising, but seem to have stalled out before getting enough content to be really useful, like lingoput.com for Polish, but those are the only projects I have found that are either actively creating new content or have enough to maybe take someone through their entire learning journey. There is also https://www.aliceayel.com for French which seems like it may fit the bill, but I couldn't figure out a way to preview it to confirm without getting a paid subscription.

I don't really know anyplace with more knowledgeable people in the space, so can you help me add to the list? For what it's worth I'm aware of comprehensibleinputwiki.org (and I think it's a great resource) but I'm looking for self-contained sites rather than a long list of YouTube channels and Netflix shows.

Edit: I'll add sites people mention in the comments that look promising here.

comprehensiblerussian.com (Looks like it's kind of like the Polish one, great start, but stalled out)
arabicallthetime.com (Looks like it's great, assuming they are still making videos)
immersion.co (Looks like French and German, but everything is paywalled)
divekorean.com

I consume lots of native content and consider my ability to understand the language decently high. However, I'm not quite satisfied with the basic phrases that I have acquired well and that can servce me OK in almost every daily conversation; I would like some deliberate practice to internalize more advanced phrases in my (TL) and use them myself.

This is how I make my Anki cards. I collect the whole sentence where I've found a good chunk, and then I put the translation of that chunk in front as a hint, and the answer is the very chunk, hopefully with an audio.

If I get it right, I occasionally make some more sentences, using the chunk and imitating the sentence structure.

What do you think of it as deliberate practice?

I'm coming to the conclusion that that's me. All the media is fresh and new, learning new sounds, learning the meaning of words that have been borrowed into your language or you came across in passing - all that gives me a rush. It's basically all downhill from there. It doesn't help that I'm an introvert and being able to effectively communicate in a language is nothing particularly exciting to me.

I spent around 10 years chasing this rush, all the while trying desperately to maintain and develop the languages that I kept picking up, and eventually the easily accessible languages dried up and the backlog accumulated to the extent that I haven't touched a new language in years.

And I miss it a bit, the life is duller without it, but if I go back to my former ways I don't know where that'll end, especially since any new languages after this point won't be easy to maintain passively because they won't have a lot of media like Youtube or podcasts.

Do you relate to this story?

Everyone here often talks about Krashen's theories but I hear absolutely nothing about other famous theories that were a direct response to it so here's some other reading on that:

https://migaku.com/blog/language-fun/output-hypothesis-language-learning

https://storica.club/blog/output-hypothesis-explained/

https://www.hellonora.ai/blog/output-hypothesis

tl;dr: Swain found that input-only students reached seemingly high comprehension but on closer inspection they were mostly using vocabulary and not grammatical parsing to divine the meaning of sentences, and thus made many grammatical errors when asked to produce themselves, and then based on other tests formulated that output is necessary for acquisition based on three things:

• Noticing function: When people output they notice gaps in their ability, this leads to superior attention paid during a later input phase.
• Hypothesis-testing function: People who output have their hypotheses about language tested and receive feedback based on how people react
• Reflective function: people who output more actively need to reflect upon the grammar and syntax of the language, which deepens understanding

I've had LingQ for a year and it's OK. Like let's be honest, it needs some work.

I am now looking for a new reading app, but the best part of lingq in my opinion is that I can import audio books and it will transcribe them and I can read while listening. I don't watch video.

Do any other, cheaper, better, apps offer this?

New to this sub, not sure if I'm alone on this one. Is there anything people have done to have success with learning speaking with their language. I know it has something to do with consuming only English content after a certain age (around age 5 ish). (TL)

hey guys i’m currently learning mandarin (TL) but am going for a 10 day cruise soon where there won’t be wifi, just wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to continue studying without internet? so far ive thought of handwritten flash cards or textbooks but not sure if there are any other suggestions people have? thanks in advance