Before diving into your language learning journey, here's a quick tour of what you'll be working on in each phase. Every phase has specific details, activities, and other useful information in the rest of the roadmap.
There are 7 main phases on your pathway to fluency:
The names describe the primary goal of each phase, but each one has more to it than the name implies.
The primary learning approach for the entire Refold method is immersion in the language and comprehending things. This allows your brain to learn patterns and develop fluency subconsciously. But you must actually comprehend things in order to learn.
How do you understand anything if you're a beginner? You might ask.
That's what the foundations phase is for. You'll use basic vocabulary and grammar study alongside simple content to slowly turn the gibberish that is your target language into... less gibberish. You still won't understand much by the end, but the language will stop feeling overwhelming and foreign.
Once you don't feel like you're drowning in the language, you want to increase your comprehension as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do that is to start with reading. It's generally much easier than listening and lets you use your adult literacy skills to make rapid progress.
However, you won't be ignoring listening. Through the entire comprehension phase, we recommend you only read along with audio. This trains your ears to hear the language instead of relying solely on text.
When we say "reading," we don't just mean books. Anything with text counts. Some of the best resources during this phase are TV shows and YouTube videos with subtitles which match the audio.
By the end of the comprehension phase, you'll be able to understand things (when reading) at a fairly high level — far ahead of any traditional learner at the same hour count.
Focusing on reading first creates a "reading-listening gap," where your reading ability is well ahead of your listening. This means two things: you'll feel a sudden drop in ability when switching to listening-only, but you'll improve very rapidly as your ears catch up. The Reading-Listening Gap
It can be uncomfortable to suddenly understand a lot less than you did a few days ago. But the fact that you already know so much from reading means that as your ears adjust, everything clicks into place quickly. That's what this phase is focused on.
Towards the end of this phase, you'll turn your focus to conversations and pronunciation, preparing you for speaking.
It might seem like writing would be easier to start with, since you can take your time and think. But that causes overthinking and gets in the way of building speaking fluency.
You'll start with specific exercises to make sure you're comfortable producing the sounds and rhythm of the language, as well as mentally preparing for a first conversation.
This preparation matters because you'll be able to hear a lot of your own mistakes and awkward phrasings — you've spent so much time on input that your ear is far ahead of your mouth. This can be frustrating when you're just trying to speak. So the first focus is getting over that initial difficulty and speaking a lot. The Input-Output Gap
There's an optional sub-phase for practicing specific situations (travel, daily life, work) which can be done at any point. If you have a specific use for your target language or are going on vacation, this is very valuable. But it's not required for the overall method.
By the end of the speaking phase, you'll be able to have a real conversation with a native speaker. You'll still have mistakes, but you'll be well on your way to fluency. Roughly equivalent to reaching B1. CEFR Levels
After getting over the initial hurdle of speaking comfort, the focus shifts to accuracy. Writing is the perfect tool for this — you can take your time, look things up, and study grammar to make sure you're not just understandable, but correct. The CARA Model for Output
You'll use your writing and grammar study to improve your speaking too, slowly reducing errors and unclear phrasing.
By the end, you'll be comfortable speaking and writing roughly around the level of a native high school student in the language. Roughly equivalent to reaching B2.
Once you're comfortable and fairly accurate, all that's left is increasing your fluidity and naturalness. This phase is about developing automatic use of the language, filling gaps in your knowledge, and doing lots and lots of practice.
The general goal of the Refold method is to reach "functional fluency," meaning you can live your life entirely in the language without it drastically impacting your ability to function. You can have a social life, hold a job, navigate the world, and enjoy media. Functional Fluency
Finished Phase 6 is roughly equivalent to reaching C1.
Once you're fluent, your journey doesn't stop. You're now a user of the language and it's become part of who you are. During the following years, you'll continue to read, write, listen, speak, and learn so much more.
But there are specific things you can do to deepen your fluency purposefully. You can focus on becoming an expert in certain domains, or put yourself through the kind of learning that native speakers do during their years of schooling.
Phase 7 is technically never-ending — a lifelong journey of discovery and learning.
The Refold method develops your skills in a non-standard order. The CEFR scale assumes reading, listening, writing, and speaking all progress at roughly the same rate. That doesn't happen with this method.
Our approach is more of a "cascade," meaning that one skill follows another. We find that it's more efficient to focus on one thing at a time (just reading, then listening, etc) rather than trying to do it all at once. You're able to focus better on the skill at hand and then use that ability to make faster progress in the next skill you turn your focus to.
Here's the approximate progression if you were to follow the exact Refold method: CEFR Levels
| Phase | Reading | Listening | Writing | Speaking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A2 | A1 | A1 | A1 |
| 2 | B1 | A2 | A1 | A1 |
| 3 | B2 | B1 | A1 | A2 |
| 4 | B2 | B2 | A2 | B1 |
| 5 | C1 | B2 | B2 | B2 |
| 6 | C1 | C1 | B2 | C1 |
| 7+ |
Note: passing an official CEFR test will almost certainly require some study of the test structure and format, regardless of your actual ability.
A rule we've had in our learning community since day 1 is that Refold is not a dogma. The Refold Method is meant to be a framework that you can build your own learning system on top of.
If you want to ignore our recommendations or change things, you should! We try to be general with our suggestions, but each person is different and has different learning needs.
| C2 |
| C2 |
| C1 |
| C2 |