What You're Doing
You can understand basic sentences and you're immersing consistently every day. Now it's time to settle into your routine, build up your comfort, and increase your "language stamina" before taking the next leap into Phase 2.
The goal here isn't to learn dramatically new things — it's to solidify what you're already doing, increase your daily time, and reach 1000 words. By the end of this sub-phase, you should feel like you know what you're doing and are ready for the next level.
What's New
Everything from 1C continues. The one major addition is a new type of immersion (and it's optional):
Freeflow Immersion — Up until now, all your immersion has been interactive: pausing, looking things up, actively working to understand. Freeflow immersion is closer to what you do in your native language — you focus on the content (the story, the information) and let understanding happen naturally, without stopping to look things up. Freeflow Immersion
You won't understand much during freeflow, especially with new material. That's expected. The point is to practice processing the language at natural speed and to enjoy the experience. It's a lot like climbing with a harness — you're still doing the work of trying to understand, but if you lose track, your existing knowledge of the story catches you.
For freeflow to be effective at this level, use content you've already gone through interactively. The Multipass Method is ideal here: use something for interactive immersion first, then go back and use it for freeflow. Re-experiencing familiar content also works well — dubbed audiobooks, shows you know, etc. The Multipass Method Re-experiencing Content
Don't drastically change your routine. If you need variety, try new content or a new genre rather than overhauling your approach. This sub-phase is about building consistency and increasing your daily time, not reinventing your process.
If you're happy using just Interactive Immersion, you could forgo Freeflow immersion entirely at this stage and still be perfectly fine.
Your Routine
Now that you're using all three types of learning activity — priming, interactive immersion, and freeflow immersion — your breakdown shifts: The Pillars of Language Learning
- Priming: 25%
- Interactive Immersion: 50%+
- Freeflow Immersion: 25%-
Interactive immersion is still the most important. If you have to cut something short, don't let it be that.
This is also a good time to start increasing your total daily time. If you've been doing 1 hour, try pushing toward 1.5 hours.
Sample Daily Schedule
- Vocab study: 20-25 mins
- Interactive Reading with Audio (TV show): 45 mins
- Freeflow Reading with Audio (comprehensible input or familiar content): 20-25 mins
When to Move On
Move to Phase 2 when you:
- Are hitting your daily learning goals consistently
- Know at least 1000 words
- Can understand sentences in the immersion materials you're using.
- Try this test: open a simple TV show with subtitles. At least 1 in 4 sentences should be understandable without tools, about 2 in 4 with tools, and about 1 in 4 will still be too difficult. ~75% sentence coverage.