Baltimore English? Well, I got around the problem by practicing Russian every day with Moscow behind us.

Thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough review. I recently found Lucas KZbin and was getting interested in bidirectional

Good luck with all your goals! Reading so many books in foreign languages sounds like a proper challenge! But I like the idea of reading half of your books in your main language. I might think about doing something like that next year, but this year I also want to focus on reading bigger books and classics in English and my native language. Looking forward so seeing how you'll do!

Jo, many thanks for the honest and thorough review of my Bidirectional Translation Method! 🥰

For many languages, the information is not on the Internet at all. Nor are there any materials readily available for you to "immerse" yourself.

Did you fully pay out 200 europe dollars for this? Why not just finish the basics from a textbook and then try out what you've learned casually with native speakers?

Amazing video!! 🇧🇷🇺🇲

I know you were a little concerned about what you could put in the video since the course isn't free. Here's what you can get from asking Chat GPT: Yes, I'm familiar with Luca Lampariello's bidirectional translation method, which is a structured technique for learning foreign languages by practicing active and passive translation. It’s especially helpful for building vocabulary, internalizing grammar, and improving fluency. Here's a breakdown of how it works: 1. Step 1: Forward Translation (L2 → L1) Take a short text in your target language (L2)-for example, a dialogue or a paragraph from a book-and translate it into your native language (L1). The goal here is to understand the meaning of the text fully and to see how the structure and vocabulary work in the target language. 2. Step 2: Backward Translation (L1 → L2) After a brief interval (e.g., a few hours or a day), take your translation in your native language (L1) and try to translate it back into the target language (L2) without looking at the original text. This forces you to actively recall vocabulary and grammar, strengthening your production skills. 3. Step 3: Compare and Correct Compare your back-translation (L1 → L2) with the original text in the target language (L2). Identify your mistakes and analyze where you went wrong-whether it’s vocabulary choice, grammatical structure, or idiomatic expressions. This step helps reinforce correct patterns and highlights areas to improve. Why Is It Effective? Active Learning: Translating back forces you to actively retrieve and apply knowledge rather than just passively consuming the language. Error Correction: The comparison step ensures you identify and learn from your mistakes. Memory Reinforcement: Working with the same content twice in different ways (forward and backward) strengthens memory connections. Tips for Using the Method Start with short, simple texts and gradually move to more complex material as you improve. Use authentic texts that match your level (e.g., dialogues for beginners, articles for advanced learners). Do this regularly for a cumulative effect-repetition is key to internalizing language patterns. This method aligns well with your interest in SRS flashcards and vocabulary building, as you could incorporate challenging sentences or phrases into your SRS system for review! Are you thinking of trying this method with one of the languages you're studying, like Korean or Spanish?

At Lingoda you pay 3 times more than they sell it to you! I purchased a 40 group hours subscription with a promotion price, with an objective to study only 1 month intensively before my new job starts. The content of the course is interesting, most of the teachers are good, and I like the fact that I can choose topics and be flexible with the time. But each lecture goes too fast, and has too many new things to learn with little practice, so it requires 2-3 hours of self-study time per 1 hour of lecture to repeat the learned material. If you cancel your subscription, you lose access to your account! So you can not repeat, you lose all the studies material unless you download it one by one and copy paste all words. And if you want to access your account, you need to pay the full subscription price, even if you don't have time to use your group hours any more. So I have chosen to pause my subscription on 24.12 evening. How it is supposed to work: it can be done once per payment cycle for 4 weeks and you can access your account without paying the subscription, without receiving credits. What happened in reality: the payment on 26.12 at 7:14 has passed, for the full price of the subscription, and added me 40 new credits. Only on 27.12 I received an email that my subscription has been paused. When I wrote to Lingoda support, they said the request to pause was registered in their system on 26.12 at 23:16, and that they can not refund the payment. Now I have no time to study anymore, so I cancel my subscription and lose the 40 credits. To summarize: What I thought I purchase: 4 group hours for 1 month for 325.80 CHF What I end up paying: 325.80 CHF + 543.01 CHF = 868.81 CHF It feels like Lingoda does not care about what their students learn, doesn't care about customer satisfaction, just cares about taking as much money from you as they can. Someone in another review about Lingodanamed it "well engineered scam", and I completely agree. If I knew this before, I would take group classes with Babbel: it is way cheaper (149€/month), the quality is good enough (seems a bit less structured than Lingoda, less info in the account), and you can repeat the learned material as much as you want without losing access, even if you stop your subscription.

Are you going to continue using it? I like Luca and his channel. I’ve been watching him for years probably over a decade. But a lot of KZbinrs sell a method of some sort and frankly it’s always overpriced for what it is and seriously I think buying it is something you would do to support the channel. Like a donation but you still get something in return. €200 is a bit steep for me. If it were the cost of a textbook I’d probably go for it just out of curiosity. I think he explained the main idea of his method in a video on his channel. I would have to review the method but I think it was mostly just translating. I can’t remember the method now but is it different than memorizing some useful sentences and their translations in your native language so that you brain can better absorb the patterns and well the language? I was memorizing some Korean sentences earlier this week thinking this might be an amazing tool to improve but it’s so hard lol. As a more doable goal I’m trying to memorize a sentence for the day now. I’m sure I’ll skip some days but it’s easy to pick back up I think too. I tried doing multiple sentences and you totally can but then recalling them later in the day is more work if only because it’s a bit messy in my head but one is simple. I could see doing one sentence per language if you study a few but I get so focused on one it’s kind of hard.

Listening to you is so relaxing, and I really enjoy watching all your reviews. 😊I think this method works best when the target language is as similar as possible to one you already know. I believe he struggled with this method for Japanese and couldn't make it work-I can see why. So I found interesting that he offers Japanese material in his course. In general, I really like Luca and whatever people say or think about him, I believe that he motivated tones of people to learn languages. Personally, I do sentence mining, upload them to Clozemaster, review until they're 50% mastered (two initial cycles), and then switch the setting for this collection to show only the English sentence to actively recall the target language. Familiarizing myself with the sentences first is key, as I aim to think in the target language rather than translate. There are just slight differences between recalling and translating in my opinion, but I find them very important.

Thanks for posting this! I tried his intermediate program which was super effective for me, and was considering the BDT course for a new language.

why such a big knowledge gap from level 6 to 7? Doesn't sound very realistic.

One thing I really like about this method (though I haven’t actually tried it yet 🙃) is how it really makes you notice the differences between the two languages. I think it might be cool to try it with two similar languages, like Spanish and Italian in my case, to see where we overtransfer things from the dominant language (don't know if that makes sense?). That said, part of me can’t help but wonder how many books in my target languages I could buy for €199 😬

Always been intrigued by this method so yelped a little when I saw you were reviewing haha. It seems like it would be effective as it practices most productive/receptive skills and gives a lot of repetition but in slighty different ways? And ofc customisable re. content/language/level If I was willing to sit down and really actively study for 20-30mins per day with a pen and paper then I would definitely consider (and with a serious discount on the course lol)

I just find it SO. EFFING. BORING. I get the theoretical appeal. But to me, you may as well argue the same benefits for replacing my wife with AI. Like, why chat to a human when you can chat to a bot that can pretend to be a human and never make a mistake? Well... because, we are designed to interract with humans. I firmly believe that an AI can't come up with anything compelling so long as I know that it's an AI, because I will just be like "Yeah cool that was a really dark twist but you stole it from *something a human wrote*." When humans write a dark twist it's because they had that thought themselves... and that makes it interesting. AI isn't sharing thoughts or emotions because it doesn't have any.

hey!! this was a super informative video as i am in your exact same shoes! i am starting to study for the DELE to pass B2 in the coming months as i am applying to attend university in Murcia! this has given me a lot of useful resources that i am excited to use and would love to see more content about this in the future !

HNY. When is your exam ? Sorry if I missed it in the video. I had considered doing it myself this year. I’m currently around B1 level, I think. The B2 exam is in November here. That feels like enough time.

Its actually really bad on your knees and ankles to run on concrete or hard surfaces, so it might be harder to run on cobblestones/sand/soft surfaces, but it's better for your joints 😊

Good luck!!!

Happy New Year, and good luck on the DELE!! 💪🏻

hitting the ground running this year!! 🎉 you will do AMAZING! so excited for you :D

I love your content! Good luck with the exam.

Happy New Year Jo!! All the best on the DELE!!

You are a gem. Just letting you know :)

Wow Tadoku looks like a fun way to have accountability partners for TL reading! I've never used it before, so hopefully there will be easy way to track different kinds of reading media, since a lot of my reading is digital

Thank you for sharing your not-so-mainstream opinion on AI (I mean it in a positive way). It was very refreshing but also insightful to hear about your persepective. As for me, my position regarding AI keeps evolving. I first found it scary and refused to use it at all, then at some point I discovered some interesting ways to use it for my own language learning journey and got quite eager and I forgot a bit about the environmental and data privacy concerns I had. Your video brought those aspects/concerns back to my mind (which is something that I appreciate and is important to me, so thank you!). I think thanks to your video I will be able to find a better balance between those concerns and a more reasonable use of AI. Anyway, thank you for staying true to your own opinion and sharing your thoughts even if it not might be following the trend. This is what I love (and look for) on KZbin: persectives, opinions and personal experiences that challenge me, to help me grow, learn and open my mind. Thank you again 🎉

Landed here after watching Tanya's new video. Since Tanya is one of the very few KZbinrs I watch and enjoy (I almost never watch KZbin except for about 3 channels), I thought that "if Tanya likes your content (she mentioned you in her video), then I guess you have an approach that might speak to me too!". Indeed! Thank you for sharing your thoughts as well as this survey. It was very interesting to think along with you, question things and make my own opinion. It was particularly interesting because the video made me think about which kind of content I do enjoy, which I don't and why. It helped me reflect about that and I gained some insight about what I am looking for in language related KZbin videos! Thank you! 🎉

I agree... bought the Turkish Uncovered and deeply regret it. Not that it's terrible, I do get something out of it, but it's way way overpriced. It's basically a graded reader with a few videos which, at least for Turkish, aren't even great but very random and unstructured.

Thank you for this comforting video and for letting us know about this resource! 💖✨ I'm excited to use it as part of my German studies 🌷🌿

I'm thinking of my 2025 goals and just as Spanish is your focus language, French is mine. My main goal for French is just to output more (speaking and writing) like you. I already speak often due to work but I want to practice speaking in ways that I don't get to in work and also write more (journalling or even writing essays for fun). Taking a test would be great but I'm hesitant to set that as a goal mostly because I don't want to feel like I have to use "leveled" materials/textbooks lol Good luck with Mandarin if you do end up starting it!!

I had never heard of a Tadoku challenge before. Looks interesting but not sure I’m clear on how this works exactly. Do many people participate?

i love having “interesting” on your list, i will 1000% be implementing this as a to do in the new year

yesssss planning video!!!!

this video gets me in the mood to study - i love your consistency in your videos and in your languages!!

Korea is very similar with being alone at restaurants/events -- not really a common thing. Add to that the fact that I stick out as an obvious foreigner, and it really discourages me from attending things or eating out alone most days -- I'm so self conscious!

Nice study vlog! What app were you viewing the transcript in?

The Mari thing is so interesting -- Maria must have been a WILDLY common name for its nickname to be made generic like that. But questioning if it's a thing and then hearing it used for a printer is funny 😆

Idk if it helps but "predictable" is "previsible/predecible" because you can see/say (ver visible/decir decible) in advance (pre). Hence the existence of "impredecible". Maybe if you try to think about it you can mentally separate "imprescindible" (prescindir de being manage without) and "impredecible". :)

Nice work, gets me inspired to so a little more deep work again!! I was not yet familiar with Readlang, will give it a try. Thanks!

Do both things work on TV?

I think I'll watch the first Platform (Hoyo) movie because I need new Netflix recommendations and it sounds interesting (but I might like you said just skip the second one)

I love these! It’s been pretty challenging for me to find media in Spanish, especially podcasts and shows that I’m actually interested in. Thanks!

Wow, your pronunciation got better! It's funny, I was in a similar situation where I wanted to say "peacock" in Spanish and I didn't know the word, and after I was told it was "pavo real" I was like 😳. Portugal is beautiful, and I'd love to visit there sometimes, but their Portuguese is so different from Brazilian Portuguese, it feels weird, haha. Great fun watching this.

los pájaros en el fondo hicieron el viaje más mágico y portugal ya es así 🥹

I don’t know if it’s true but your Spanish sounded like Spain Spanish to me vs Latin American…something about how you choose to word a few things. Spain Spanish sounds so much more flowery to me than Latin America Spanish. It’s so beautiful!

¡Hola! Tu español suena muy bien. Creo que el esfuerzo de hablar en español durante el vídeo merece la pena porque el resultado es muy bueno. Me encanta Faro. Estuve allí hace un par de meses y las imágenes me han recordado mi viaje. Me encanta ese parque. Fui a esa librería varias veces para comprar libros. Es una ciudad pequeña pero muy agradable. Ánimo con el portugués. A mí me ocurría lo mismo, las primeras veces que fui a Portugal no podía hablar en portugués con nadie. Ahora hablo portugués todo el tiempo con todo el mundo.

Just had my trial class and wanted a 2nd opinion before signing up. This was very useful.

i looove the way portuguese sounds sm omg. its fun to follow along w you and see how much of it i can already understand bc of spanish!! :')

A mi me gusta cuándo en inglés responden con un “sound good” a una propuesta.