Can you learn a language without ever speaking it? - Ben's 1,000-hour Czech update

[@FellowHuman18]

Yes! A Ben update!

[@free-navalny]

The video we've been waiting for!

[@FellowHuman18]

Very encouraging progress! We were all curious how good you'd be immediately and then how good you'd be after, say, 50 hours.

[@OneWordataTime1]

holy cow. this is awesome to see. your progress is great, the lessons are valuable and the bowling-ball idea is quirky-but-accurate-as-hell. very very motivating to apply this to my own learning. top shelf content!

[@Refold]

Thanks!! It took a lot of different metaphors before I found one that actually made sense 😂

[@runningriot7963]

Yes! Just like Abe Lincoln once said "Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe." I feel like it ties in with this approach, spending the majority of the time learning and getting better, then only in the last part you go out and speak. I don't get the point of going out and speaking to someone when most of the time you wont understand what the person says back.

[@Mark_Mark27]

i had completed 450 hours in the last 175 days, my hability to understand english is huge when i thought that now I can see Refold videos without subtitles and understand 90 percent of the topic. 60% of my progress was only using audio content without CC (i didnt understand nothing, but the hypothesis of imput comprensible had sense like equations in engeeniering ). I realy enjoy the guide of Refold, My writing and speaking sucks but i dont care. in the moment where I can reach 800 hours i am going to take lessons in Itoki, for now I prefer have conversations with me in my mind :v

[@emirobinatoru]

I am a native Romanian speaker and , during the pandemic, I had acquired English through huge loads of input (real huge numbers per day, unhealthy brainrot mostly). Your comment and perspective (your writing is very clear) made me realize that it is not impossible for me to learn the languages I wanted, bless you!

[@minoos2411]

Speaking to himself never fails hahah, you feel crazy but definitely it’s one of the most powerful things in language learning (btw your English it’s good man, keep going)

[@jordendarrett1725]

Your writing skills are surprisingly good for 450 hours. A few spelling mistakes but I would not have guessed you were only just learning English

[@DragonMasterGold]

Hey -- a note for if you ever have production hiccups with the audio where you are getting lots of mic pops. You can zoom into the waveform and very clearly visually see the "pop". If you take the spikes and cut them, having either side of the audio track's wave forms about equal once moved together --- then you no longer have a pop and the there is no distortion or problem with the audio. If done right it should be undetectable.

[@Alicia-yn6gt]

This is sooo motivating! Thank you!

[@oliviah.44]

These updates are very useful. Thank you for sharing your journey! I want to learn Czech next (because technically, I am Czech) and look forward to your primer on Czech grammar :)

[@Refold]

😁😁 It's a pleasure! I really look forward to making more updates. Czech is a really fun language, you're going to enjoy it. But the grammar primer is already thicccc. I'm going to boil it down to be an actual "input primer" and "output primer" (since you need different things at different points in the process). But I plan to make some videos on how to learn Czech...

[@pohlpiano]

@@Refold That all is sorely needed! Are these grammar primers going to be available for more languages? Are they going to be for free or paid, or available only for subscribers, or...?

[@deutsch_mit_lari]

So grateful this video just popped up on my feed. Thank you so much for sharing your experience here. This is so valuable. First video I watch from this channel and already a big big fan! Danke!

[@kaythia-s9h]

Amazing!! It's finally here after so long.

[@DRC85]

Michal is a great teacher, highly recommended

[@c00bmaster]

I absolutely love the ball analogy, so creative (at least until it got to the point of talking about bowling and tennis lol). also congrats on hitting 1000 hours!

[@vforvalorant1019]

I'm really enjoying watching this journey! I'm most looking forward to seeing how your speech improves/how you start correcting your mistakes, because I'm in the weird valley where no teachers think my (frequent if small) adjective/case/preposition mistakes are especially noteable, but I still sound odd to a native speaker and can definitely hwar my own mistakes even if I can't correct them in time yet. Currently hovering uncertainly and trying more input in the hope that I develop gradually more of a feel for the prepositions, and I think it's working, it's just tough to get it really making a difference at the speed of natural speech.

[@AndrisGameDev]

You just earned my highest appreciation mate! Great video with nice explanations and also kudos to your results! GG WP

[@ranjidtobi5140]

I’ve read it as well, your analogy with the bowling ball is just…perfect 😂 Loved the video, I think it is the best representation of why immersion works you can find, it is simple, and your progress is in general superb so far. I’m into 900hrs of immersion and started to output very slowly, made a lot of mistakes, but it feels satisfying how quickly you can get with that big input base you already have in your brain. Btw, I’m the one learning Hindi/Urdu. And I like your idea with the grammar guide. Would like if you make a video about that as well or a lil discord thread. Thanks Ben for being such an awesome inspiration.

[@Refold]

Great work! I'm glad you liked the video :) I do want to make that video about the grammar guide, but I'm really busy with some other things. I'm hoping I can get ahead this week and finish the script/recording. I've been using my grammar guide with a tutor and it's super helpful.

[@Kaspertangen]

Wow, great analogies Ben! Thanks for the inspiration. - a fellow czech learner :)

[@hamstu]

You’re awesome Ben!

[@jonh1995]

Love this! Good job Ben!

[@pohlpiano]

Super! Dobrá práce, jedna báseň!

[@pohlpiano]

Na závěr tohoto projektu to určitě bude chtít velmi detailní statistiky ohledně celého procesu studia, časovou osu, čas věnovaný veškerým aktivitám, atd.

[@YuraJayRJay]

Probably not related to this video, but I've got a couple of questions regarding Anki: 1. On Stage 3A, 3B, 3C of the detailed roadmap is the usage of Anki limited to reviews, or adding 1T sentence cards is still recommended? 2. What about Stage 4, is using Anki there still useful?

[@jeffreybarker357]

This is unconventional in a few circles, but those of us rocking Dreaming Spanish see this as the norm! 600 hours minimum with a recommendation of 1,000 before speaking. Very cool. Thanks for putting this together!

[@Txrje]

Great progress video! Love seeing people put out output progress after substantial immersion without fluent, it's very motivating to see the reality of output, as well as how rapidly you can improve your output with sufficient input. I love the bowling ball/tennis ball analogy! I've had this concept in my head already but not articulated remotely as clearly as that, so I'm definitely stealing that for whenever someone asks me why I can't really speak Japanese when I watch Japanese KZbinrs and shows and understand a substantial amount of the content. I just simply haven't touched my tennis ball yet lol By the way, I'd love if you could make your mic track mono instead of stereo in future videos with this mic, when you shift around while speaking it's like you're walking a tight half-circle around my head LOL

[@derekofbaltimore]

I would amend your definition of "conversation" Know enough to Understand Be understood And Be able to manipulate the subject of the conversation so that its not just a couple present tense (or past tense) statements regarding some noun Being able to say "I do something" or I don't do something " is very different from saying "I was supposed to do something" or "I would do something if"

[@MARIANNADEMICHELI1]

Hi, thanks for your very interesting videos. If you have time to answer, my question is: I have the opposite problem. I make myself understood better than he understands, I guess because I'm not afraid of making mistakes... but I listen, listen, listen... I've been listening to (Chinese) every day for 3 years and I still struggle to understand the most basic sentences, especially if they are not called super slow. What could I do? thank you very much

[@TheOneChannelToRuleThemAll]

Great progress! And I like the tennis and bowling ball analogy. Do you think in your native language first and then translate it to Czech? My plan is to postpone Speaking until the Spanish comes on its own. I don’t want to reinforce translating my English thoughts into Spanish. I’m only at 543 hours now so I don’t see myself making this jump any time soon but I’m curious if you would have forced it even if you didn’t think in Czech yet at 1,000 hours or if you would have continued to hold off.

[@michaelsager5688]

I would like a video explaining when you began to believe you were getting it! At what points our hours along the way did you go Wow this shit is really working! I actually understand a new language, and I only use comprehensible input. I am not studying my ass for these results

[@Dylan-oy3ch]

Hi there! I spent about 3 years learning Spanish… Out of nearly brute force memorization I am now at the point were I am fluent and watch content and understand everything. I consider myself fluent and am very happy, but these last three years have taught me this is NOT how you learn a language, I am now learning French on pure immersion with the exception of 6 1/2 hours of the French language transfer course to kick start my journey, and wow not only is it a million times more enjoyable but it is so much more motivating to know im intaking dozens and hundreds of hours of passive knowledge and input that I dont even have in spanish, if I could relearn it I would but unfortunately I cannot, so I am hoping my french can be my revenge arc for efficient language learning haha. Cheers on your Czech journey bon voyage!

[@Dylan-oy3ch]

Incredibly distant side note, I think you would look very good with a buzzcut/short hair 😂🙏

[@lol-rl8gc]

Hey ben! I had a question since you brought up about speaking earlier. I am a heritage speaker of korean and I've tracked at least 159 hours of immersion but I would assume that number would be at least decently significantly higher due to childhood exposure and exposure now and previous attempts at studying but failed in being consistent what would you recco to someone who wants to possibly speak earlier in the process? I've been thinking of outputting at 1.5k to 1.8k hours I have a high lvl 3 to low level 4 comprehension I can understand at least 80-90% of what I watch in native YT videos or tv shows depending what I watch I can also understand my parents speaking to each other without having to spend much brain juice? sorry if my writing is poor I just got back from something haha

[@Refold]

No worries. Speaking earlier is actually a great way for heritage speakers to connect more with the language. They (you) usually have more vocab hidden away in their brain and having conversations, especially with your family, can help you re-find those words and learn which ones might be more "childish" (it's really common for heritage speakers to know words like tummy or belly, but not stomach). If your parents are patient and willing to help, having little chats with them about their life in their native country can be an amazing way to get solid input, learn more about your parents, learn new words AND connect with the language/culture. But you can also just do regular speaking practice and use some Language Hacking methods to learn quicker. I hope this is helpful!

[@AltoPianistaOnline]

We need the next Refold online course! When are we getting it? 🤓☺️

[@Refold]

You didn't hear it from me, but there may or may not be something having to do with LISTENING in the works 👀👂

[@AltoPianistaOnline]

@@Refold 😍😍. "El pueblo quiere saber de qué se trata" (como decían en Argentina hace 200 años :)

[@jordendarrett1725]

Awesome progress

[@YogaBlissDance]

I am not trying to be negative, but I can tell the teacher (female,) there are those teeacherrs that listen for mistakes as their primary "teaching tool" instead of coaxing and encouraging the student to get a flow going. I know some may like that "every mistake stop" approach. I actually get better over time in a convo and encouragement actually relaxes me to SPEAK BETTER. It's hard to find such teachers. We can then go over the most eggregious mistakes during a break, but NOT BREAK the students efforts. The male teacher was better, he smiled and nodded to encourage you. That is actually hard to do and not interupt.

[@SzczeryPoliglota]

That's a great explanation of a theory I've believed in for a few years now. In late spring/ early summer there will be The Polyglot Gathering in Czechia or nearby, fancy coming, perhaps? ;)

[@Refold]

Someone told me about that the other day! It sounds like it would be fun.

[@portraitofalion]

Great, fresh comments.

[@smartstrength4414]

On my journey, my consistent output is 30 minutes a week, compared to my 8-12 hours of input per week. The feedback from my tutor is super valuable, informs sentence mining, and lets me focus on my gaps during my input.

[@antHir01]

Hi Ben, my name is Yahir. I’m 14 years old and I have a lot of free time. I started immersion 13 days ago and have already accumulated a total of 140 hours in the language, doing about 10 hours per day. However, I will now increase that to 14 hours per day. My plan is to reach 1000 hours by December 1st, and also to learn 20 new Anki words every day. After that, I will start speaking and writing, and also study phonetics and pronunciation. My goal is to reach 2000 hours by February 1st, which will be my birthday, through intensive immersion, speaking, reading, and writing. Do you think my plan is solid? What level do you think I will have after 2000 hours with this intensive plan in 4 months? Psd: My native language is Spanish and I am writing this with a translator. When I learn English it will no longer be like this.

[@Refold]

Hola, Yahir! Te voy a escribir en español pa que no tengas que traducir (aunque a lo mejor solo te estoy robando más tiempo de inmersión jaja). Tu plan suena bien, pero MUY desgastante. Solo llevas 10 días actualmente entonces no sabes que tan duro será. No puedes dedicar el enfoque necesario durante 14 horas al día sin parar. Te recomiendo que quedes con 10 horas (o menos!) al día y enfocate más en usar las horas bien. Mejores horas es mucho más eficiente que solo más horas. Todavía eres muy joven y eso significa que no deberías apurarte tanto. Si puedes seguir con un plan de inmersión durante unos años, podrías lograr ir a una universidad en estados unidos con becas pagadas. Y probablemente tener un nivel del inglés casi nativo. Pero SOLO si puedes seguir de largo plazo. Aprender idiomas no es una carrera de 100 metros, sino un maratón. Hazlo como parte de tu vida y éxito seguirá. Pero si consume tu vida, tendrás que parar por algún motivo. ¡Mucha suerte en tu viaje!

[@antHir01]

​​@@RefoldHacer unas 12 horas no me desgasta, y como no tengo otra cosa que hacer, es el motivo por el que hago esto. Actualmente llevo 170 horas en 16 días de inmersión y cada vez tengo ganas de ver más cosas. En unos 25 días llegaré a las 500 y estoy emocionado por eso; cada vez voy entendiendo más y espero que, al llegar a las 1000, entienda la mayoría al 90%. Ahora mismo estoy viendo el universo de Marvel y quiero entender la mayoría al 90% para empezar a hablar. Cuando logre las 1000 horas, me dedicaré a la pronunciación y fonética. Me emociona aprender el idioma y quiero tener un nivel avanzado en 4 meses y, ya cuando pase el tiempo, tener un nivel casi nativo. Ya no me apuraré tanto y bajaré las horas, pero en estos 4 meses le dedicaré esas 2000 horas. ¿Me darías un consejo para entender aún más? Y si es así, ¿más o menos alrededor de cuántas horas ya entendería un 70%, quizás a las 500 o así? Con esas 2000 horas, ¿me darías un nivel aproximado? Psd: por cierto me es muy fácil hacer esto de 12 horas todos los días porque lo llevo haciendo más de 6 meses pero viendo contenido normal en mi idioma, por eso no es desgastante pará mí, más bien son días normales, no preguntes porque tengo tanto tiempo libre jaja

[@digitlhand]

Great work putting yourself out there and learning it. To my non-native ears, I’m surprised that your vowels have so much room to grow. I thought one of the benefits of waiting was to have a more native like pronunciation. Can you hear your difference from natives?

[@Refold]

When I listen back, it's very clear to me. I use a direct monitor, I can hear them in real time better than without. "Native like" anything is a pretty prevalent myth in immersion learning. In our experience, no language learner achieves native like levels in basically any aspect of the language without thousands upon thousands of hours of immersion AND study. Or having exceptional talent for a specific thing (usually pronunciation) and then specifically editing a video to make themselves look even more natural than they probably are. With these Czech videos, I try to show a more realistic experience for the average language learner.

[@digitlhand]

@@Refold thanks for the clarification. Really awesome experiment and always happy to see a successful language journey. I’ll recommend others watch when the topic comes up.

[@vforvalorant1019]

I would say that relative to the average results from people who are in classes and start speaking early, he's doing *amazing*. I'm in a C1 class right now with such German learners and only a few manage to sound even nearly as good as Ben is here, and some of them have such thick accents I can barely understand them. I think watching a bunch of language learning KZbin fools people into thinking that on average people are better than they are.

[@digitlhand]

@@vforvalorant1019 I think we’re in agreement. Let me repeat what you said and then note the differences: Ben sounds amazing, yes. Though, I’ve never spent time in a Czech classroom of English speakers, I’d be willing to bet a box of Krispy Kreme donuts that Ben would be at the top of the class. With that said, I think that one of the most touted reasons for delaying output was so that you’d have a native like or close to native accent. And I think this video is good evidence that this simply doesn’t work. At least, not with the current regimen.

[@mihan5660]

​​@@digitlhand i wonder where they (the originators of this method) came up with that, because native speaking little kids often take years after first speaking to master pronounciation of their native phonemes (like "w" and "r" sounds in english). Did it start out with teachers of a language that only used more common phonemes that were already in most learners' inventories from their native languages? And then they extrapolated their success to all languages in general?

[@shepeh2416]

Hey ben! Great progress, just one thing i wondered was did you do something extra to practice getting better at output compared to day 1 of speaking and 3 weeks? Or did you just speak more and get better?

[@Refold]

Not really, those first few days were basically just "speak!" After a few weeks, I started to do more practice on other skills.

[@pohlpiano]

​@@Refold Maybe you could make more chorusing videos, perhaps with IPA subtitles?

[@pohlpiano]

@@Refold Oh, and if there is anything like a working Czech text frequency analyzer, I´ll definitely buy it!

[@paulwalther5237]

Great video. I was impressed with the fast progress between videos. I have no idea but your accent sounded really good to me. I think people get biased when it comes to how to learn a language based on what worked or didn’t work for them. People are different and it makes sense they’ll take different paths to language success.

[@F3nGShu1]

It would be interesting how much grammar you did until you started speaking. Did you really 0 grammar or only the most basic grammar like what cases, gender and verb forms do exist? Did you sometimes look those things up or only focused on the vocab. Would like a video about that topic :)

[@Mystika]

What's the cat's name at 3:20?

[@Refold]

That one is Tulio :)

[@DoomscrollToFluency]

cat 3:21

[@Refold]

He's my favorite Refold KZbinr

[@danilomiranda8728]

❤❤❤

[@espanol9498]

No passive listening?

[@kendroslav8296]

siiiiiiiiiiiick i mean bomba

[@felipecanadulce]

Mikel hyperpolyglot method mogs

[@filoreykjavik]

bomba

[@_remblanc]

Ponieważ języki słowiańskie są jak puszka Pandory, czekam gdy Ben będzie płynnie rozmawiać po polsku.

[@alchemist_one]

What happened to that Irish Polyglot guy?

[@Born-u7h]

Damm this is like watching Endgame

[@emirobinatoru]

Anothe' Stephen Krashen W

[@JanRubes-ds3kt]

I'm a Czech native and while I can understand you, your pronunciation is definitely not good and you got the conjugations of most words wrong.

[@LuisMiguelAguileraGarcía]

Am I wrong? But I think Czech is a phonetic language

[@pohlpiano]

Quite phonetic, except for some quirks...

[@_remblanc]

Basically phonetic, yes. Slavic languages are like that, Russian being an exception.

[@VictoriaLeblanche-iq4ez]

Sorry, but was the final straw that killed the tiny little faith in the Refold method! You sound like I usually do after having studied a language for 3-4 weeks, and it turns out you’ve been at it for a year and a half?! Dude, imagine how good you could have been of you had only practiced a bit! This is not the Refold commercial you think it is, it actually convinced me once and for all that not only is it boring as hell (because you don’t get to to the fun part, which is actually speaking), but it is a super long process that gives little results. So thanks, but no thanks!😅

[@digitlhand]

@@VictoriaLeblanche-iq4ez I had a similar reaction with respect to his accent. Though, I do think his understanding is much higher than his output ability. So, I think your assessment about progress via another method is simply wrong.

[@DoomscrollToFluency]

this comment is exactly why the tennis ball/bowling ball analogy is important. if you memorize how to say a bunch of things, you can 'make a lot of progress' very quickly. But you will not understand the language.

[@_remblanc]

Understanding the language goes the long way in terms of actually speaking it, and it’s far easier to get to the conversational level in a language you actually understand. The difference is highly perceivable when you’re there, I can say that based on my experience with English and Japanese, neither of which are all that close to my native tongue, as opposed to Slavic languages like Polish and Czech, which I already had rough understanding for when I started them because I already spoke Ukrainian and Russian, which have a significant enough linguistic overlap to take you halfway across the journey.

[@_remblanc]

Also, watch the video. It doesn’t say you have to strictly stick to input or commit to things you don’t find fun.

[@ranjidtobi5140]

It is hard to believe that there are actually people out there who are still not convinced after explaining it so easy. But well, he mentioned a bunch of times that this method is definitely not for everyone AND you can get to a certain point without any input. But you won’t get any further. That’s a fact and there is no polyglot who will deny the benefit and importance of input.