Your Japanese Learning Guide

Theory

Hey there language learner!

If you’re reading this guide, it means that you want to learn how to learn a language on your own. Regardless of whether you’ve never learned a language before, you’re a seasoned language learner looking for new strategies, or you’ve tried and failed several times to learn a language in the past—you’re in the right place!

In this guide, we’ll explain how the Refold method for learning languages works and how it’s different from other traditional language methods.

Allergic to reading? Here’s a TL;DR video that summarizes this guide

The problem with Language Learning

Ever wondered how to actually learn a language? Nearly EVERYONE studies a second language as a teen or adult, but the number of people who fluently speak that language well is shockingly low.

How could that be possible?! Humans are wired to learn language. We’ve been doing it for 150,000 YEARS. It’s literally built into our DNA.

The reason? The language learning industry is broken. The success rate of language learners worldwide is abysmal, and most people fail to learn a language using traditional methods!

Traditional Language Learning is NOT the Best Way to Learn a Language

What many people’s language learning experience looked like…

The traditional method of learning is what we call “grammar-translation.” Most people believe that this is the best way to learn a language, even though most people never achieve true fluency with this method.

Traditional learning methods teach you grammar as a way to translate between two languages.

They think that you can learn a language if you practice translation enough because it will eventually become automatic and instantaneous, and you’ll be fluent.

In reality, you just end up translating forever.

Upside: You can make blazing-fast progress for a few days or weeks and speak pretty quickly. But there is a hard limit to using speaking hacks and memorizing phrases.

Downside: Speaking like this creates unnatural language. Other languages aren’t just English with slightly different pronunciation and word order. It is difficult, or even impossible, for people to reach true fluency with the grammar-translation method.

What Does Fluency Mean?

When people dream of fluency, they imagine speaking a second language as naturally as their first, being able to navigate the language through feeling.

So, what does fluency mean if you think of it like this? It means you have a “language instinct,” and that’s what we focus on with the Refold method. We want you to use a language without conscious thought. Grammar-translation will never help you gain an instinct for the language.

Developing a language instinct takes a lot of time, even if you’re using the right methods! Another reason people fail is because they rely on motivation.

However, the truth is that…

Motivation is a Scam

Most people think motivation is the key to how to learn a new language by yourself, but learning a language is a long-term goal, and most people fail to recognize that. Many people get the wrong idea by watching polyglot YouTube or Duolingo marketing and think they can learn a language with a bit of focus and minor effort.

Most people end up relying on bursts of motivation for language learning, but these bursts of motivation don’t last long enough to get learners to fluency.

So, a large part of our method focuses on sustainable habits and processes to ensure you get to fluency, no matter what.

You Need Strong Habits to Learn a Language

To ensure your success, you need to have rock-solid habits and a personal learning system that will push you to success.

We start with “consistency over intensity.” Start small and build up. It can be tempting to dive in headfirst, but this quickly leads to burnout.

Instead, make things simple by starting with only two learning activities. That’s it. If you’re a beginner, our recommendation is starting by learning simple vocab with a flashcard deck and immersing in the easiest content you can find and enjoy.

After you’ve built a solid learning habit, you can start to increase your learning time and the complexity of activities. It may be counterintuitive, but going from nothing to something is quite hard. However, going from a little habit to a larger one isn’t too bad!

How to Actually Learn a Language

Ok, now that we’ve covered many of the ways that traditional language learning will not work, we’re going to teach you what will! The Refold method is carefully designed to teach you how to actually learn a language and reach your fluency goals!

First, if you want to be successful, your goal should be to…

Building a Language Instinct

Humans are excellent at learning languages; if you think about it, everyone knows how to learn a language! Everyone speaks at least one, without even trying. We pick up the patterns of our native languages as children through observation and interaction. Our brains are pattern-matching MACHINES.

All we need is exposure to those patterns. Lots and lots of time and repetition leads to excellent pattern recognition, knowledge, and language fluency.

In order to achieve this instinct, you’ll need lots of something called “input.”

The Real Way to Learn a Language: Optimal Input

We learn languages by understanding messages in that language. Understanding the language is called “input” (which is reading/writing or a combination of both).

However, you can’t just barrage yourself with the language and hope to learn.

If only it were this simple!

You need what we call “optimal input,” which has a few different parts to it.

Optimal input is:

1. Interesting
2. Comfortable
3. Understandable

Let’s dive into each one of these aspects a bit further.

1. Interesting Immersion Content

You must care (at least a little) about the language and what is being said. If you’re totally uninterested in learning, it will be very difficult. No “language” is boring, but the content might be. This is why Refold focuses on helping learners have fun and find the content that suits them.

2. Comfortable Environment

You also need to be at ease when learning. If you’re stressed or physically uncomfortable (for whatever reason), you are less receptive, and it’ll be harder to learn. It’s important to be free from distractions, have good video/audio quality, and have a nice place to be to maximize your learning ability.

3. Understandable Content

And finally, input needs to be comprehensible. Not entirely. You only need to understand bits and pieces or individual words. Or even be able to guess what’s happening from actions and visuals.

But if you’re not understanding anything, you’re not learning anything.

Once you have your content set up, it’s important to manage your expectations and understand that…

Comprehension Grows with Practice

This graph is for illustration purposes. The hours and understanding level will vary, especially in distant languages.

In the beginning, you’ll only understand bits and pieces. But don’t worry, if you’re understanding anything, even single words, your brain is in the background, learning the patterns of the language.

Eventually, your ability will improve to the point where you’re understanding whole sentences. The main idea, or plot, of what’s happening may still elude you.

Then, you’ll reach the point where you understand the main idea, but there will be lots of nuance that you’re still missing.

And then, at some point, you’ll be able to understand everything, even the nuance, like a native speaker would.

It’s easy to get discouraged when even the simplest of things are hard to understand, but with dedication and perseverance, you won’t be able to avoid understanding.

Another thing you’ll need to remember is that…

Output Isn’t How to Learn a Language

This is contrary to most of the advice you’ll find about how to learn a new language on your own. However, after working with dozens of clients 1:1, hundreds of students, and thousands of people in our community, we learned that outputting before you have any instinct for the language isn’t a good use of time.

Why? Because it can stress you out and make your learning painful, which is an important part of being able to learn. For most people, speaking is NOT comfortable!

This is counterintuitive advice, but the truth is that speaking and writing help you refine your instinct, but only what’s already there.

Here’s an example…

Imagine that you’ve never heard music before in your life. And suddenly, you’re tasked with playing piano at a concert hall. You can’t just sit down at a piano and start playing well since you don’t even know the purpose. You’ve never heard music, so you don’t know what good/bad music sounds like. You don’t even know what a piano is and how to make progress.

You would start by listening to a lot of music and learning what it is. Then, once you know what music sounds like and the fundamental rules, you can start to really learn to play.

The same goes for speaking a language. If you start saying sentences without any idea what they should sound like, what’s natural, and how a conversation flows, you won’t make any sense or learn. Plus, you can’t understand what someone responds with if you’re in a conversation.

Focusing on understanding first is much easier and leads to deeper fluency.