Immersion at Stage 1

[robust totem]

Hey there, so, in stage-1 should I spend 2 hours daily in free-flow immersion even if I can't understand a thing - just trying to get sounds? I perused documentation, but I'm still unsure if that's correct. Also, should I make active/intense immersion even if I can't understand anything?

I've studied Japanese for 8 months in a basic course. Learned lots of grammar and some words, and added lots of sentences to Anki. I recognize some basic words, don't remember their kanji yet - just sounds, recognize some structures, but I'm lacking lots of vocabulary. I'm just starting Refold method with JP1K deck and trying to immerse myself properly. Thanks.

[livid fractal]

Freeflow is a lower barrier of entry for beginners, so I would recommend that. But 2 hours a day as a beginner is an ambitious goal. You may find that you don't have the stamina to be listening to gibberish 2 hours a day. Start low and take it slow. I would just watch 1 episode of a show like an anime or something on Netflix and see how you feel after. Audiovisual media is recommended for stage 1 and 2a because the visual context gives you an element of comprehensibility. Stay away from things that are audio-only like podcasts because you'll probably just whitenoise it.

I'm not sure if you're getting your terms mixed up, but freeflow is active immersion. There are 2 types of active immersion, intensive and freeflow. With these 2 types, you're trying to pay attention as much as possible. The difference is how much you're interacting with it through lookups. Leaning towards more lookups makes it intensive and leaning towards less lookups is freeflow. You'll probably end up doing a mix of both naturally.

I very very strongly recommend immersing in material with Japanese subtitles. It will help you build up your kanji recognition ability and your reading ability in general. It also makes it easier to look things up if you have convenient access to subtitles. Install the popup dictionary Yomichan so you can look things up without having to copypaste into Jisho or something.

[robust totem]

Thanks for such fast reply. I was worried 'cause I've saw Matt say you need lots of immersion to learn, but it did not seem feasible at such early stage.

I did mix them up - I'm still getting used to the nomeclature. I meant intensive immersion where we look up for words more frequently. In this stage, this option seems very time consuming to translate even a simple text.

[livid fractal]

2 hours of input a day is the ideal, at minimum, but that doesn't mean you have to be pulling those numbers the first day

More lookups are more mentally taxing, especially at an early stage. But I want to make a distinction between lookups and translations because sometimes the terminology causes misunderstandings.

Lookups on single words and single grammar points is encouraged.

Wholesale translating by throwing complete sentences into something like Google Translate is discouraged and not recommended.

[robust totem]

I understand. That's a good distinction.

For me sentences, now, look like a composition of words I don't know with grammar that I know (i.e. particles, form, etc.). So I would need to search every word meaning. (yep, the course I took was heavily on grammar). But it seem important to go through this process to learn stuff as well - and from what I've grasped from the method.

Thanks for the clarification.

[livid fractal]

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I think your heavy grammar focus will be helpful for getting a foothold in your immersion

[hallow spoke]

I recommend checking out this video. It seems to help a lot of people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GfLNQeRvI&ab_channel=Brett'sImmersing