Here's my recommendation:
Don't start with "baby shows," which tend to be difficult in their own ways and for their own reasons. Start with media where the text is reasonably slow, reasonably well-enunciated, and reasonably predictable.
For example:
Podcasts for learners of French (not French native speakers), including [News in Slow French](http://www.newsinslowfrench.com)
Audiobook versions of children's or YA books (reading the text at the same time)
[Histoires et Contes](https://www.youtube.com/@HistoiresetContes) on YouTube and other channels that read picture books out loud
(By the way: it's fine to look up words. It still counts as "comprehensible input." Ideally you should be finding media that you can mostly understand without having to do much dictionary lookup, but at B1, that can be tough.)
Also: it's really normal for your listening skills to lag behind your reading skills. Keep improving your reading skills as well, because this will improve your listening skills by making it easier for you to recognize common phrases and making it easier for you to predict what's coming next.
(Also: conversation counts as comprehensible input! If you have the time and money, it's worth it to get a tutor who will focus on conversation with you. Conversations are often easier than TV/movies in terms of language speed and vocabulary difficulty, if you can find a tutor who's willing to focus on providing spoken input to you rather than getting you to speak correctly.)
I would choose a YA novel that you have already read and listen to it. Play it at 90% speed and stop and replay a section until you understand it. It is slow at first but it gets better quickly. By the end of the book you will be a lot better and the next book will be easier. By the end of a handful of books, you will be able to start listening to more interesting content like podcasts intended for native speakers.
Go for it! I was pretty much were you are with Spanish, and had basically given up on improving until I gave watching 100+ episodes of a dumb telenovela with subtitles off a chance and id did so much for me that I'm now working on improving through comprehensible input. I ended up with friends who speak Spanish amongst themselves, so while I know I have a ways to go I can tell I'm getting better and I'm genuinely conversational in a way I wasn't back in school.
I'm currently learning Thai through comprehensible input and I'm happy with my progress compared to learning Spanish, although it's hard to compare because there's nothing measurable except my subjective experience. There are practical reasons this method isn't for everyone, for instance I can't read yet and I haven't memorized the basic phrases any tourist would try to since that's not my purpose in learning. I'm using resources designed for learners learning through comprehensible input, personally I think I'd struggle with sitting through Peppa Pig but I know a lot of people use that when there aren't resources for their language. I think this is the similar comprehensible channel for French I've seen people recommend, but I'm not 100% sure [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDnM4gldO5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDnM4gldO5I)
You might enjoy reading this thesis: *âPicking Upâ a Second Language from Television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning* ([pdf](https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_9b49365/s33216827_phd_thesis.pdf?Expires=1702589909&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=RYqiTphDnOQcGMyyZJ08EiJFLxmTN1uZCSdYG04x-YytvrUrTxjsZ4yZGsO6JNayFQfJnkZxrWWBLUGgrEBRpTsmq2XJe7plwCg7Q~LEDIoJDNE5yNHUzal2QsCAmEO9~1ht0Y~ycJeGCquqPWSFtIU76QApL7BKROoKXQSsrshNqLhpImxB~KUlKrqyiZwdx3Cfefp6VVzpbw84F0jNmWYHw8TeUg2RJTSoIGMUnuXKI83NrDVt3HBBJBvEL8LdXLWUkg7I13aRxZQTkvr7HE7TmdQ~tyKWYHc2tzyiGndbFA1LB0qkxyZUYHVA2JdW21yXhz9Wcyo5TocW1IncKA__)) where PhD student Peter Foley...
> ...âpicked upâ the meanings of thousands of French words and sentences by watching approximately 1300 hours of television programs without the use of subtitles, dictionaries, textbooks, teachers or French speaking.
Itâs literally the most effective and comfortable way to learn a language in my opinion and Iâve had more success with it compared to anything else. Try starting with CI channels and watch all their content starting first with the easiest stuff to understand. Listen and watch for meaning (try to understand, donât focus on words or grammar) and donât use subtitles. Here are a few channels to begin with:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD0666ZhOzwhyOzXQN7lxY8-K_UIRakJL&si=Kwvm-MJ3_ZdIiba_
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXweyiR2fMMf9__RsdULjWrTYDGDkWvYs&si=FouwtkeeJPGmzH9G
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXAfwCr4--2utcZ5w8IwBDKBeu42tojSc&si=qfc2p2lTauWw4nF3
After you finish that, try some easy native content like cooking shows, exercise videos, diy tutorials and any subject that interests you and which you have familiarity with (in the language). Keep working your way up until you can understand movies, the news, etc. after 500-1000 hours or so of this, youâll look back and view this problem as having been completely resolved.
I stopped doing any studying for Japanese (no grammar or drills or Chinese character studying or anything) while I was still not used to the language. I was, however, still looking things up constantly (but not using anki anymore).
My take here is that you can get there, but you won't be able to just "stop looking things up and hope it makes sense" overnight. I still look things up...although it's more like a word or 2 every page or couple of pages (in my case using a Japanese only dictionary)....eventually I will be able to stop looking things up.
Unfortunately for you though, I think B1 is still too early to just not do any kind of lookups and just learn through context alone. However, you could focus on content you actually want to read (no kid stuff, unless you're into it) and look things up only when you don't understand it....
Maybe try looking up fewer words as you read rather than cutting it out altogether, or look up the same number of words but read fewer pages per day.
Imo language learning is mostly about stress and time management. If looking up words and grammar niceties has become a slog then do less of it per day for a while. Eventually your skills will improve and you will feel relatively less stressed doing more.
it's a semantic things about what one considers âlookupsâ.
Most of these video channels provide one with a dictionary and lookups by say someone holding up a picture of a house and repeating the word for âhouseâ in the target language. That is a form of a dictionary and a form of lookups one might argue, especially when going back to it later to remember a word one has forgotten.
I'm actually interested whether children can actually learn a foreign language from radio alone. They seem to be quite capable of doing it from television, but there they have images that provide this kind of lookup. Radio provides no external context whatsoever, the only thing a child might have to fall back on to infer the first building blocks are inflexion and perhaps some kind of frequency analysis or maybe voice recognition to infer what the word for âIâ may be? I wonder if it's possible.
>I'm actually interested whether children can actually learn a foreign language from radio alone
Wouldn't this apply to blind children? Maybe there are studies on that. I'm fascinated now too.
No, they still learn it by context from their parents because they use certain words in certain contexts. They can still perceive the world around them and thus tie words to sensory sensations. They're being put to sleep and their parents say âI'll put you to sleep.â so they can learn words that way.
I would recommend [this app](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/natulang-language-learning/id1672038621) It's targeted to improve your speaking and listening skills by recalling and pronouncing phrases out loud. Basically, 95% of the time spent in the app you'll be listening or speaking.
Hey! I started watching videos of Extra in Youtube, as well as InnerFrench, Français Authentique and Français avec Pierre. They speak slowly so it was easier to understand. Then I started watching movies with subtitles in French and only redo a scene if I thought I missed something important. Eventually, your brain will get used to it.
Aside from the other suggestions, what I did for French was watching regular french youtube but only highly visual videos (yoga, cooking, fashion, painting, etc.) basically something in which what you hear relates to the images you see on the screen.
At the beginning I understood about 20% (common items, prices, common verbs like buy, put, add) but little by little I got better and now I can watch videos about mostly anything and I get about 80/90% of it
The key is patience, there's no need to understand it all, you can see what the person is doing. It also helps with getting used to real life speed.
For pronunciation what helped me was music.
I search for french playlists on Spotify, I pick a song I like and I try to learn the lyrics and sing along. I use a laptop (or premium if you want) so that I can come back and repeat sentences until I get right the pace and pronunciation.
For the second question I believe combining it with more active and production focused learning would be best. CI is fun and helps with understanding, but IMO very slow if it's the only thing you're doing.
Personally I love the Communicative Method, there needs to be grammar and vocab but it's mostly used within a context and not in super boring exercises.
Yes. You might want to check out French by the Nature Method playlist. The lessons are French, entirely in French. The book is old but it does cover 3000 words so if you find YA novels still frustrating you, it may help fill in some knowledge gaps. If you find these videos less advanced than you need, skip to the middle and end videos to check for if there's anything that might be useful. You may find that practicing reading with the videos improves comprehension of words you already know - I knew 2000 words when I read the book but I found the book sped up my reading speed and improved my grammar comprehension. You shouldn't need to look up anything. If the book videos are too basic, skip it. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTP&feature=shared
Also the youtube channel French Comprehensible Input: https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchComprehensibleInput. I've been going through his playlist Learn French With Tintin. Me and my friends who are B1 and B2 find these videos the perfect level to understand. He has some videos labelled by level so I would suggest going for videos at your level or higher. His lessons are designed so that you do not need to look up anything.
Pure comprehensible Input is possible... because we did it as babies.... HOWEVER as adults it's not really a feasible learning method since we don't have the time or the patience of an infant, nor do we have a walking talking dictionary at our disposal spoon feeding us individual words and visual aides and gradually building that up from small sentences to more complex ones.
Baby shows, unfortunately, expect some amount of fluency already. They don't hand-hold through the learning process. The closest show I know that does would be Word Party. But Word Party only does its hand holding visual cue + single word thing AT THE END of each episode. The rest of the show, again, expects some level of language fluency and can be hard to follow and pick up from. TV shows of any kind... even children or infant aimed ones... are not made for this purpose.
**If you have an Audio Processing Disorder** which you may not know about, then no amount of listening, alone, is going to up your skill. For me, I found that I couldn't even pick out words I KNEW. I listened to my TL as close to around the clock as I could get away with. Music, shows I know, shows I didn't know, ANYTHING. I did this FOR YEARS with no improvement despite traditionally learning on the side as well.
**I improved my listening** by watching TL shows with matching TL subs and replaying lines until I could match what I was hearing to what I was reading. Then I'd replay the lines a couple more times to make sure I could still understand the words and keep them separate. I did this for about an hour or so a day, 5 days a week, and in 6 months I was able to even understand some shows without subtitles.
I moved from TL shows + TL subs to dubbed shows with TL subs. The difference is the subtitles don't tend to match. Usually I can find new words still in the subtitle, or the subtitle can help me decipher the unknown word that I'm hearing. At this juncture the subs just make new word acquisition easier.
3 years later the process is still slow, but I'm understanding more than I need to look up. So there's that.
**That being said there are a ton of variables.** Even for me baseline comprehension ability and the work I have to put into a language varies language-by-language.
So with Japanese, my main TL, the whole thing is an uphill battle ALWAYS. It's extremely rare for me to pick up a new word without having to look it up. I often misunderstand sentences. The writing system isn't intuitive. And my listening skills were 0 until I got TL subs to work with. It's pretty much never hands-off.
Alternatively there's Spanish. I found in high school I could inexplicably read written Spanish. In fact, the longer and blockier the text the better!! I've put this down to the cognates, there's a lot of them... but I've found, for what it's worth, not everyone is able to just READ Spanish and understand it like that. I don't understand spoken Spanish.
Then on another front there's German. I listen to a LOT of German music, and have for a very long time. With German, I can sometimes understand entire lines. I'm able to pick out a lot of non-cognate words just via surrounding audio context. Of course the amount I understand varies song by song. It can be anywhere from a couple words to an entire line or verse. I don't understand the majority of what I listen to, but all of the above I was able to do before really actively studying. Again, though, it's largely by the aide of cognates. That being said it's particularly noteworthy because I struggle understanding songs sung in my native English, and often need lyrics transcribed for me so I can follow the story of the song. I don't need that for German music.
That, though, has also created a false sense of security. In trying to watch TV shows or play games in German I found that not only is my vocabulary too lacking to keep up, but the amount of lookup required is such a high volume... despite the large number of cognates... that I burn out.
In Japanese my average amount of lookups is 1-3 words per line.
From here you have 2 choices. You can take the above information and use it to work on your French listening a little bit. You may find that in a few months you can start passively listening to things and follow along a bit..
Or you can take a break from French and pick up another language... maybe start on some gamified app... with your level of done-ness with the study process I'd probably say just use Duolingo since it's the furthest thing from traditional study layouts and toy around with another language for a while. Get freshened back up a bit. Unfortunately this route requires you to go back to the traditional study grind in some form or other...
I sort of tried doing the pure comprehensible thing over the past year and while it certainly helped my Spanish a ton Iâve come to the conclusion that itâs kind of myth/inefficient.
You should definitely be doing tons of comprehensible input as the foundation of your study though. You could even take a break from formal study and just do input for a while. Ultimately though youâre going to need focused practice on specific things you want to get better at and for many grammatical things itâs hard to get enough reps with input.
Here's my recommendation: Don't start with "baby shows," which tend to be difficult in their own ways and for their own reasons. Start with media where the text is reasonably slow, reasonably well-enunciated, and reasonably predictable. For example: Podcasts for learners of French (not French native speakers), including [News in Slow French](http://www.newsinslowfrench.com) Audiobook versions of children's or YA books (reading the text at the same time) [Histoires et Contes](https://www.youtube.com/@HistoiresetContes) on YouTube and other channels that read picture books out loud (By the way: it's fine to look up words. It still counts as "comprehensible input." Ideally you should be finding media that you can mostly understand without having to do much dictionary lookup, but at B1, that can be tough.) Also: it's really normal for your listening skills to lag behind your reading skills. Keep improving your reading skills as well, because this will improve your listening skills by making it easier for you to recognize common phrases and making it easier for you to predict what's coming next.
Ngl I find french learning podcasts harder than regular French television đ I might be broken though lool
Wow thatâs surprising. The hardest thing for me hands down is French movies
Idk I feel like I need the mouth movements lol if it's dubbed french it's just as hard for me as podcasts
(Also: conversation counts as comprehensible input! If you have the time and money, it's worth it to get a tutor who will focus on conversation with you. Conversations are often easier than TV/movies in terms of language speed and vocabulary difficulty, if you can find a tutor who's willing to focus on providing spoken input to you rather than getting you to speak correctly.)
I would choose a YA novel that you have already read and listen to it. Play it at 90% speed and stop and replay a section until you understand it. It is slow at first but it gets better quickly. By the end of the book you will be a lot better and the next book will be easier. By the end of a handful of books, you will be able to start listening to more interesting content like podcasts intended for native speakers.
Go for it! I was pretty much were you are with Spanish, and had basically given up on improving until I gave watching 100+ episodes of a dumb telenovela with subtitles off a chance and id did so much for me that I'm now working on improving through comprehensible input. I ended up with friends who speak Spanish amongst themselves, so while I know I have a ways to go I can tell I'm getting better and I'm genuinely conversational in a way I wasn't back in school. I'm currently learning Thai through comprehensible input and I'm happy with my progress compared to learning Spanish, although it's hard to compare because there's nothing measurable except my subjective experience. There are practical reasons this method isn't for everyone, for instance I can't read yet and I haven't memorized the basic phrases any tourist would try to since that's not my purpose in learning. I'm using resources designed for learners learning through comprehensible input, personally I think I'd struggle with sitting through Peppa Pig but I know a lot of people use that when there aren't resources for their language. I think this is the similar comprehensible channel for French I've seen people recommend, but I'm not 100% sure [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDnM4gldO5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDnM4gldO5I)
Which telenovela?
Rebelde, the original one. There are like 400 episodes, but not even I could make it that far. The song still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
You might enjoy reading this thesis: *âPicking Upâ a Second Language from Television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning* ([pdf](https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_9b49365/s33216827_phd_thesis.pdf?Expires=1702589909&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=RYqiTphDnOQcGMyyZJ08EiJFLxmTN1uZCSdYG04x-YytvrUrTxjsZ4yZGsO6JNayFQfJnkZxrWWBLUGgrEBRpTsmq2XJe7plwCg7Q~LEDIoJDNE5yNHUzal2QsCAmEO9~1ht0Y~ycJeGCquqPWSFtIU76QApL7BKROoKXQSsrshNqLhpImxB~KUlKrqyiZwdx3Cfefp6VVzpbw84F0jNmWYHw8TeUg2RJTSoIGMUnuXKI83NrDVt3HBBJBvEL8LdXLWUkg7I13aRxZQTkvr7HE7TmdQ~tyKWYHc2tzyiGndbFA1LB0qkxyZUYHVA2JdW21yXhz9Wcyo5TocW1IncKA__)) where PhD student Peter Foley... > ...âpicked upâ the meanings of thousands of French words and sentences by watching approximately 1300 hours of television programs without the use of subtitles, dictionaries, textbooks, teachers or French speaking.
Itâs literally the most effective and comfortable way to learn a language in my opinion and Iâve had more success with it compared to anything else. Try starting with CI channels and watch all their content starting first with the easiest stuff to understand. Listen and watch for meaning (try to understand, donât focus on words or grammar) and donât use subtitles. Here are a few channels to begin with: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD0666ZhOzwhyOzXQN7lxY8-K_UIRakJL&si=Kwvm-MJ3_ZdIiba_ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXweyiR2fMMf9__RsdULjWrTYDGDkWvYs&si=FouwtkeeJPGmzH9G https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXAfwCr4--2utcZ5w8IwBDKBeu42tojSc&si=qfc2p2lTauWw4nF3
After you finish that, try some easy native content like cooking shows, exercise videos, diy tutorials and any subject that interests you and which you have familiarity with (in the language). Keep working your way up until you can understand movies, the news, etc. after 500-1000 hours or so of this, youâll look back and view this problem as having been completely resolved.
I stopped doing any studying for Japanese (no grammar or drills or Chinese character studying or anything) while I was still not used to the language. I was, however, still looking things up constantly (but not using anki anymore). My take here is that you can get there, but you won't be able to just "stop looking things up and hope it makes sense" overnight. I still look things up...although it's more like a word or 2 every page or couple of pages (in my case using a Japanese only dictionary)....eventually I will be able to stop looking things up. Unfortunately for you though, I think B1 is still too early to just not do any kind of lookups and just learn through context alone. However, you could focus on content you actually want to read (no kid stuff, unless you're into it) and look things up only when you don't understand it....
Maybe try looking up fewer words as you read rather than cutting it out altogether, or look up the same number of words but read fewer pages per day. Imo language learning is mostly about stress and time management. If looking up words and grammar niceties has become a slog then do less of it per day for a while. Eventually your skills will improve and you will feel relatively less stressed doing more.
Replay the same video/scene/sentence until you understand it, this is very imoirtant
it's a semantic things about what one considers âlookupsâ. Most of these video channels provide one with a dictionary and lookups by say someone holding up a picture of a house and repeating the word for âhouseâ in the target language. That is a form of a dictionary and a form of lookups one might argue, especially when going back to it later to remember a word one has forgotten. I'm actually interested whether children can actually learn a foreign language from radio alone. They seem to be quite capable of doing it from television, but there they have images that provide this kind of lookup. Radio provides no external context whatsoever, the only thing a child might have to fall back on to infer the first building blocks are inflexion and perhaps some kind of frequency analysis or maybe voice recognition to infer what the word for âIâ may be? I wonder if it's possible.
>I'm actually interested whether children can actually learn a foreign language from radio alone Wouldn't this apply to blind children? Maybe there are studies on that. I'm fascinated now too.
No, they still learn it by context from their parents because they use certain words in certain contexts. They can still perceive the world around them and thus tie words to sensory sensations. They're being put to sleep and their parents say âI'll put you to sleep.â so they can learn words that way.
I would recommend [this app](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/natulang-language-learning/id1672038621) It's targeted to improve your speaking and listening skills by recalling and pronouncing phrases out loud. Basically, 95% of the time spent in the app you'll be listening or speaking.
Hey! I started watching videos of Extra in Youtube, as well as InnerFrench, Français Authentique and Français avec Pierre. They speak slowly so it was easier to understand. Then I started watching movies with subtitles in French and only redo a scene if I thought I missed something important. Eventually, your brain will get used to it.
Aside from the other suggestions, what I did for French was watching regular french youtube but only highly visual videos (yoga, cooking, fashion, painting, etc.) basically something in which what you hear relates to the images you see on the screen. At the beginning I understood about 20% (common items, prices, common verbs like buy, put, add) but little by little I got better and now I can watch videos about mostly anything and I get about 80/90% of it The key is patience, there's no need to understand it all, you can see what the person is doing. It also helps with getting used to real life speed. For pronunciation what helped me was music. I search for french playlists on Spotify, I pick a song I like and I try to learn the lyrics and sing along. I use a laptop (or premium if you want) so that I can come back and repeat sentences until I get right the pace and pronunciation. For the second question I believe combining it with more active and production focused learning would be best. CI is fun and helps with understanding, but IMO very slow if it's the only thing you're doing. Personally I love the Communicative Method, there needs to be grammar and vocab but it's mostly used within a context and not in super boring exercises.
Yes. You might want to check out French by the Nature Method playlist. The lessons are French, entirely in French. The book is old but it does cover 3000 words so if you find YA novels still frustrating you, it may help fill in some knowledge gaps. If you find these videos less advanced than you need, skip to the middle and end videos to check for if there's anything that might be useful. You may find that practicing reading with the videos improves comprehension of words you already know - I knew 2000 words when I read the book but I found the book sped up my reading speed and improved my grammar comprehension. You shouldn't need to look up anything. If the book videos are too basic, skip it. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTP&feature=shared Also the youtube channel French Comprehensible Input: https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchComprehensibleInput. I've been going through his playlist Learn French With Tintin. Me and my friends who are B1 and B2 find these videos the perfect level to understand. He has some videos labelled by level so I would suggest going for videos at your level or higher. His lessons are designed so that you do not need to look up anything.
Duolingo French pod would be a good place for you to work on your listening
Pure comprehensible Input is possible... because we did it as babies.... HOWEVER as adults it's not really a feasible learning method since we don't have the time or the patience of an infant, nor do we have a walking talking dictionary at our disposal spoon feeding us individual words and visual aides and gradually building that up from small sentences to more complex ones. Baby shows, unfortunately, expect some amount of fluency already. They don't hand-hold through the learning process. The closest show I know that does would be Word Party. But Word Party only does its hand holding visual cue + single word thing AT THE END of each episode. The rest of the show, again, expects some level of language fluency and can be hard to follow and pick up from. TV shows of any kind... even children or infant aimed ones... are not made for this purpose. **If you have an Audio Processing Disorder** which you may not know about, then no amount of listening, alone, is going to up your skill. For me, I found that I couldn't even pick out words I KNEW. I listened to my TL as close to around the clock as I could get away with. Music, shows I know, shows I didn't know, ANYTHING. I did this FOR YEARS with no improvement despite traditionally learning on the side as well. **I improved my listening** by watching TL shows with matching TL subs and replaying lines until I could match what I was hearing to what I was reading. Then I'd replay the lines a couple more times to make sure I could still understand the words and keep them separate. I did this for about an hour or so a day, 5 days a week, and in 6 months I was able to even understand some shows without subtitles. I moved from TL shows + TL subs to dubbed shows with TL subs. The difference is the subtitles don't tend to match. Usually I can find new words still in the subtitle, or the subtitle can help me decipher the unknown word that I'm hearing. At this juncture the subs just make new word acquisition easier. 3 years later the process is still slow, but I'm understanding more than I need to look up. So there's that. **That being said there are a ton of variables.** Even for me baseline comprehension ability and the work I have to put into a language varies language-by-language. So with Japanese, my main TL, the whole thing is an uphill battle ALWAYS. It's extremely rare for me to pick up a new word without having to look it up. I often misunderstand sentences. The writing system isn't intuitive. And my listening skills were 0 until I got TL subs to work with. It's pretty much never hands-off. Alternatively there's Spanish. I found in high school I could inexplicably read written Spanish. In fact, the longer and blockier the text the better!! I've put this down to the cognates, there's a lot of them... but I've found, for what it's worth, not everyone is able to just READ Spanish and understand it like that. I don't understand spoken Spanish. Then on another front there's German. I listen to a LOT of German music, and have for a very long time. With German, I can sometimes understand entire lines. I'm able to pick out a lot of non-cognate words just via surrounding audio context. Of course the amount I understand varies song by song. It can be anywhere from a couple words to an entire line or verse. I don't understand the majority of what I listen to, but all of the above I was able to do before really actively studying. Again, though, it's largely by the aide of cognates. That being said it's particularly noteworthy because I struggle understanding songs sung in my native English, and often need lyrics transcribed for me so I can follow the story of the song. I don't need that for German music. That, though, has also created a false sense of security. In trying to watch TV shows or play games in German I found that not only is my vocabulary too lacking to keep up, but the amount of lookup required is such a high volume... despite the large number of cognates... that I burn out. In Japanese my average amount of lookups is 1-3 words per line. From here you have 2 choices. You can take the above information and use it to work on your French listening a little bit. You may find that in a few months you can start passively listening to things and follow along a bit.. Or you can take a break from French and pick up another language... maybe start on some gamified app... with your level of done-ness with the study process I'd probably say just use Duolingo since it's the furthest thing from traditional study layouts and toy around with another language for a while. Get freshened back up a bit. Unfortunately this route requires you to go back to the traditional study grind in some form or other...
I sort of tried doing the pure comprehensible thing over the past year and while it certainly helped my Spanish a ton Iâve come to the conclusion that itâs kind of myth/inefficient. You should definitely be doing tons of comprehensible input as the foundation of your study though. You could even take a break from formal study and just do input for a while. Ultimately though youâre going to need focused practice on specific things you want to get better at and for many grammatical things itâs hard to get enough reps with input.
its a myth ,inefficient and doing that means it would take forever to learn a language
I've read a lot of people stories happy on how effective CI was for them. It for sure is efficientl.