One year learning CZECH! What has Ben learned so far?

Thank you for sharing! I’d like to share my go-to language learning app, which is Immersive Translate. I use it to translate my webpages and documents, and even to watch Netflix every day, which has really helped me become immersed in my target language. I like it how I’m able to make it a part of my daily routine, and how it’s uses goes beyond that of translation.

im at 120h (of using Refold), learning German, in stage 2B.

I have felt similar experiences with Japanese. Many times I will watch content now because it's good content in Japanese and not just "to learn" the Japanese in the content. It's always nice to learn something, but outside of my active immersion time, in not worrying about missing vocabulary and such unless I need to know a specific term to understand it.

Very very excited for more videos about output and what you're doing specifically!

Blahopřeji! Vynikající, jen tak dál!

It's amazing see Ben very exciting learning Czech, and Idk why but i can almost understand him perfectly, maybe is because I do the decks of refold in the past haha, at this moment I am having problems when I am trying to make Output in my target language (English), in this moment I am focusing in improve my listening skills, and for the output stuff, idk what to do yet, but i can say that learn English is one of my best experiences ever.

Hello Ben and Refold! I’m curious on how Ben uses his vocabulary template(from the video “tech recommended from experienced language learner”)

It's been going well for me as well in 2024! Have gotten in ~136 hours since Feb. 11 (the day I switched to tracking time with Toggl), which is roughly ~1.8 hours/day and haven't missed a day (though some days had so little time spent that they just served to continue the streak). I'm working towards getting that up to 3 and ultimately 4 hours/day 😛

Nice job staying consistent and you’re learning faster than I learned / am learning Korean. No way would I ever almost get through the Harry Potter series in my first year.

quite interesting, my progress is quite similar within my past year of Korean😅

Great to hear your update! Refold has really inspired me to start tracking and to increase my daily time of input.
I logged 20 hours of French immersion in the last 2 weeks, and also started the 1K deck. I’m able to understand and enjoy more and more.

Where did you find a rapper to rap about refold? Or was that AI?

I guess you can say… it’s Ben a journey.

Great update, Ben! I am really looking forward to your output and results. Will you speak some Czech in them? I am also still learning Czech but have nothing to rival your consistency. What you have achieved is impressive!

Very inspiring!🎉

Hey! I commented on the previous update video about my Finnish journey, and I have learned a lot about myself and consistency since that time honestly. I started a new full-time job, and frankly, that threw me off quite a bit. I had a crazy ambitious goal of trying to maintain 3 hours per day, which admittedly, was a lot. Based on the time I had 2 hours was more manageable, but I realized that with the new commitments I had, my time, and more importantly, my brain was tired by the end of the day. Basically for the past month, I have been subsisting off of like 15-30 mins per day. I haven't missed a day, as I didn't want to and I wanted to be able to hop back on the horse, but man, it has been difficult.

I tried to listen to stuff on my way to work (I walk like an hour), and while that works occasionally, I find that the audio for things I want to listen to is too quiet and the noise around me is too loud to get anything meaningful out of it. Oh well haha. I still listen to things occasionally if there is good audio, but it has become a struggle. Normally that would be about 2 hours of my day, but because I have found it difficult to listen as walk a long ways, I found myself start to lapse on that.

I had 2 hours cut out for me after I got home, but I also felt like immersion was getting "in the way" of things I wanted to do as opposed to being the thing I wanted to do. I found things like talking to my spouse, making food, etc. becoming difficult because I wanted to do them and share my day with my spouse, but I felt the nagging to get to my immersion. Over time, time spent on immersion became less and less. I kept doing basically the bare minimum to keep up with things (Anki, a streak on Lingq, etc.).

Today was my first day getting back into the swing of things. Being sick, I had an excuse to focus back in on my Finnish stuff, and not only was it really fun again, but I was so surprised at how well I was understanding! That little bit of consistency and time spent per day cannot be overstated in its helpfulness. Basically, I hope that if anyone is struggling to reach their goals, keep doing the bare minimum. Often times I find myself focusing on being perfect, but at the end of the day, perfect is the enemy of the good. We make progress with time spent with the language, not just the most time. My goals and time frames for those goals have shifted slightly, but I'm still going! Good luck Ben, and good luck to everyone else as well!

That's some great progress, good job. Great video, very motivating.

Yeah, Ben! Always looking forward to these.

Thank you, Ben! My family heritage is Czech, and I have always wanted to learn how to speak it but thought it would be too hard. But now after watching your video, I have hope that I can speak the tongue of my father and his family! ❤