Refold Approach to Language Learning: Russian
Background
The Refold/Mass Immersion Approach (https://refold.la/) is an immersion-based method for language learning. Unlike traditional language learning methods, there much less emphasis on direct study of grammar. Instead, the focus is on immersing yourself in content in your target language and picking up the language similarly to how you learned your first language.
My Background/Progress Overview
I first heard about Refold from my friend Deus Ex Vita and his progress learning Spanish (his latest post here). I was inspired to learn a language too, though for a while I wasn’t sure which one to choose. After some consideration, I decided to learn Russian because of my love for Dostoevsky’s novels (Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books of all time). Someday, I would like to be able to read Dostoevsky’s books and other native Russian literature in its original language. I started learning Russian in Mid-September (about 5 months ago) after passing my grad school qualifying exam. I’ve never had any intentional exposure with the Russian language before, so I was starting from square one. I started by gradually familiarizing myself with the Cyrillic alphabet and learning the sounds of Russian over the course of a week. Then, I started learning some vocabulary and doing immersion.
Total immersion time (including Anki): ~133 hours.
Anki
Total review time: 76 hours
Using the spaced repetition flashcard app Anki, I’ve been learning vocab by studying the 1000 most frequently used Russian words from this deck (here: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2037470492). I set my Russian deck to introduce 7 new cards per day, which gradually built up to ~70–90 reviews per day. Because I now have a foundation of those top thousand words (I saw #1000 a few weeks ago), intentional vocabulary expansion will be done by sentence mining (more about that below).
Listening
Total Listening Immersion time: 53 hours.
So far, my listening time has consisted of watching Russian dubs of animes I’ve seen before and watching some Russian content on YouTube. After two weeks of vocabularly study, I started immersing with a Russian dub of Avatar: the Last Airbender. While I was able to pick up on some basic vocabulary (e.g., Zuko says “uncle” a lot, so that was easy to figure out), most of the words ran together and were unintelligible because of my lack of familiarity with the vocab. Even though Avatar is a show that I enjoy and am familiar with (having seen it three times in English), not being able to understand the majority of what was said was frustrating. Because of that, I began searching for more comprehensible content on YouTube. I discovered the Comprehensible Russian channel and quickly switched to that as my primary source of immersion. Their videos are easy to understand because of the basic vocabulary and explanation of words and concepts through drawings. I’ve seen all the videos in their Beginner Zero playlist and most of the videos in the Beginner One playlist. Fairly early on (I think around late-October) I watched their biographical videos on Dostoevsky, though I didn’t understand very much at that time. I rewatched those videos in early January and was very pleased when I found I understood more than 90% of what was being said. Encouraged by that experience, I started watching Avatar again. I finished Avatar in January while isolating at home with covid, and I am now watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
Future Plans: After Fullmetal Alchemist, I’m going to watch Russian dubs of Deathnote and Code Geass. After that, I plan to start watching native content.
Reading
Total Immersion time: 4 hours.
My roommate Deus Ex Vita got me a Russian translation of the Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas. Now that I’ve “finished” my vocab Anki deck, I’m reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’ve read two chapters so far, which took 4 hours. The first couple of pages of the first chapter were pretty easy because there was a lot of dialogue which used simple vocabulary. The later pages in that chapter have a lot of exposition describing how Lucy comes to find herself in Narnia, which was much more difficult for me to understand. My reading pace is gradually getting faster, as the second chapter had almost twice as many pages and I read those in the same time that it took me to read the first chapter. While reading each chapter, I did some sentence mining for N+1 sentence cards. N+1 sentences are sentences in which you know the meaning of all the words but one. After finding such a sentence, I write it down and later make it into an Anki flashcard with the unknown word underlined and the definition of the word on the back of the card. Putting the word in the context of a sentence makes it easier to remember what it means.
Future Plans: continue reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe then read the other Chronicles of Narnia books. At some point, will also read a collection of Pushkin’s short stories.
Grammar
I’ve done some study of the noun/adjective cases and verb endings, though not much more than making some Anki cards for memorizing some of those. I figure I’ll implicitly learn most of the grammar through immersion, though I may do some light study on specific topics.
Overall Impressions
The first two months were quite difficult and not very enjoyable. I’m pretty motivated by a sense of achievement, so switching to something easier was a good choice. Noticing my recent improvement in comprehension has been a lot of fun and I’m glad that I’ve stuck with it. I am excited to continue the journey and will make another update post once I reach ~300 hrs of immersion.
You can check out my immersion progress here
