During the first 2 months of learning Korean it was all fun and games, but I felt like I was missing something. Going through some textbooks most definitely gives you the basics, but that was all I did for the first 2 months. All the content I watched was still with English subtitles, as let’s be real I couldn’t understand a damn thing.

So instead of accepting that this is my life now, I lost myself in this rabbit hole on YouTube about language learning. Before I knew I was spending countless of hours researching about different ways and methods that could help me learn a language. Which to probably no surprise I found out about ‘Refold’.

I started reading more about Refold and the method(s) they describe on how to acquire a language. Maybe like many others, at first I was really skeptical about it, thinking to myself “Can I really learn a language by watching content in that language?”. However, then it hit me! I started to think how I learned English and figured out I couldn’t remember anything I learned in school… I mostly watched a lot of shows and played a lot of games in English when I was younger. This was the epiphany I needed and decided to just go for it.

During the first month of following the immersion approach, I mainly focused on getting all my tools setup and the habits of immersing down. This includes passive listening, reading, watching shows, basically anything that I can immerse myself in with Korean.

This means I also got back into Anki, but this time with the right settings so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. I use(d) ‘TTMIK’s First 500 Korean word by Retro’ which is free and the KO1K deck from Refold which is paid.

At last in this period of time I probably changed my plan every week a little bit. Just to find what was right for me (e.g. deciding on 30 minutes of watching a day at the start, or reading at least 1 chapter).

<aside> 💡 Important to note is that you will not per se see a whole lot during the first few months. Sure there are wins here and there, but it will take a while for your brain to get adjusted to all of this

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