In the video, I mention "primed listening", which is a new technique for making content comprehensible. It's an mpv script that automatically pauses the video at the beginning of each subtitle line, gives you a moment to read the English subtitle, and then automatically unpauses the video and hides the subtitles, allowing you to fully listen to the Japanese audio. Migaku also now supports primed listening. I explain all about it on the 5th day of my free 7 day course, which you can access here: https://mattvsjapan.com

The problem is that videos likes this one are more enjoyable than videos in the native languages am learning....

The thing is you have to transition your mindset from enjoying language learning to enjoying content in the language, at around stage 4 the enjoyment you're measuring is just fundamentally of a different nature.

One thing worth mentioning about getting a “language high” (and therefore getting rewarded for making it past the hard stages) when you start getting into the higher stages you essentially start unlocking the world of language. New friends, unique experiences, and new ways of looking at things, all of these have been the greatest “high” for me ;).

The secret to getting through "the dark night of the soul" is two things: 1. Find content you really enjoy and 2. Be okay with not understanding most of it.

We’re so back

So the way to "stream entry" is basically 頑張って.

I feel lucky that Spanish is my target language because I have Dreaming Spanish. Your point about not having that perfect level content for Japanese is something I think Pablo is gonna tackle soon for the same reason (he also speaks Japanese and lived there for a few years).

This model also feels super accurate! Glad to see you break this down—lots of people probably get stuck in that pit of the dark night and think they can’t get out. Definitely possible though.

Glad to see more Matt vs Japan, too!

There should be a stage where you stop watching “how to become fluent in Japanese” videos and see them as a waste of time. But of course, only after watching them all twice at least lol

yeah, I dropped chinese during the dark night of the soul. I think I just had no idea how many hours it actually takes and I was starting to doubt myself. I think knowing that it's like 2,000 hours to get into native content actually would have helped me to understand that I had nowhere near enough hours and that I just had to grind it out and believe.

the dark night part is actually a part of almost any learning path. its easy to forget that. still sucks when you’re in it though

I've never seen your channel. But what a coincidence. I'm currently deep in stage two and yesterday I thought to myself "I'll just pick some relatively easy anime, download the subtitles, generate cards for all words I don't know, and then watch it". I'm going to give it a try, this encouraged me! :D

I just passed 600 hours of immersion recently, and yeah the stream entry stage perfectly describes where I'm at. So glad I pushed through the dark knight of the soul and can't wait for the Goldilocks zone

This is exactly what I needed because I've been stuck in "the dark night of the soul" for 1-2 years now, just slogging it out, concentrating on reading and writing kanji, learning vocabulary, trying to watch content but most of it seems still out of my range.  It's so good to see your thoughts on how to transition out of that phase and even better to hear that the Goldilocks zone may be next!  Going to adjust my tactics now, based on your advice.

Do you think the dark night of the soul is easier to overcome if you're studying your 2nd foreign language?  Or maybe it's harder because the novelty of learning a foreign language isn't there to help motivate you to persevere?

im definitely in the later stage 2, and i have been for probably over half a year now, while still seeing notable progress. i think i have just been working hard to nail the fundamentals down so that way when i do branch out to new domains is becomes easier. i wonder if theres anyway to increase the speed of this process

regardless, glad you are back

I finally feel im slowly climbing out of stage 2. a few things have fallen into place. I was falling to sleep to a podcast and without overthinking it and  understood some full sentences, it even felt like i had just heard it in English,  I didn't translate in my mind first, it was a strange feeling but inspirational :)

One thing i have been doing when i get bit overwhelmed or the tedium creeps in, is to watch either a Matt video...for some inspiration or to watch some trash TV. in English I've been using the Office. Firstly they are low effort easy watching and one ep is done in 20mins...secondly as it's trash tv it does not take long for me to start thinking about how much time i am wasting by watching it and i start to naturally feel i want to get back to immersion in my target asap.

took me about 2 minutes to realize this is matt vs japan

I'm at 375 hours in Russian, and I am definitely slogging through stage 2 and have been for a while. I just keep telling myself not to quit; it will get better! I also found that stage 1 was much shorter than stage 2 has been. The initial excitement did not last long, and like month 3 was probably the worst it has been. It has been getting slowly better since then, and I am very ready to be able to understand a lot more of what I listen to.

so happy matt is back!!!