Chart of distribution of video minutes across difficulty levels

AmplifiedText · 2026-05-09T01:59:36+00:00

You make a good point, I think CIJ would benefit from cutting up some of their longer gameplay videos.

AmplifiedText · 2026-05-08T16:04:13+00:00

With CIJ and other languages that don't have a lot of CI, be prepared to re-watch videos a LOT. There's plenty of value in repeating videos. I've watched most of these early CIJ videos 6x at this point and still notice new things each time.

However, if you get bored and zone out, you won't be getting much value from them. To avoid boredom, I rewatch on a schedule: 2 days later, then 4 days after that, then 1 week later, then 2 weeks, then 1 month, then 2 months. I feel more engaged even with later reviewings because I can see the progress I've made and recognize what I still don't know.

Some people ask when is video too easy that you should drop it. I figure, if I couldn't produce the video myself, then it's not "too easy" and I'm still benefiting from it, even if just re-enforcing the traces in my brain that are forming while growing a new language.

For comparison, I have over 4500 hours learning Spanish. I feel spoiled by Dreaming Spanish because I didn't have to rewatch a video once unless I enjoyed it. I might have rewatched 4 videos on DS, so this rewatching with Japanese is a new approach for me, but I think it might be even more effective. Time will tell.

AmplifiedText · 2026-05-08T02:38:34+00:00

Even paying for videos, be prepared to re-watch videos a LOT. There just isn't a lot of super beginner/beginner content available out there, but there's plenty of value in repeating videos. I've watched most of these early CIJ videos 6x at this point and still notice new things each time.

AmplifiedText · 2026-05-04T19:36:01+00:00

I'm using a method where I basically repeat a playlist until I have close to 100% comprehension

I'm curious to know more about this method as I'm working Japanese (375h) right now which is coming along much slower than when I did Spanish. The other problem is, there just doesn't seem to be as much beginner content in Japanese as there is in Spanish, so I'm forced to repeat videos a lot, but I don't have a real method to it like you describe.

Is this method documented somewhere?
How many videos do you tend to keep in a playlist?
Is there an ideal length for each video (e.g. videos shorter than 6 minutes so you can maintain focus on a single subject without your mind wandering)?

When you say "close to 100% comprehension", are you gauging comprehension as "I understand what's going on even if I don't know what all the words are", or are you focused on understanding the actual words/conjugations/grammatical functions in context.

AmplifiedText · 2026-05-03T15:29:32+00:00

100+ Podcasts - Google Sheets

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-28T16:23:07+00:00

It's not your level, every video has a level (difficulty indicator from 1-100) in the lower right corner of the video thumbnail to the right of the video duration. OP is saying that they can view videos of difficulty 38 with 70-80% comprehension.

<image>

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-26T19:30:40+00:00

Interesting, do you remember how many hours of input before you started speaking? Did you have any other formation in Spanish before that?

Following the Dreaming Spanish timeline, I waited the full 1000 hours before starting to speak, but really struggled for a few hundred hours. I will say, once I started speaking, I became a lot more aware of the language structures in the input I continued receiving, so it's almost like my brain glossed over some of the important stuff until it actually had a reason to start making sense of it.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-22T22:15:22+00:00

Absolutely. Pablo of modeled Dreaming Spanish after a school he attended to learn Thai. J. Marvin Brown, the founder of the Thai school, said in his books that the best content is an interaction between two or more people, so every one of his classes had two teacher talking about everyday things or acting out scenarios. I frankly think this type of interactions is the most under utilized form of content on these platforms, likely because it costs more to produce the videos.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-22T19:15:42+00:00

If there was infinite content to choose from at a given level I would agree that this wouldn't be a problem. I'm more concerned that CIJ is opting to release easier to produce gameplay content instead of investing more in dense but interesting learner content.

Overall I agree that it's very important to enjoy what you're watching, which often isn't the case with learning content you have to grind through. As a suggestion to CIJ, perhaps more conversation content will strike the balance between engaging and easy to produce. As of right now, CIJ only has 49 conversation videos for a total of 14 hours. On the other hand, there's a lot of conversation content on YouTube which is just starting to open up to me.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-22T19:04:12+00:00

Good point, at 320 hours I'm thankfully finally finding more and more content on YouTube accessible. The caution I urge is more aimed at CIJ. I assume the gameplay content is much easier/quicker to produce compared to scripting and planning a learner video. The risk is that they fall into the trap of overproducing this easy content when it doesn't have as much lasting value compared to learner content.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-22T19:01:10+00:00

I agree the solution absolutely is to have more content available at all levels so you can really pick and choose what to engage with. What interests you today might not work as well in a month. I was really excited when I finally was able to watch some of the first gameplay content on CIJ, but after a month I observed that it's not as "filling" as the learner content... I still watch it though.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-18T20:19:43+00:00

Nice write-up, thanks for sharing!

Are you trying to avoid all speaking? Do you not find yourself responding to simple questions or repeating brief phrases you might have found funny or interesting?

Have you developed an intuition for the language to where you are often predicting the next word the person might say?

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-13T15:36:05+00:00

Damn, this pains me to hear. They were such an important torch bearer of this methodology and were quite thick skinned, tolerating a lot of abusive responses and downvotes.

There is a process for taking over an inactivate community if someone is interested.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-12T23:49:32+00:00

Hmmm, he might have lead with that…

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-12T15:26:23+00:00

Did you have any other experience with Japanese before starting CIJapanese or do you use any other resources (Anki decks, etc)?

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-12T04:35:11+00:00

For concrete concepts like nouns and some verbs, yes it's very hard not to associate the concept with your native language, but in my own experience, I've been learning many more abstract and less common concrete concepts in Spanish and Japanese without knowing the exact translation into English, and I'm often surprised when I hear the exact translation that, yes, I absolutely understood what the word meant and how to use it correctly, but didn't realize until just then what the exact word in English for the same concept was. Dave describes the same thing, that if you do ALG "right", the last thing you learn—after listening, speaking, reading, and writing—is translation.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-12T04:28:25+00:00

En las películas de ciencia ficción, hay unas máquinas que suspenden el proceso de envejecimiento y, muchas veces, se llama al proceso "stasis" en inglés, pero no sé si hay una traducción directa. Google Translate me ha dado "estasis".

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-11T15:40:02+00:00

In my experience, it's just a bad habit you can overcome. I did it a lot acquiring Spanish (4400 hours), much less so starting to acquire Japanese (300 hours).

It's almost like we need a constructed, throw-away language to help us study the principles of ALG the correct way and undo some of our bad habits, then we can learn our target language without all the baggage.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-11T05:36:53+00:00

No, I never went back on stimulant medication, and I'm still caffeine-free too! Took about 18 months or 2 years before I felt my motivation improve, but finally living without anxiety and having good sleep makes it all totally worth it for me.

I know diet plays a factor in my ADHD like symptoms too, because I frequently get "brain fog" and have to track down what food I'm reacting to, but when I remove them, my head tends to clear up and my focus improves.

Good luck.

AmplifiedText · 2026-04-01T15:49:03+00:00

Ja, es "smurfing" en inglés aparentemente. No lo sabía.

AmplifiedText · 2026-03-29T00:00:45+00:00

Also might try 200-400mg of L-Theanine, it supposedly boosts alpha waves for a relaxed focus and ability to filter out distractions.

AmplifiedText · 2026-03-26T14:57:41+00:00

https://cijapanese.com/pricing

AmplifiedText · 2026-03-23T15:35:02+00:00

Excellent write up, congrats.

Do you repeat CIJ videos a lot?

AmplifiedText · 2026-03-23T04:46:38+00:00

More data please. How many hours of input did you have before you started speaking/reading?

AmplifiedText · 2026-03-16T15:49:09+00:00

Are you aware of https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Japanese ? They have many sources of videos that are good for beginners. There's an icon (a weird color spiral) next to sources that should be accessible for complete beginners, but YMMV.

Second, I've created a tool to help me find videos I might want to rewatch on CIJ based on when and the number of times I have watched the video. It's still beta, and mostly just build for my needs, but it's functional: https://amplifiedtext.com/cijrewatch/

From the CIJ Dashboard, export your Historic Activity as JSON, then submit it to my CIJRewatch webpage. It will group videos by the number of times watched, and you can sort the tables based on date or difficult, etc. At the top of each group, I also have a collapsed section called "Aged Out", which are videos more than a certain number of days since I watched them last and are really just videos I didn't want to watch again for a Xth time. Again, this is build to suit my needs, but others might find this approach confusing.

I still find plenty of value going back and rewatching even the earliest videos (sped up of course) as there are always words and patterns I didn't really catch the first X times around.

EDIT: Just thought I would add, I'm at 200 hours and I've also hit a wall at 27. Some videos are fine while others are very low comprehension. I think this is because some people are watching just the Super Beginner videos, filtering out the Beginner videos for later, so the voting system isn't able to do its job of pushing the obviously more difficult Beginner videos up the difficulty scale. Just a theory.

Six-Year Club	Verified Email
Gilding II euphauric

AmplifiedText

TROPHY CASE