hey guys so today I'm gonna be answering
the question how often should you be
looking things up when you're immersing
so basically of course looking things up
while you're immersing is good because
then you a lot of the things you'll look
up you'll remember and then you won't
have to make cards for them you'll just
be increasing your vocabulary more and
it will help you become comprehend
whatever you're consuming more and not
only get more engaging and make it more
likely that you'll acquire more language
so of course looking things up is
desirable but at the same time it can be
a hassle it's pretty tedious it can be
you know really boring and so if you're
looking things up too often then it
really just starts to suck all the
enjoyment out of immersion and it just
makes the whole thing a giant shore and
in addition to this if you're getting
into that mode where you're just really
looking things up back to back to back
like every yeah sorry every couple
seconds then not only is that going to
be extremely tedious and painful but
your that informations and it's gonna
start going in one ear and out the other
because you're gonna get into kind of
this like weird days where you're just
staring at definitions one after the
other and you're not really gonna retain
the information it's gonna like lose all
the value that it has to your mind at
that moment and so really when we're
talking about how often should you be
looking things up while you're immersing
it comes down to how do we find the
balance between you know looking things
up so that we can learn and and
understand more and not going crazy and
not getting into it days where we won't
retain anything and my answer to this is
choose some sort of fixed amount of time
and say that you're only gonna look
something up within that amount of time
right like for example you could say
okay I'm gonna look something up around
every three minutes now of course you
don't want to actually be setting a
timer and trying to be like getting this
strict to the like to the second right
this is just a very kind of guideline
principle like hey it feels like about
this amount of times past I guess I
should look this up or like oh I just
hooked up to a word like a minute ago so
I'm just gonna skip this one you know
and if you continue to kind of adopt
this principle become more and more
intuitive and natural and you won't
really have to think about it over time
and the kind of logic behind this sort
of principle is that
what the guy when you're deciding
between whether you should you know look
something up or not it that decision
shouldn't really have very much to do
with how much are you understanding
total or how much are you not
understanding it really just has to do
more with you know how much time are you
spending looking things up compared to
how much time you're spending just
naturally reading because like I said
before if you're looking things up too
frequently then you're gonna go crazy
and not retain anything and you're gonna
it's gonna be an awful experience so it
doesn't really matter how much you're
understanding you know you shouldn't be
looking things up more than once every
couple minutes that's just kind of just
the bottom line and so of course once
you get better you know when you get
more advanced maybe they'll only be one
thing that you want to look up every few
minutes
maybe you'll though it will only be like
every 10 minutes where you come across
something that you want to look up and
in that case you can totally um you know
throw this principle out the window you
don't need to think about it anymore you
can look everything up that you want to
because even when you do so you're not
looking this up very often but it's
gonna be a while before you get to that
point especially when you're a beginner
and so when you are beginner you need to
kind of just create some sort of
principle like this that keeps you from
going crazy and you know allows you to
continue pushing through even when
you're surrounded by a lot of words that
you don't know and so yeah I would say
maybe three minutes you can play around
with it a you know depending on you know
your personal preferences the type of
media that you're consuming even your
your mood right like maybe you're
feeling you're feeling a little bit more
ambitions ambitious one day you can look
maybe look up a little bit more often
than usual but I really would not push
yourself because basically we're all you
know you're gonna have some kind of line
maybe it's looking something up once a
minute maybe it's three minutes maybe
it's ten minutes for you and if you try
to force yourself to look things up more
often than that then it's just gonna
become a chore you're gonna push through
at that time but then the next day when
you're thinking about how you want to
spend your time when your mind says how
about we read another part of your mind
is gonna say how about we just do that
later because that's really not very fun
and there's something else I'd rather do
you know and so basically it's really
important that you don't push yourself
and then make yourself start to
associate the experience of immersing
with the language with being a chore
because then you're just not gonna do it
no none of us have that much willpower
that's just the bottom line
and also the by kind of adding this sort
of um by adopting this principle you
also have this kind of added side
benefit of that it naturally forces your
mind to prioritize what its gonna look
up right because if you're reading a
book as a beginner and there's lots of
words that you don't know you know some
of those words will be words that you
feel like you've seen before that look
kind of familiar that you can just
intuitively grasp are probably really
valuable and look really basic and and
worth learning at that time in other
words maybe you feel like I've never
seen that before that kanji looks weird
this kind of seems like I don't know it
could be a waste of time to try to learn
this word at this point in my learning
and so naturally if you know like hey
well I just looked up the word a second
ago I'm gonna wait a few minutes before
I look a word up and you come across a
word that um that you know doesn't look
very valuable you're naturally gonna
gonna say well I don't want to use up my
one word for this few minutes on this
one you know I will probably be one that
looks more juicy that sticks out to me a
little bit more and so you'll naturally
end up when you do look things up you'll
naturally start looking up the ones that
are likely to help you the most because
if a word is really sticking out at you
that means that some deeper part of your
brain has probably already noticed it a
few times and it's by looking it up once
it's gonna be very likely that it'll
just stick and then you know you'll know
that word from that point on you'll
continue to notice it every time it
comes up and you'll still remember what
it means and so you'll be able to
reinforce that knowledge and this is
especially important when you're talking
about reading as a beginner because
basically um when you're when you're
dealing with trying to immerse in
content that you don't uncompromised
medium
you you're getting a lot more clues as
to what's going on like what story is
being told what message is is being
given just because of all the sound and
all the visuals right and so even if
you're missing a lot of language input
then you can still you know get a pretty
good grasp of like all the others these
characters they're doing this this
characters like this scare goes about
whatever and also you also get like the
emotionality of the way they say things
and also in general language like for
example if if it's a kind of a TV show
like a drama or an anime or whatever um
the language use is just going to be
easier because it's gonna be spoken
language and written language is just
you know necessarily denser has a larger
vocabulary and is you know harder to
understand kind of just inherently and
finally and perhaps the most important
thing is that an audio-visual based
medium it has the time component built
into it you know an anime episode is 20
minutes and if you don't pause it it's
gonna take you 20 minutes and so a lot
of times if you're just watching through
it's easier to just let things that you
missed um go by and you know like hey
someone said something you didn't
understand it whatever the thing just
keeps going it it has that pace built in
and so it's easier to let go of what you
didn't understand and continue to just
focus on whatever it like new language
every moment like whatever is coming
into your ears
at that moment and and there's also the
component of if you're watching
something without subtitles you know
that sometimes like if you hear
something and you didn't understand it
there's nothing you can't look it up
there's nothing you can do because if
you if your brain couldn't Acura
accurately parse all of the phonemes
which I'll oftentimes it won't be it you
you won't be able to in the beginning
then really you don't even know what to
look up because you couldn't hear
exactly what was said and so again that
just makes it easier to kind of let go
and can you know stay with the flow and
just keep watching and fun you know
waiting until those perfect low low
hanging fruit type sentences pop out at
you and grow your ability but when
you're dealing with text you don't have
any of these benefits right it's like
first of all if you wanted to you could
look everything up because it's all
right there
you can go as slow as you want there's
no time component it's up to you to
decide what speed you're going to
consume the content with and it's just
much harder and there's you know more
words used and so when you first start
reading it's really going to feel
like like well I mean if you're a
westerner you're probably gonna feel
tempted to just try to look up almost
every word because that's kind of the
way that we're taught in schools right
it's like don't move on until you've
understood something perfectly write it
we're almost conditioned to be
uncomfortable with vagueness and and not
understanding things but this is just
really gonna get in the way of learning
how to read because at the beginning
you're not gonna be able to understand
very much that's just a reality like a
lot of times when people try to start
learning how to read what uh what
happens is they understand so little
they get so frustrated then they just
say okay well I guess I'm not good
enough yet I'll come back to reading in
a few months or a year or whatever and
I'll just go back to learning with audio
visual medium mediums and that's fine
because it is true that the more base
ability you have it's the easier it's
gonna be to learn how to read and you
can train that kind of base level of
ability by using those audio-visual
mediums but there's also a certain
component of just that reading is a
different skill than learning to
understand spoken language or even
subtitle based spoken link like spoken
language with the help of subtitles and
until you practice reading you're not
gonna be able to read so you you just
have to kind of push your way through
this paradox of if you want to become
able to do task a then you have the only
way is to is to do task you can only
learn how to do task a by doing tasks a
it's kind of just as paradox even though
you can't do it yet so you just gotta
kind of jump in and start reading and
you're not gonna understand very much
but basically you just have to learn to
let go of wanting to look up everything
if wanting to understand everything just
keep going make you know set a rule like
I'm only gonna look something up every
few minutes or if you're reading a book
you can change the rules whoo I'm only
gonna look up one thing per page or even
like maybe two things for a page at the
beginning and stick to that it's gonna
I'll help you continue to move on not
get too frustrated not have it be too
tedious and naturally hone in on the
words that are gonna be most valuable
for you to look up because they popped
out at you or whatever and over time
even though you won't understand very
much at the beginning you'll slowly or
start to understand more and more and
that's really the only way you're going
to be able to read
native content in the language is
through pushing through that and if you
do push through that you'll get better
extremely quickly so you kind of have to
it's kind of um you might say an
acquired taste right being able to enjoy
that process of reading and slowly
getting better at reading even though
you're understanding so little but even
if it you don't find it that enjoyable
at first it is a taste that I think most
people will be able to acquire you know
like I said in my video from a few years
ago about how to have fun right you got
to kind of switch your mindset to I'm
consuming a piece of entertainment like
I would in my native language - I'm
playing this game of how much can I
understand how how can I solve this
puzzle which is you know the foreign
language and so yeah that is pretty much
all I have to say on this topic
basically no matter how much your
understanding no matter how much your
intuition tells you that you should look
up or how much you feel you want to look
up only look something up either once a
page or once every interval of time mess
around at the interval of time don't try
to push yourself this is like a you have
to really be looking at the long-term
here and if even if you're only looking
everything one thing up every three
minutes eventually you'll still get to
the point where you have looked up
everything right there's no really no
rush here don't go crazy focus on trying
to follow the plot and not worrying
about all the little nuances of all the
words or whatever and if you feel like
you want to learn how to read now go for
it don't let the lack of common of
understanding stop you just keep pushing
through it'll get there okay that's all
I have to say thanks a lot guys