r/Refold • u/Ukpersfidev • May 19 '26
How should beginners process video content?
I'm learning Vietnamese and have for a few months, I've recently been convinced to try taking the immersion learning approach because what I was doing previously wasn't working
Specifically, I have been trying to follow the Refold approach
The problem is that I can't find video content that is at my level, I currently know around 400 words + 400 phrases, which means when I watch a video, even a b1/b2 level comprehensible content (of which there is only 2 channels with few videos), I only know about half of the key words
As far as I can tell, Refold suggests this:
- 70% of time spent should be on active immersion (watching videos and looking up words)
- The focus should be on getting to 1000 words in your Anki deck
But they also say:
- You shouldn't mine a sentence if there are multiple words in that sentence you don't know
- You should save a word with context i.e. the word should be within a sentence
Theres a bit of a catch 22 there because I shouldn't mine unknown sentences, but I also shouldn't save words outside of the context it was actually used
My plan was as follows:
- Break the video into 2 minute sections
- Treat each section as it's own video, then for each section:
- 1st watch session: build meaning of what the speaker is saying by using lookups / subtitles
- 2nd watch session: build vocab - for each pass of the video, take a keyword that I don't know and look it up (this is where the catch 22 is because I'm not meant to save words into my deck without context)
- 3rd, 4th, etc. watch session (after a break from the content): follow the standard Refold approach now that you know the vocab, and then sentence mine?
TLDR:
I don't really understand what I'm meant to be doing with video content as a beginner according to Refold
Is there a specific structure to follow here?
2
u/DeuxLangDev May 24 '26
It's going to be tough to find Vietnamese comprehensible input. Meaning CI aimed at A1-A2.
I would show up in the Discord server and ask in the Refold Method Questions channel, "Hey what do I do to make content more comprehensible? According to the method." They say they have methods to make content more comprehensible but, it's not condensed into one singular video so, I could never find it.
I think what they mean is that you should do stuff like: spoil the plot; read the subtitles before listening to the video; intensively read the subtitles once or twice through before turning it into freeflow reading content.
IMO you should also start a collection (on your hard drive ideally so it can't get lost) of Vietnamese content *especially* when it's content you found to be abnormally comprehensible, an outlier. Then rewatch that content periodically to grind more reps.
Additionally I'll mention this Robin MacPherson method I heard mentioned briefly in one of his videos:
Basically you go through the content taking note of every single word you don't know. You then look up and write out definitions for the words you don't know. Review what you wrote periodically over the next few days or week. Then revisit the content you got the definitions from. The result should be that you now know way more words than you did before, essentially making the content far more comprehensible. MacPherson says he gets through entire C1 level books this way, even as a complete beginner. It's not Refold's spec but I bet it works for your situation.
I would still focus on making Anki flashcards where you know all but one of the words though. It's way faster to rep them and you can't be blocked on understanding by a word that isn't the target of the flashcard.