As you progress throughout your language learning journey, you'll reach different milestones and will need some change in strategy. Here we try to break down each stage so you can better understand what you need to focus on at all times.
Breaking down the process into stages comes with the added benefit of making the transition from a different learning method easier. Just pick the stage you feel describes your current ability and go from there.
You've just started your language learning journey. You know less than 500 words and have just started immersing. At this point you won't understand much but that's okay!
The more you listen and read the more words will start to sound familiar to you. You should be using a flashcard deck of the most common words. The name of the game here is to go from nothing to something. It may not seem like it at first but this is the shortest stage. Even if you don't understand a lot you will start picking up words rapidly and the language will start to feel familiar. You'll know you're ready to move on when you can recognize around half the words used in kids shows.
You're finishing up memorization of the most common words and have started to understand short sentences.
In many ways stages 1 - 2 are the most rewarding. It's at this point in time you should start sentence mining (see our guide). You're going to be moving from word recognition to targeted sentence comprehension in this stage. We suggest you up the difficulty slightly and watch content geared towards teenagers. The difficulty increase will be noticeable but your goal isn't perfect comprehension. We want to expose you to more advanced vocabulary at this stage while you continue to master the basics. You'll know you're ready to move on when you can grasp the plot of most kids shows even if you miss minor details.
You've mastered basic comprehension and can understand content geared towards younger audiences.
It's at this stage we suggest you spend the bulk of your time with content you enjoy. Content geared towards adults is subject to the domain effect. Vocabulary becomes specialized and so-called "rare words" become common within their domain. For example, words relating to spell-casting or medieval hierarchy will become common as you start to engage with fantasy works. Because of this, your first priority is to master one of these domains you enjoy. If you enjoy romance you should consume as much romance content as possible. This allows you to side-step frequency issues and more rapidly develop mastery in a subset of the language. You'll know you're ready to move on when you can engage with adult content. At this point there will still be unknown words but you'll notice they no longer interfere with your ability to enjoy what you're watching.
Progress has seemed slow and imperceptible up to this point. But... You realize you're actively engaging with and enjoying adult content in your target language.
Congratulations! While the occasional unknown word still pops up and you still encounter some cultural confusion, you can confidently say you understand this language. At this point, if you've followed our stages, you have confident comprehension in a particular subset of the language. In stage 3 and beyond, it's up to you to learn what you want. You already have the tools and understanding to have learned one domain. You can continue to expand to other domains or try to hone in more on any particular one you already understand.
It's also at this point we recommend deliberate output practice. If you can understand a subset of the language confidently you've already internalized the vocabulary and grammar (completely unconsciously!) needed to output. This will be shakey at first but you are likely to be understood by natives. You can feel free to use other resources to master your accent. Good output comes from good input. You can start by mimicking the language you've been exposed to over the past few months (or years). If you find yourself unable to express a certain idea, look out for it the next time you immerse.