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I think the idea of just immersing oneself in a language is incredibly natural and intuitive, and sounds like the least stress-inducing of all the possible methods one could use. And I've heard that it works: plunge yourself into a language, and eventually it starts to "click". You start to think the way the language works, and it just takes off. But reading this description, I have a bit of decent insight into the process, and I sorta get how it's possible. I agree that subtitles are basically chaos and noise; if you're trying to learn another language, it'll throw you right off. See my other answer to 'mkaziz' one level up. The context thing is very interesting. On the one hand, it can seem incredibly intuitive to want a perfectly flat, scopeless index into memory and facts, but it's functionally impossible (with computers right now too - web and other large index searches go through MapReduce and similar. When we can directly search all of RAM in realtime life will be very different!). But, context is vital to mental organization, and I've observed this to amusing effect when I have, on many, many occasions realized I've used the same terms or acronyms in different contexts in technology and not realized the connection :P I don't read magazines, so scene websites like Reddit-in-whatever-language will have to fill in there. But the Web moves quite a bit faster than print (hours as opposed to many days, in some cases) which might help a slow beginner keep up with trends, but I can imagine it becoming an overload quickly, especially with places that talk entirely using slang and/or memes. The bit where you mention how your brother "forced himself to do it" and succeeded is strongly reminiscent of neuroplasticity literature, which describes a sort of anti-plateau point where for a short period no progress appears to be made in spite of continued concerted effort, and then suddenly (eventually) results begin to snowball. A most curious phenomenon that makes me think of |