Hello all! If you saw my first attempt at creating this thread, apologies! I’ve been aware of Natively for a while but just found out about the forums so I’m learning as I go lol
I have a chronic case of stop-and-go language learning and it’s driving me insane. I need SOME type of accountability and commiseration, even if it is just strangers on the internet. I like the look/vibes of other people’s learning logs here so let’s give this a go. Everyone else here looks pretty advanced language-wise but I’ll use that as motivation!! I’ll be able to read the books I want to read in Korean someday too!!
I DREAM of the day I can get past the boring beginner content in both languages, but I tend to do a little bit of comprehensible input for a few days/weeks and fall off, then go back to where I started. I’m literally sisyphus and it’s killing me.
korean backstory
moved to korea in 2019 to teach english with ZERO knowledge of korean language or culture (didn’t listen to kpop or watch kdramas, I was literally just a dumb college grad who wanted to live and work abroad). fell in LOVE with the language and committed to studying a lot while I was there. had to leave pretty suddenly and basically against my will in 2020 due to a family crisis (and covid didn’t help) and it’s the biggest regret of my life not returning once the family stuff settled down. tried to improve my korean over the six years since I left but haven’t made any meaningful #gains.
spanish backstory
took 2 years in high school and 1 semester in college. I swear I retained nothing and hated it. now that I’m US bound for the foreseeable future (have a license in the medical field and love my job/the stability so I’m not becoming a digital nomad anytime soon) most of my vacations will be to spanish speaking countries and wouldn’t it be so cool to actually speak the language of the country im visiting!!! and also yeah medical field- I simply need to know spanish and frankly it’s embarrassing that I don’t.
Discovering dreaming spanish/comprehensible input method was really a game changer for me; however, I do not see myself going ‘purist’ with that method since I love a bit of structure beyond time spent.
Goals for now:
- Refold’s anki decks for Spanish and Korean just to grease the gears. Might mess around with Pimsleur or Paul Noble for a bit until I get to the all target language listening level.
- Work my way through Talk to Me in Korean’s catalogue because I love checking items off a list. I’m definitely not fully reading every book or doing any of the fill in the blank activities, but most of their books can be found on zlib and they provide free audio on their website, so I just listen to the example sentences and follow along in the book, that way I ‘absorb’ the grammar through lots of example sentences instead of english explanations.
- do 20-30 minutes of whatever TTMIK book I’m on followed by 20-30min of comprehensible input (liking the lengualytics website so far for this because I get too distracted on youtube)
- watch 1 dreaming spanish video a day until it feels less painful.
Comprehensible input as of 25 August 2026:
Korean: 68 hours (not giving myself credit for current knowledge base, this is just my tracked hours) (started tracking April 2025 which gives you a good idea of my (in)ability to stick to something lol #sad)
Spanish: 44 hours (started tracking Feb 2026)
Slow and Steady:
I went back to school May 2025 to further my career which is why my progress will be super slow and stay slow until I graduate July 2027. Time will pass regardless and some progress is better than no progress!!! Hopefully by spring 2028 I’ll have time/money to travel again so I need to get through the noob grind sooner rather than later.
Currently school + work already take up 50 hours a week (not including homework, commute, food, exercise, yadda yadda) and my therapist tells me i need to CHILL OUT with the ‘pressure’ im putting on myself to do other things, but like. I spend so much time every day on twitter and reddit (EMBARRASSING!). like sure I need time to decompress but I can relax while going on walks and watching easy videos in korean/spanish instead of actively rotting my brain. going back to school and trying to actually learn a language made me realize my attention span has been absolutely DESTROYED by my phone/social media so I need to lasso in some self-discipline. with grace and understanding and self-kindness of course.
I plan to do monthly updates!!! Fighting!!
I keep meaning to but…yeah. My schedule just makes it a lot easier for me to throw on a podcast while driving or doing laundry, skincare, etc.
I know so many bad words in French thanks to Instagram
but yeah I don’t think solo talking podcasts are for me in any language
There’s one on the Japanese side of the forums…
Level 1 + Workbook [completed 26/8/26]
Even though almost everything on TMMIK is paywalled now (remember when their podcast was free for all levels?? We didn’t know how good we had it) they at least provide ALL AUDIO for EVERY BOOK on their website! 
Korean CI Shout-out of the Month
