A Day in Level 1

At Level 1, your goal is to build a strong foundation in vocabulary and basic sentence patterns by engaging with real-life activities in your local community. Each component of the Level 1 learning process helps you move from passive listening to active comprehension and response.

This article explains the four key components of Level 1:

• Participant Observation (PO)
• Planning & Processing (PP)
• Language Session (LS)
• Active Listening (AL)

🧍‍♀️ 1. Participant Observation (PO)

Goal: Get firsthand exposure to daily life and collect material for language learning.

Each week, spend 10–12 hours engaging with the people and routines of your local community. Your goal is to observe and participate in activities across all 12 Areas of Language & Culture, such as food, clothing, tools, health, transportation, and more.

What to Do:

• Walk through Life Routines (LR) with locals (e.g., making breakfast, going to the market).
• Take photos of each step in the routine for later use in Language Sessions.

• Jot down notes and questions about what you observe.

  Take photos of these life routines. Each should include:

  • 12–15 step-by-step photos
  • 2 overview photos
  • Observation notes
• Upload these photos in the Life Routines section of Level 1.

Tip:

Make sure you engage in all 12 cultural areas over time to ensure broad exposure to everyday language.

Learn more.

🧠 2. Planning & Processing (PP)

Goal: Prepare visuals and vocabulary for your Language Session.

What to Do:

• Choose 40-60 vocabulary words based on the Language Domains provided in the app.
• Upload or take photos to represent the target vocabulary.

Learn more.

🗣️ 3. Language Session (LS)

Goal: Learn new vocabulary by listening and responding to full sentence frames.

Spend 12–15 hours/week in Language Sessions with a native-speaking helper using your prepared photo set.

What to Do:

1. Present your photos to the helper using hte app.
2. Ask them to use a simple sentence frame (e.g., “Where is the ___?” or “Show me the ___.”) for each vocabulary item.
3. Point to the correct picture as they say the sentence.
4. Have the helper repeat each phrase 8–10 times.
5. Once you’ve heard all the words, ask the helper to use them in randomized order (still using full sentences).
6. Record a 3–5 minute randomized audio of all phrases with pauses for later practice.

Start with Listen and Act exercises (Lessons 1–25). As you gain confidence, transition to Listen and Act While Speaking (Lessons 26–50), where you also speak or repeat the phrases aloud.

Learn more.

🎧 4. Active Listening (AL)

Goal: Deeply process what you heard during your Language Session.

For each recording, spend time each day doing focused listening activities. This is your main tool for internalizing vocabulary and sentence patterns.

The 10 Steps of Active Listening:

1. Mentally repeat what you hear as you act.
2. Repeat aloud as you hear and act.
3. Transcribe parts of the recording to clarify unknown words.
4. Repeat the recording sentence-by-sentence with pauses.
5. Fully transcribe the text.
6. Confirm pronunciation with a helper.
7. Repeat the recording while reading the transcript.
8. Repeat the recording without a transcript or pauses.
9. Back-translate (sentence-by-sentence with pauses).
10. Back-translate the whole recording without pauses.

Once you’ve completed these steps for a recording, you’ve fully engaged with it.

⏱️ Weekly Time Breakdown (For a Full-Time Learner)

🧩 Summary

Level 1 is about immersing yourself in real-world routines, preparing photo-based vocab lessons, learning through structured input, and reinforcing what you hear. By combining observation, planning, live practice, and deep listening, you'll build a foundation of 2000–3000 high-frequency words and 12–15 core sentence structures—enough to understand and participate in everyday life in your new language.