September 21, 2025 | Ademola Adeyemi

Hey everyone,

So this week’s letter is different—and longer than usual. 

About 2,400 words (~13 min read) instead of my “not so typical” 1,200 (still working on that haha).

Here’s why: I had a conversation with one of you on Discord who’s been following my writing closely. 

They shared something that hit me hard—they’re dealing with the exact struggle I went through when I started learning Korean. 

Gaming addiction eating up all their immersion time, feeling like a fraud on language exchange apps, wanting to understand everything before diving into native content.

It reminded me of my HelloTalk days when I was secretly using translators to appear better than I was, just like trying to seem higher level in games than you actually are. That competitive validation-seeking that gamers know all too well.

So I wrote this piece specifically for gamers learning languages.

If you’re not a gamer or don’t struggle with games taking time away from language learning, you can probably skip this one. 

But if you’ve ever felt that pull between ranking up in League and actually making progress with immersion, this might be the most important thing you read this year.

I’m breaking down exactly how that same obsessive, competitive energy that got you addicted to gaming is actually your secret weapon for language acquisition. 

Not something to overcome—something to transfer.

The piece follows 9 core principles (inspired by a framework I study) but adapted completely for the gaming → language learning transformation. It’s longer because these insights deserve the full treatment, not surface-level tips.

How to read this: If the gaming addiction angle doesn’t resonate, bounce after the first few paragraphs. 

If it does hit home, settle in for the full journey. 

I’m walking you through the complete psychological shift from comfort-zone learning to immersion mastery.

Fair warning: I get pretty vulnerable about my HelloTalk translator phase and some other low points. But that’s where the real insights live.

Alright, here we go.

I know that many of you will agree with me when I say that language learning is so much better when you have a system to operate by.

Because most language learners have been tricked into thinking they need perfect comprehension before they can handle native content.

What they don’t understand is that perfect comprehension—no confusion, no ambiguity—is synonymous with permanent intermediate status. 

The only reason you think you need to understand everything first is because you’re following a learning method you didn’t create.

So when you feel overwhelmed by native speakers talking at normal speed, you retreat back to Korean: Grammar In Use and beginner podcasts for “just a little longer.” 

But after months of grammar study and Duolingo streaks, the artificial comfort ends and you realize you still can’t understand a Korean web drama without subtitles. You find yourself back where you started, craving real conversations but terrified of the chaos.

Here’s what I discovered after months on HelloTalk, religiously using Pimsleur, and watching “Talk to Me in Korean” videos: 

I became a complete fraud. 

I wanted to seem better than I was—just like when you’re trying to appear higher level in games than you actually are. 

I stopped asking questions when I could ask questions because I wanted Koreans to think my Korean was good. 

I wanted that early dopamine hit of success before doing the actual work.

So I started using translators. Literally. I’d scroll through Korean YouTube videos looking for phrases to copy. I’d type what I wanted to say in English, run it through Papago translator, then question if the formality level was right. 

I felt like an imposter—a complete and utter imposter—when I was using HelloTalk, and that shit sucked.

But here’s what I discovered: that same obsessive, competitive energy that made you grind for hours in League? 

That’s exactly what makes you unstoppable at language learning. 

You just need to transfer that addiction to something that builds a skill you can use forever.

I) Reject Traditional Language Learning

Reject the school path of teaching you without the agency to understand that you need to make choices. 

Reject being assigned vocabulary lists by apps. 

Reject being a perpetual beginner who’s “building their foundation” for three years straight.

Language learning is a series of decisions, and the single decision that determines all other decisions is to vehemently reject the trajectory the language learning industry sets you on. When you truly despise the outcome of being stuck in intermediate hell forever, you begin to form an anti-vision.

The average language learner takes classes because they’re required to, uses textbooks, waits to graduate, looks at tests as measurement of proficiency, and holds the unconscious belief that reaching native level is almost impossible. 

They’ve rationalized incompetence based on never being given a clear picture of what acquisition actually requires.

Every time you catch yourself reaching for subtitles when things get difficult, write it down. 

Every time you choose slowed-down content over native speed, notice it. 

If you simply have an anti-vision and make decisions that move you away from comfort-zone learning, you’re moving toward fluency.

II) Commit to Immersion Excellence

I’ve never had trouble knowing what I wanted from language learning simply because I knew what I didn’t want from the start. 

I could see exactly what wasn’t working by observing other learners around me—in classes, on language exchange apps, in online forums.

From early on, it was clear what I had to do. 

I had to commit to immersion excellence. 

I had to do something that actually worked, no matter how uncomfortable it felt. 

For me, that looked like throwing myself into native content even when I understood maybe 20%, tracking my immersion hours like a competitive gamer tracks their rank, building systems that made confusion feel like progress instead of failure.

Your frame of reference for language learning is formed by two halves: 

1. your vision (immersion excellence and native fluency)
2. your anti-vision (moving away from eternal intermediate status)

When you live in this world, that’s your language learning reality.

If you can just make decisions that move you from anti-vision territory toward vision territory, you’ll become fluent no matter what specific content you choose.

III) Standards Create Identity in Language Learning

You aren’t fluent yet because you’re more uncomfortable with feeling lost, than your will to figure it out in time.

If you’re okay with turning on subtitles every time you feel confused, you won’t have the desire to push through that discomfort, and many opportunities to develop real listening skills will be closed off to you.

If your standard is 80% comprehension before you’ll watch without subtitles, you’ve set a standard that will keep you intermediate forever. 

But if your immersion standard requires you to watch without subtitles, then you will look at English subtitles in disgust.

This is like the high school student who’s afraid to go to college, so he keeps choosing to hold himself back. 

You tell that kid, “Hey dude, you’re old enough, you know enough, you can get there.” But they keep saying, “No, I feel like I need more time, I’m not ready for that responsibility.” 

Eventually that kid needs to graduate. 

And it’s the same for language learners—you need to graduate from artificially slowed-down speech to natural pace.

You only think raising your immersion standards sounds stupid because your current standards are abysmal. 

Someone who values rapid fluency finds it painful when they don’t have access to challenging native content. It’s not hard for them to avoid subtitles. It’s actually enjoyable to push their comprehension limits.

But there’s also what we can call anti-standards—what you are not willing to sacrifice to achieve fluency. 

I have the goal of reaching native-level fluency, but I am not willing to sacrifice my mental health by forcing myself to understand 100% of everything immediately, like most perfectionistic language learners do.

Most people think that frustration and confusion are just natural parts of language learning that you have to suffer through. 

No, you don’t. 

Because setting the right constraints is how you actually get breakthrough results. 

In order to maintain your sanity while pushing your limits, you have to think creatively about how to make immersion enjoyable and sustainable.

When you commit to never using subtitles again but also refuse to torture yourself, your mind notices higher-leverage learning opportunities that you wouldn’t have noticed when you were pursuing the goal of “perfect understanding before attempting anything difficult.”

IV) Project-Based Immersion

Because you know what you don’t want from language learning, and you have an idea of what fluency looks like, now you need to acquire the comprehension skills that bridge the gap between both. 

So how do you start moving into native content? 

Through immersion projects.

The best way to develop language skills is to commit to a real immersion project and only look things up when you desperately need to understand something. How much you actually acquire is directly correlated with how much time you spend in your target language.

Now, am I saying that studying grammar is bad? No. 

Am I saying that using language apps is bad? No. 

What I’m saying is that that’s not acquisition. That’s preparation. 

It’s for another domain of your language learning. Maybe it’s for confidence building or understanding basic patterns or stress relief from feeling completely lost. 

But is it for actual fluency? No.

And sure, it can contribute to fluency, but it’s a very ineffective way to become fluent. The other thing is if you’re doing grammar exercises and flashcards for the sake of “learning” the language, you’re filling your mind with endless rules and exceptions. You’re just creating more mental chaos.

My first immersion project was Korean web dramas. 

I went in on web dramas. I have thousands of hours of web dramas saved to playlists that I watched as my primary domain of mastery. I wanted to master comprehension of this domain because mastering one domain—a slightly smaller sphere of language than the entire language—teaches you so much about the principles of the language.

When you master one domain, entering a new project or new type of content becomes 20 times easier because you’ve already done it before. 

You’ve already gone through the confusion phase, you’ve already built pattern recognition skills.

A project is when an immersion plan meets consistent action. So don’t focus obsessively on the perfect content. 

Don’t focus endlessly on the perfect strategy. 

Those are byproducts of actually doing the immersion project. 

You pick content, you consume it daily, and you iterate on what works because the plan without action and without iteration is just a list of anime you’re never going to watch.

V) Daily Immersion Hours

Every single day, complete at least one to three hours of pure target language immersion that moves you toward completing your project. 

That is the only piece of language learning advice you will ever need in your life.

After two weeks, if you haven’t noticed your ear starting to pick up more words or if you’re not starting to recognize recurring patterns, you are not immersing correctly. 

You are doing something wrong.

Most people won’t admit that, or they will intentionally choose easier content to avoid the discomfort of real confusion because secretly they want to stay comfortable. Your brain notices patterns to acquire language. That’s what it does. And most people have this deep unconscious programmed goal of understanding everything immediately.

The most important thing to understand: that feeling of being lost in native content isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a feature. 

Your brain is designed to feel confused before breakthroughs happen. 

Every gamer understands this—you die repeatedly before you master a difficult boss fight. 

The dying isn’t the problem. 

Giving up before you figure out the pattern is the problem.

So far our immersion framework—the system that is going to bring fluency to our life—is composed of: 

• anti-vision (rejecting traditional methods), 
• vision (immersion excellence), 
• standards (no subtitles, challenging content), 
• Immersion projects (specific comprehension goals), 
• and daily levers (consistent native input, sentence mining, SRS reviews)

Away from intermediate hell, toward native fluency.

That’s the foundation, and that’s what pushes you deeper into native-level content. 

But how do you actually navigate the confusion, frustration, and uncertainty of not understanding anything?

VI) Become a Pattern Recognition Machine

For years, language learning was treated like academic memorization. 

We didn’t recognize that our brains were already optimized for pattern recognition through thousands of hours of gaming. 

We didn’t understand that every game we’d ever mastered had already trained us to be acquisition machines.

Every gamer understands this intuitively. 

When you’re learning a new game, you don’t start with the instruction manual. You jump in, you die repeatedly, you notice what works and what doesn’t, you recognize patterns in enemy behavior, you optimize your approach based on feedback. You get comfortable with not understanding everything immediately because you know the patterns will emerge through repeated exposure.

Language learning is the exact same process, but traditional methods teach you to avoid the confusion phase where pattern recognition actually happens. They want you to understand everything consciously before you experience it naturally.

During my web drama project, I spent thousands of hours watching Korean content, and my brain started recognizing speech patterns the same way it recognizes gameplay patterns. 

Common phrase structures became as automatic as combo sequences. 

Cultural context clues became as obvious as visual tells in fighting games.

The difference between gamers and traditional language learners is simple: gamers expect the confusion phase. 

We expect to lose repeatedly before we start winning. We expect to feel overwhelmed by complexity before we start seeing the underlying systems.

Your gaming addiction wasn’t a waste of time—it was pattern recognition training. 

Those are exactly the skills that make immersion effective instead of overwhelming.

VII) Confusion is Signal, Not Noise

Because you’re supposed to feel lost when immersing. 

You’re supposed to feel overwhelmed by native content. 

You’re supposed to feel like you understand maybe 20% of what you’re hearing. 

Everyone learning through immersion feels that way.

The biggest lie language learners tell themselves is that they’re not ready for incomprehensible immersion. 

But acquisition doesn’t hold you to steps. 

It holds you to your attention. 

It holds you to your investment in understanding the messages.

Every time a language learner says they’re not ready to do something, it has more to do with the feelings they get when they’re doing it compared to what they expected based on traditional language learning frameworks. 

Real language learning is a long-term game, not instant gratification.

Your confusion is the signal that real learning is taking place. 

That feeling of being completely lost isn’t a sign that immersion isn’t working—it’s a sign that your brain is being challenged exactly the way it needs to be for acquisition to happen.

VIII) Self-Experimentation

Self-experimentation is the only way to solve your comprehension problems for good. 

Teachers and apps can diagnose and prescribe methods, but they often lack understanding of your specific learning style, goals, and gaming background.

The beautiful thing about having an addictive personality is that once you find the right immersion setup that triggers your competitive nature and flow state, you’ll be more consistent than learners who have to force themselves to study. 

You just need to experiment until you find what makes language learning as engaging as ranking up in League.

There’s no one resource that will deliver you from the requirements of iterating and finding what works best for you. 

Even with my words, ultimately it’s up to you as the learner to assess and break it down for yourself.

IX) The Greatest Mistake is Avoiding Mistakes

You aren’t fluent yet because you’re afraid of not understanding things. If there were one true sentence to orient your language learning around, that would be it. 

Confusion is acquisition’s compass.

If perfect comprehension can’t exist without the reference point of confusion, breakthrough moments can’t exist without periods of being completely lost. Your mistakes become your light in the darkness of incomprehensible input.

Here’s my advice: Watch what you want without permission from your inner perfectionist. Choose the anime, the YouTube channels, the podcasts that genuinely interest you. Seriously, because avoiding native content is only going to keep you dependent on training wheels forever.

But you need to realize when you’re choosing content that’s genuinely too difficult versus content that’s just challenging enough to create breakthrough moments. 

Not understanding 90% of advanced political debates isn’t helping if you don’t have foundational vocabulary. 

But avoiding all native content because you only understand 70% instead of 90% is the mistake that keeps you intermediate forever.

You need to start from scratch and trust the process your brain was designed for.

Ready to transfer that gaming addiction into language mastery? At some point, the time you spend in your language, the things that once were incomprehensible noises will feel like your native language. It will hit your ears as meaning and you won’t be able to change that. You won’t be able to go back to not understanding. That’s the dream most learners want—and your gaming brain is exactly what will get you there.