AMBoy In my opinion, if you're around A1/A2, I think one should either: 1. Expose themselves to more material intended for language learners, gradually increasing the difficulty. OR 2. Use the Listening Practice Videos on this site as opposed to reading the news articles, if one wants to increase their vocabulary. The listening videos with transcripts on this website are very useful, and because the vocabulary used in these videos are more common, you'll get more exposure to the more common words used in the language. You can also read the transcripts while listening to "read while listening", which is what I do. From my experience using this website, I would say probably the easiest resource on this site with transcripts that is intended for native speakers would be the MichelleFamilyDiary videos. This would be followed by the Acy De Castro and Pao Adventurer. The reason why the news isn't something I recommend for beginners is because the news is a lot more at B2+ level, and can frustrate A1/A2 people with all the words they don't know. I can remember when I was at a lower B1 level and I would feel really frustrated reading the news myself and read only at 25 words per minute. It was a significant step up from what I had listened to earlier and the vocabulary used is completely different. Previously, I was mainly listening to easy-to-understand speakers such as akosibail, Dwaine Wooley etc. Instead, if you wish to read, reading some material intended for foreign language learners and importing it into the reader may be useful. It's probably my only suggestion for the reader tool - there isn't enough of this actual "beginner-like" sort of material imported in the reader tool as of yet. It's a similar story with things such as teleserye and movies - I'm watching my first Filipino movie on Netflix and it's not the easiest. It currently takes me 6 minutes to go and 100% fully understand 1 minute of video. Plus all the innuendos, double meanings and unfamiliar sayings can make things awkward without previous exposure to them. EDIT: I've generally done journals on occasion, but I haven't enjoyed them myself so I probably won't create one. But I don't mind helping others out to learn Tagalog!
@Scrover
I may have misrepresented by my progress, perhaps because it says Day 5 of 588, its more like day 180 and 7 years living in PH without active effort. As I mentioned in prior posts I'm really not in danger of burnout or over frustration. I've been there though a few times in the past 6 months, but after a few breakthroughs its all coming together. It's just going to take time, effort and exposure but it's rewarding. Real frustration to me would be to not progress, or to have not reached my goals by day 588.
I think the most important qualifier of content to consume is not if it's easy or for learner, but if its compelling to the learner at all. If you are reading something you don't care about at all (most learning materials) it's very easy to burn out and question why you are even bothering lol. Tagalog learning materials as so bad that even as a 1 month novice I was finding errors in almost every learning material, pretty sad.
I actually think it's better you immediately start reading content by natives for natives. The listening practice is going to be key but I cannot for the life of me embrace those bloggers, prime example of stuff I don't care about and thus will not take extra effort to comprehend. Strange enough, I do enjoy cheesey romcoms, love teams, etc.
So because of this issue I've actually asked @jkos set me up (Thanks !!) with a system that allows me (anyone) to take a youtube video and import my own tagalog closed captioning and use it in the reader tool. I pay natives to transcribe (not translate) content and load it up. However, the current edition of the tool makes it hard to use for me because the video takes up too much of the screen I'm sure @jkos will get that resolved eventually, hopefully soon.
I've already reached the level of understanding where I feel that lack of vocabulary is the biggest thing holding me back hence why I'm trying to hit it so hard. I currently shy away from the labels as there is no formal test for competency available. My metrics are based on my goals for the language. The news is actually quite interesting to me, @akosikoneho and @jkos are I are also reading a decent Wattpatt novel called "Bakaysion" which has many deep words to learn but is still pretty comprehensible and interesting enough to read. Lastly, I'm actually making my way through all 600 episodes of "Be Careful With My Heart" teleseries and find it amazing how much I can follow along with it, in near real time and they don't even offer captioning in either language. This alone has been very motivating for me. As soon as @jkos gets me fixed up on the video consumption issue I will be watching more modern stuff mixed in as novels and news lean quite formal where as a show like Bubble Gang is quite modern, and funny.
Overall sounds the like our strategies are similar, read, read, read, listen, listen, listen, but I'm taking the extra step of actively flash carding unknown words.