Hey there! Ethan here from Refold. You’re not alone in wondering about Stage 4.

When Matt and I wrote the initial guide, there were a lot of learners who had already gone through the comprehension-building phase of language learning. I, myself, was around Stage 2B at the time.

As a result, we were pretty confident in our Stage 1 and 2 recommendations; less so with Stage 3. Fewer people have successfully transitioned to output, and we needed more data to be confident in our recommendations. We knew it would likely need to be reworked.

When I finally made it to Stage 3, my suspicions were confirmed. There are many more aspects to output than we initially thought and I, personally, have found the advice in Stage 3 to be incomplete.

Over the past year, we’ve drawn from our experiences and the experiences of the community to redesign Stage 3. Now, we’re testing these changes with our clients to see what works and what doesn’t. We’re thrilled with the results we’ve seen so far.

Look for more details on the Stage 3 revision in a future blog post.

Stage 4 has even less data to draw conclusions from because so few learners make it to that level. Our plan has always been to conduct deep dive interviews with advanced learners to flesh it out and expand on the advice it contains.

That being said, after many requests from the community, and many hours of writing, editing, and re-writing, we’ve decided that the current version of Stage 4 is solid enough to provide value to our community.

We’re excited to announce that Stage 4 is now available to all patrons! A big thank you to all our patrons that support our work. Please let us know your thoughts on Stage 4.

If you find value in our work and would like to see us expand and revise the Refold roadmap, please consider becoming a patron. We could not do our work without your support!

For almost two years, I’ve watched with pride as our community has grown. You’ve shared your dreams, challenges, and wins, and you’ve made Refold a part of your life. Thank you for choosing us to be your partner on this journey. We can’t wait to see where this road goes.