u/BluRazz494

My stats:

• No Spanish background

• No traditional study

• ~650 listening hours

• ~75k words read

• Reading graded B1 readers comfortably

Comprehension feels solid. Luisito Comunica and Alex Tienda are around 90-95% depending on the topic. DS level 65-70 is very comprehensible. How to Spanish and Español con Juan podcasts feel clear.

But I took an A1 grammar test for fun and BOMBED it.

I’ve been basically a purist and waited until 600 hours to start reading, but this made me rethink avoiding grammar completely. I’m now planning to do a small amount of explicit grammar study in Spanish while still keeping input/reading as the main focus.

Not trying to debate CI. It clearly works for comprehension. But seems my high tolerance for ambiguity is also backfiring hard.

For those of you who are farther along, what’s one thing you’d do differently if you had to start Dreaming Spanish from Level 1 again?

For example, would you start speaking earlier or later? Start reading at a certain number of hours? Add native content sooner? Or maybe you’d just follow the roadmap exactly the same?

I’m not trying to debate the method, just curious what you’d change in hindsight and why.