600 Hour Update!
First of all, I’m very proud of myself for getting to this point and extremely grateful for everyone else’s progress updates so I’m excited to be able share mine.
Progress has been steady. There are good days and bad days of comprehension that come and go. I gave up on sorting by any difficulty on DS at around 500hours as everything seemed to be comprehensible depending on how attentive I was being —even Gustavo. I just watch whatever looks interesting now but 50/50 DS/outside content. I started branching out and dipping my toes into native Spanish YouTube, but still frequent SBG, ECJ, Andrea and other common channels. A big win is that I can now count Bluey as input. I remember trying early in the journey but it was complete gibberish. I also finished ATLA which was rough in some spots but still very enjoyable. I have leaned more into watching content that I find interesting that may be above or below my level because as I progress many topics I’ve watched have been beaten to death (travel vlogs for example.)
350k words read, working on the second Harry Potter book now. Reading has been a lot of fun surprisingly, because I never enjoyed reading in English. It’s been fun using it as a way to find new vocab and see some of the grammar concepts in action.
A huge goal that I set when I first started was that if I made it to 600 hours I would reward myself with finding tutors online and begin speaking. And here I am almost a year later. My goal is to see tutors 2-3x a week so I’m leaning towards worlds across just for the simplicity but I’m open to hearing others opinions on their journeys.
I have been thrilled with DS so far and the incredible the progress I’ve made. The road map states: “You can understand native Spanish speakers speaking to you normally”. I would say that’s relatively true. The very few Spanish speakers I’ve come across at work I have had no problem understanding, though I’m sure they’re still trying to speak clearly. Our conversations often fall apart mainly because my speaking is so poor, but I am able to piece together enough to get my point across. All of my colleagues are convinced that I already speak Spanish which is fun to hear but absolutely wrong. My internal thoughts are, “just you wait!” In the next year or two I might be able to actually agree with them, who knows. Very excited to start speaking and see where I’ll end up in the future. Thank you everyone for their updates and recommendations! See you at 1000 hours. Cheers!