u/Gaudilocks

This article dates to 1999, but I thought with all the recent meta discussion about how to learn a language, these reflections on FSI lessons learned could be of interest:

https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rfburger/fsi-gurt-1999-07.pdf

I think it is all worth a read, but for anyone just wanting the overall takeaways, they are:

Lesson 1. Mature adults can learn a foreign language well enough through intensive language study to do things in the language (almost) as well as native speakers.

Lesson 2. “Language-learning aptitude” varies among individuals and affects their classroom learning success (but at least some aspects of aptitude can be learned).

Lesson 3. There is no “one right way” to teach (or learn) languages, nor is there a single “right” syllabus.

Lesson 4. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial.

Lesson 5. Learners’ existing knowledge about language affects their learning.

Lesson 6. A learner’s prior experience with learning (languages or other skills) also affects classroom learning.

Lesson 7. The importance of “automaticity” in building learner skill and confidence in speaking and reading a language is more important than has been recognized by the SLA field over the last two decades.

Lesson 8. Learners may not learn a linguistic form until they are “ready,” but FSI’s experience indicates that teachers and a well designed course can help learners become ready earlier.

Lesson 9. A supportive, collaborative, responsive learning environment, with a rich variety of authentic and teacher-made resources, is very important in fostering effective learning.

Lesson 10. Conversation, which on the surface appears to be one of the most basic forms of communication, is actually one of the hardest to master.

Many interesting threads to pull on that are applicable to people here. Including an observation that immersions are more helpful at a higher level, etc...

I have a few hundred thousand in ETFs with Merrill that started there as around 100k many years ago just for the Premium Rewards benefits. For reasons unrelated to the changing value of Premium Rewards, I am planning to move out of the BoA ecosystem over the next year.

My anniversary date for Premium Rewards is May.

1. Can I ACATS my entire account from Merrill now, close that account, and still maintain the Premium Rewards until my anniversary date next year? Or would they drop down my earning bonus sooner than that if I closed the Merrill account? Or does it need to be open even if empty while I still use the credit card?

2. Semi-related, are there any fees to closing out BoA checking accounts? I plan to just product change my card to the free Travel Rewards to keep average age of account up, but then close the checking account. Effectively the end state, whether in two months or eight months, is to only have the one credit card account opened that I am no longer billing too, and everything else with BoA closed.

Thanks for any insights! I originally planned to just move on immediately, but reading some of the rules on how the anniversary determinations worked made me think it could be worth still using this card for at least the rest of the year.

These are all authentic snippets of conversation from around the Spanish speaking world. When you click to watch, a new window pops up. IT DEFAULTS TO SHOWING THE ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT. So be careful and click the "N" before playing to not ruin it.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/

I think it is a nice place to check in for those earlier on the journey to see how you can improve on little snippets over time. Plus it is "real" spoken Spanish and not curated for learners, so it adds a bit of authenticity.

I liked coming across a few accents I had not heard before. Enjoy!

Question for intermediate and up folks:

After you "arrive" at your listening goal (whether measured by hours or some comprehension milestone), how have you handled/plan to handle the shift in time investment afterward?

I'm not planning to pick up another language anytime soon, but am close to my listening goal for Spanish. I realized I never had a more specific goal than "converse with people okay" and "watch TV/movies without subtitles if I'm familiar with the accent/topic." Some Peninsular Spanish shows would probably still blow my socks off, but I've been experiencing a kind of intense leveling-up lately, and a lot more is doable now. Feels like the endgame is close, and it's strange to think about what shifting to maintenance looks like after so long of getting in all the Spanish I could.

Background:

I've reshaped a lot of my routine to fit Spanish in, and I feel like I'm getting close to where the opportunity-cost math changes. The remaining rough patches will smooth out eventually with more months passing to get the hours hours, but I'm leaning toward letting those milestones arrive whenever they arrive, rather than staying all-in.

There are some remaining challenges:

• Group conversations in loud restaurants
• Some TV shows are still too fast
• There is usually a short adjustment when I meet someone with a new-to-me accent (though this happens in English too, so not really a big deal)

Recent wins (I focus on argentine-content generally):

• Working through Cielo Grande (Argentine, Disney-tween-style show) without subtitles. I had either full comprehension or near-total with context filling gaps.
• Spot-checked a random 5-minute clip of Los Simuladores (classic Argentine show) and understood it completely with full attention.
• Decided I don't actually want to watch Patito Feo or Rebelde Way, but sampled clips of both on YouTube to test comprehension, and had no problem after adjusting to their sort of theatrical, over-the-top delivery style.
• A chilena I met while visiting Santiago earlier this year went from nearly incomprehensible to me at full speed back then to sending me a 4 minute WhatsApp voice message about work and life that I understood about 98% of a week ago. After I responded with my thoughts in Spanish, she sent a shocked-face reaction and an English voice note saying, "holy shit, I wouldn't have shared so much if I thought you'd understand it all." Haha.
• Finally tried Radio Ambulante after saving it as a "later" test, since I'd heard it was hard. I am now jumping around random old episodes to find a ceiling, but thus far comprehension has been effectively perfect with full attention (I lose the thread if my mind wanders, but can pick it back up without issue).
• No issues with recent El Hilo and No Es el Fin del Mundo episodes.

All that to say, I am not *quite* there yet.........but I am getting really close to feeling "done" with Spanish listening as far as an ongoing goal. It would just need to not regress, and presumably maintaining is easier than building.

So what then?:

I don't know how to reallocate time then. Still aim for volume? Do less but really focused? I will confess lately I have put up bigger daily numbers but with a lot of it being easier background content during work and the like, and this has seemed to help more than hurt. Do I just drop down to like 30 minutes a day and give the rest to reading?

Do I just only touch Spanish when I feel like it and enjoy hearing birds chirping and city life? haha. It is a good problem to have, but I somehow suddenly feel like I am quite close to the other end of the tunnel, and welcome thoughts on what to do when I come up into the light!

If anything, I think developing a meditation habit to stop my mind from wandering during content would itself do more for future listening and attention-giving than even another 500 hours of CI, haha.

Anyway, sorry for the novel. I just would love to hear from any of you who down-shifted and whether you regret it, would do things differently, etc...

1. Do you think podcasts or scripted TV are more helpful once both are viable?
2. Once you can mess with authentic content made for natives (whether TV, movies, podcasts), did you still find value in dropping down for ease or did you get more out of sticking at your upper edge of comprehension at that point?

Thanks!

The old DS method page says the following under "How to Use Our Videos" (my emphasis added):

"When watching our videos, your focus should be on enjoying the videos. You do need to be paying attention, so listening to them in the background or while you sleep won’t work, but your focus should be on enjoying them, not on trying to analyze what’s being said or on memorizing certain words."

I wonder if so many people here discussing things like listening while playing video games, cleaning, working out, etc...has changed something for them? This page did not seem to make the move to the new site, and while the FAQ still exists as it was formerly, the suggestions against background listening no longer seems to survive anywhere on the current site.

I just thought it was an interesting change, if it was intentional. While most of the things on that page are reflected somewhere in the FAQ, I thought this older method page was a bit more accessible for introducing someone to DS.

Membership Fees

Not an awful price if you are reading enough. Here is the ebooks catalog:

Ebook Catalog

I was also curious about their epub options. Does it download a local file as an option? I use a kobo and would obviously prefer to read on it and on a computer or mobile app.

Cielo Grande, or Secret Summer as it is called in English, seems very accessible. I just watched the first episode without subtitles and then checked the wiki and IMDB episode description. I definitely followed the episode without much trouble. I didn't pick up every little detail or sentence, but it was not a hindrance to get the gist. I plan to wait for episode 2 until I do another 50 or 75 hours to see if it slides more fully within my comfort zone.

It is sort of like a Disney esque show aimed at teens or tweens, so not exactly high art. But the storyline was simple enough that even with my estimated 75% comprehension if we are looking at a sentence-by-sentence level, I did not seem to miss anything too key. Just to check, I slowed one scene down to .75 speed and comprehension was 99% (all but one wake boarding specific word) so it is merely a processing speed issue at this point in time.

For comparison, I also watched the first few seasons of El Internado many hours ago, but had to use spanish subtitles. It felt a bit too idiomatically Spaniard for me considering my focus on Latin America generally and the Southern Cone specifically. I do plan to revisit someday, but Cielo Grande was way more chill.

I was never big into watching animated shows, so have been waiting to find shows I could jump into that featured real life people.

Non-purist (1285 hours total):
475 grammar and speaking-focused pre-DS hours,
~810 tracked hours with the last 90 entirely native content
~550k words read

I am getting close to not tracking, and I think once one of these native shows slips into easy comprehensibility, I will do so. Additionally, I wanted to share this show since I had not seen it mentioned much. Happy listening/watching!

Level 4 Update
Level 5 Update

Don't worry, there is a TL;DR at the end.

Rambling Thoughts

I am a non-purist who studied grammar and spoke from the start. I liked the synergy of that + DS videos, and I was around 270 hours, maybe 285 of DS, when I stopped working with a tutor and had finished going through a grammar book. Since then, it was all watching videos and speaking whenever I could to any hispanohablante I could find.

I probably should have done this a long time ago since I was always tracking well ahead of the roadmap (at least a level, and a bit more at lower levels) but I decided to go back and try to count up my hours of self-study and work with the tutors, etc...and it amounted to around 425 hours. I felt like if I had added it back at the start, I would not have wanted to watch so many DS videos. But I am glad I did since I got a lot out of them! However, adding in that 425 makes me very aligned with the roadmap now, rather than tracking so far ahead.

I have always seen DS as a truly amazing toolkit, but the purist method never would have been for me even had I not had prior exposure. As I talked about in my novel of a Level 5 update, tracking has mostly been about having a nice reference point for my the increase of my global understanding. For example, quoting from two of my other posts:

"At around 400 hours, I made this post: Intermediate Grind Tip

To save you a click, a random dinosaur vlogs video for me was comprehensible between 60-80% for the entire video if I watched it at .8x speed. Recently, I tried a different episode and it was around 90% comprehensible for me at full speed, or 95% if at .9 speed. So, an interesting marker of my listening progress."

Now (around 780 if not counting my non-DS), dinosaur vlogs is one of my continual favorites and is so easy to comprehend. I can easily be doing something else while listening and get it all. It is maybe my personal favorite representation of something going from pretty fast to a touch fast to easy. I think because it is my first native material I have kept up with so long and sort of feel a special pride about it. Look at me. Just Gaudilocks enjoying some genuine Spanish language content!

Canceling my DS Subscription

In some ways, some of the annoying things about DS like inconsistent playback, the obnoxious notification bell I couldn't turn off in my preferred browser, etc...etc...made me move into full native material a lot sooner. That was roughly 50 hours ago and it has been smooth sailing. The funniest part is the psychological challenge. When I was stacking DS videos, doing 2 to 3 hours a day was occasionally a challenge but doable since I really prioritized it. Once it was all native, it was suddenly like, "wait, I want to only watch things I actually want to watch. Not just another silly skit with my old pals." I had considered doing a 50/50 mix and slowly transitioning away. But cold turkey was so worth it.

Starting to Read

The other adjustment has been reading taking up more of my time. It was hitting the half a million milestone today that made me want to add in the old hours. Reading is increasingly cutting into my listening time, and I think that is okay! I am no longer studying or learning, I am just a Spanish speaker/reader/listener. But my journey in reading reminded me of my post suggesting that you Don't Be Afraid to Leap Forward w/ DS Difficulty.

Something similar happened for me in reading! My first 160k words were a combination of graded readers and the magic treehouse books until I could not stand them. Then a bunch of Isadora Moon, Roald Dahl, a Lemony Snicket, a handful of Diario de Gregs, and then Hoyos (Holes) by Louis Sachar. When I canceled my DS subscription I decided to see what else I might allocate the money too. I decided to get a subscription to La Nacion, from Argentina. A big part of the reason is that it is the accent I have had the most trouble with that I come into contact with regularly. There is some audio content there, plus some turns of phrase more common in Argentina compared to if I had subscribed to El País or something.

The special rate is like 65 cents a month for either 3 or 6 months, I forget. But once I started reading extensively there, I realized I had been hungering for something a bit more advanced. So now I am reading Molly's Game by Molly Bloom in Spanish. Not exactly Cervantes, but somehow it is just jiving better with my brain than trying to do another Lemony Snicket. I actually just quit one of them part way through as I realized I am an adult and my brain wanted more. I already have a stack of further books ready to go, and most were originally written in Spanish. Let's go!!

I wouldn't change anything about my journey, but in some ways, I think I was a bit overripe for the listening and reading transitions to fully native. If that ultimately made this all easier, then it was worth it.

How do I compare to Level 6?

You can really have fun with the language at this point.
Yes

You are conversationally fluent for daily purposes of living in the country and you can get by at the bank, at the hospital, at the post office, or looking for an apartment to rent.
100%. I have referenced in other posts, but I get to spend a decent amount of time in Latin America and get by with zero problem. I sometimes run into people with tough accents but can't remember the last time something came up we couldn't solve. Half the time I am liable to demand in Spanish they explain their verb choice to me, haha. I won't pretend my comprehension of every sentence is 100%, but in terms of the gist or more and being able to give or get what I need in a conversation? Absolutely.

In spite of that odd word that is not quite there when you need it, you can always manage to get your point across in one way or another, and by now you are already making complex longer phrases.
Yes. But it is pretty rare I can't think of a word unless it is just an uncommon situation like visiting a seamstress/tailor or something like that. I'd say I get my point across easily in just about every non-specialized situation. As for making complex phrases, yes. I wouldn't say I have mastered every form of the subjunctive, but reading has started to help a lot and I was pleasantly surprised to use faltarse correctly in the subjunctive recently and didn't really think about having done so until after. Maybe not a big deal for someone reading this update, but I was pretty chuffed.

At this level, for the first time, you start feeling like you are actually thinking about what you want to say, and not about how you want to say it, even though you may fall back on thinking about how you say things, especially in stressful situations or when feeling self-conscious.

This has been true for a while. If I am in a tough work situation, I do spend more time formulating sentences. But not in a way to stop conversation. Just while someone else is engaging, I prepare my more delicate/sensitive sentences. I'd do the same in English. Sometimes word choice really is that important. In terms of feeling self-conscious, I have sometimes gringo'd up my accent and acted like I couldn't do much more than order a beer if I just didn't feel like engaging with someone, haha. But that is more like it has been a long day and I just don't want to chat with the guy at the grocery store or something. Not about inherent ability.

Using humor in the language is much easier now.

One of the most satisfying things in this journey has been making natives laugh in their own language, especially if it is something culturally relevant and not just general humor.

You can understand TV shows about daily life quite well (80 to 90%). Shows about families, friends, etc. Unscripted shows will usually also be easier to understand than scripted shows, as long as they are not too chaotic or rely too much on cultural knowledge. Thrillers and other genres will still be hard.
This is the final hill for me. A common thread in all of my updates has been I am not a huge TV watcher. This has been true in English for nearly 20 years. In the last three or four years, I think The Pitt is the only thing I have watched to completion in terms of TV.

My Goal

However, I think that makes this a good measure and the real reason why I am still tracking. Since I am all native for reading, listening, and conversation now, I don't really need a reason to track. But I have decided the show Cielo Grande is my graduation test from tracking. I know I will hit a million words read by sometime no later than July since I have taken to it like a fish to water since transitioning to La Nación and books not for middle schoolers. I think Cielo Grande is around the easiest show out there that is not animated (no hate, just not my thing). I recently watched the first few minutes of episode one without subtitles and understood pretty much everything. It just felt ever so slightly too fast. Just a touch. Like if it was 5% less, it would feel just about right for chilling and watching without even thinking about it as being work.

Perhaps just watching a few episodes would unlock it now. However, I don't really mind my current setup. I love:
dinosaur vlogs
chisme corporativo
el hilo
DW Español

I will occasional listen to other things too, but those are more or less my favorites now. I actually just straight up enjoy them, the diversity of DW in particular. They have so many videos on new topics every day it seems. I usually just listen to a mix of two of them on a given day. I set my goal to 1 minute a while back on DS. Sometimes I do 40 minutes, sometimes it is a few hours if I have coffee with a monolingual Spanish-speaking friend. It comes when it comes. My plan is to "check in" on Cielo Grande every 50 hours. If it is all the way accessible at 1400, hour example, I'll call it.

TL;DR

Non-purist. Studied grammar and spoke from the start. Didn't really read much until way later, and only recently in earnest. I spend a decent chunk of time traveling in Latin America semi-regularly for work and have no problem putting myself out there to talk to strangers. When adding in my rough estimate of the supplemental time I had studying outside DS that was current to beginning to watch DS videos, the roadmap feels dead on. I am continuing to track these last ~280 hours to 1500 to see if I can hit it on the button of smoothing out the last bit of subjunctive and being able to watch a TV show without subtitles. I definitely do plan to do a few drills of grammar for a few forms of things, but it is so worth it. After so much context and content, the tiniest bit of grammar clicks so much more into place.

When I look ahead at level 7:
You can understand any general content effortlessly, including newspapers, novels, and all types of TV shows and movies. You might still struggle with technical texts in unfamiliar fields, heavy regional slang, and shows with intricate plots. You speak fluently and effortlessly, without thinking about the language. While native speakers might still detect a slight accent, your clarity and fluidity make your speech easy to understand, and no one considers you a learner anymore. You may still make some mistakes, or miss a specific word here and there, but it doesn’t hinder you from being an effective member of society.

Let's cross out the second sentence since it is framed in the negative. Everything bolded already applies. For the un-bolded, I already discussed the TV plan. As for fluently and effortlessly, that feels closer every conversation.

I will post when I hit a million words to give an update.

Thanks for reading, and I sincerely hope you all achieve your goals!