u/Minos-Helios

I’ve realized that I really hate reading 😂. I’ve tried reading books, but I just don’t enjoy it and usually only end up reading for like 5–10 minutes here and there.
I know reading is recommended a lot in the Dreaming Spanish community, so I’m curious: are there other people here who basically don’t read books? If so, how did you go about learning to speak?
I do speak Spanish here and there, but I’m definitely not speaking consistently yet. I mostly focus on input and let myself speak when I feel like it.
For those of you who also didn’t read much, did you just keep doing tons of input and gradually increase your speaking? Did you use conversations, AI, tutors, or something else?
I’d especially love to hear from people who were around 700–1,000+ hours and didn’t really enjoy reading. How did your speaking develop?

688 hours of input and I still struggle with Intermediate/Advanced content — and I think that’s okay
I’m currently at around 688 hours of Spanish input, mostly through Dreaming Spanish, and I still struggle quite a bit with Intermediate and especially Advanced videos.
Sometimes I’ll watch an Advanced video and feel like I’m barely understanding anything. Even with Intermediate content, there are plenty of moments where people start talking quickly, use unfamiliar expressions, or connect their words together and I lose the thread.
At first, I thought I would be much further along by this point. But honestly, I’m starting to realize that this is probably normal. I’ve heard from other learners who had hundreds or even thousands of hours that they still struggled with certain types of native content at this stage.
My main goal isn’t necessarily to understand every word in an Advanced Dreaming Spanish video. I want to eventually have good enough listening comprehension that I can sit down with a native Spanish speaker and actually understand what they’re saying in a normal conversation.
So I’m trying not to beat myself up over the fact that I still struggle at 688 hours. I’m just going to keep getting more input and trust the process.
For anyone who has been through this stage: Did your comprehension of native speakers eventually catch up, even though Intermediate/Advanced content still felt difficult around this point?

But I just started reading and speaking at 600 hours and I will admit it is super difficult for me. It not like hard you know but it’s like man this is hard I do recognize a lot of the words which is good but the speaking is super difficult was some other stuff that has help you get through books when you don’t understand the words do you stop, translate it or just keep reading, come back to it later. Also when did speaking become easier cause I just started at 600 hours.

So anyways what’s the best way to add new words to your sentences while your talking or are you just saying words you already know at the top of your head and did reading books help you with speaking and finding new words to use while talking and what Hours did speaking become easiest and effortlessly for you.

He said one learning a new language is actually easy

You need a good motivation to want to learn like not I want to understand a tv show or something like that like I want to be able to talk to all of my friends cause they only speak Spanish or I would like to have a easier time traveling to South America.

Learning he said read books to get the basics down or just look up the most basic words and sentences he said that helps more than you realize and also to look for the words that are spell the same in your language if there any common words that both languages use.

He said next practice listening cause that’s the most important part he said.

He said last now you need to work on speaking he said if you no one to speak with that’s okay just talk to yourself on the phone or in the mirror.

You can’t just study only input and expect to be able to speak and write and read amazingly in Spanish that not how works yes input is a great foundation for understanding Spanish better I will admit that cause it’s easier to get better at them other skills if you can understand Spanish really well but them other skills are still separate things I be honest with all the people here you should start reading at 600 hours that’s like the good middle ground there and also start speaking around that time too, cause I see post sometimes people saying I have this amount of hours like 800 or 1500 hours and my speaking and reading and writing is terrible well that’s cause you never work on that much. If you don’t work on them things you just be able to understand people really well that’s it so don’t blame dreaming Spanish or say dreaming Spanish oversells no you just ain’t work on your other skills, some people in here might need a lot more time to learn and that’s okay stop comparing yourself to other people this is your own race your own marathon but that’s all I have to say everyone have a good weekend.

I am away from Santo Domingo I am in a villa in the middle of the jungle okay everyone got that so not many people here speak English. I am at 505 hours it’s still challenging for me to understand them but my brain has been able to understand some words they say not a lot but words I heard million times before when they ask me what country I am from they don’t say país they say pai which I figure that out also they don’t say gracias they say gracia’ which can be hard to figure out but I been able to order food and juice to my villa using this WhatsApp number thing, I will admit Dominicans are very helpful and they been correcting me when I say a word wrong so I love the experience I will update you all again in December when I go to Colombia for 1 month see you all then since I been on vacation I ain’t averaging my normal 4 hours and 20 mins a day I been doing maybe 2 or 3 hours a day while here which is okay to me but yes see you again in December for Colombia.

So on chat gpt and google Gemini there a call option, you can tell me them hey speak slower to me in Spanish and let’s have a basic conversation correct me when I am wrong. Don’t sound amazing but if you’re new to speaking it can work great and why i recommend Gemini is because you can pick a dialect with that one. So I thought I would just share this tool if you don’t have money for a tutor you can start out that way and then ease you’re way into talking to native speakers after a couple of hours.

For me it’s cucaracha 🤣 I heard it once and I never forgot it now I am at 427 hours so I ain’t Spanish expert but that one word stuck in my head forever. But I let you know my progress at 600 hours or 1000 hours I only do dreaming Spanish input cause I don’t really understand the intermediate and advanced content all that well sometimes I can catch a whole sentence other days I might only catch 1 or 5 words. But that’s all I wanted to share tell me a word you never forgot you have heard.