u/Purposeful_Living10

I don't get why we can leave comments on videos, and there is a notification feature on the website, but we don't get notified if people reply to our comments.

This can be frustrating if we leave a comment asking the guide a question, and we never get notified about the response.

This has happened to me multiple times now, where I have had to go back to a video days or weeks later to see that the guide from the video responded to me or even asked me a question regarding my comment, but I had no way of knowing.

I feel like this is a really strange and basic oversight.

What do you all think? Have you thought about this or experienced the same thing?

Hello everyone,

I am making this post as a way to raise awareness to some things and as a request for everyone to have a little bit of pity on me by helping me out in how they go about recommending resources.

First I want to thank all of you for all of the great recommendations that we've had so far on the "What Are You Listening Too?" threads.

We have a pretty robust resources spreadsheet going.

Please note that there are tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for resources beyond YouTube channels and Podcasts. You can also recommend Books, Movies/Native Shows, and Video Games that you are currently using or have just read/watched/played.

With that being said, I have some requests for all of you who do give recommendations, that will be really helpful for everyone else and will make my life easier in updating the spreadsheet.

I also will give some quality control info as to what I won't be adding to the spreadsheet to hopefully help as a guide and to create understanding as to why somethings are that have been recommended are still not on the spreadsheet.

Requests for new Recommendations (first 3 most important):

1. Please only include resources that you are actually listening to or watching. I've noticed a handful of recommendations over the past few months that commenters had just found but had no information on or any idea of the quality of the resource. This really isn't that helpful to anyone.
2. When possible, please include links. Just saying that you really like "such and such" YouTube channel or podcast requires everyone to go searching for it. It would be more helpful if you could include the link for everyone to just click on. (Also, this creates a lot of work for me to add them to the spreadsheet when I have a large amount of these to look up.) Of course, if it is a show on Netflix or other streaming service, you can just say that.
3. Please include your current hours/level so I and others have a sense of the difficulty of whatever resources you're recommending. Or you can give a suggestion if you think that the resources are at an easier level than where you currently are at. (Unfortunately, I don't have the time to test out and make a judgement call on every resource suggestion.)
4. Please include the links to the YouTube channel or main resource you are using rather than to a specific episode or video.
5. If you are recommending non-learner resources, please give a brief description of what the resource is or general topics covered. (E.g. Science and History, Travel Vlogs, Cooking, etc) This allows people a chance to decide if it is something they want to check out, and I don't have to look around at or sample each resource in order to categorize it for the spreadsheet. *Also the speakers country of origen/accent is always much appreciated by me and others.

Quality Control Info:

The two main things that I've seen a lot lately that will be almost a guaranteed reject from being added to the spreadsheet are...

• Channels or podcasts that are not CI focused or at least not CI heavy

There are a million grammar and traditional learning type channels out there, they don't need to be on our spreadsheet. This is a spreadsheet for everyone who is either mostly using CI or exclusively using CI. It is very easy to go find those other channels if you want to use them.

That being said, if a channel or podcast has some grammar videos/episodes, but mostly has CI friendly content, that is okay. But it shouldn't be the inverse.

• And resources that are either short lived (meaning only a few episodes or videos uploaded a long time ago) or brand new.

The spreadsheet will grow to be way too cumbersome, unwieldy and almost useless if we fill it up with a bunch of resources that only have 5-15 episodes or videos on them for a total of 2 hours. Those aren't really helpful. If it is a resource with an extremely small library, I'm very wary to add it. If it is small and obviously dead, it will not be added. If it's just new, but hasn't really become super useful yet, I'd recommend to keep suggesting it to people in the thread, and I'll keep taking a look at it. Once it grows and seems like it will keep growing, I'll add it. A new channel with only 5 4-8 minute videos is just not something I want to clutter the spreadsheet with, especially considering that most new YouTube channels stop uploading within the first year.

u/thelostnorwegian - Can you put the following updated blurb as the new auto-post message going forward to help clarify things more for all new people who want to give recommendations?

Hello all! While we wait for more Dreaming French, please share what else you're currently listening to. Whether it's an old go-to or a new find, share it with your current hours to help other learners.

Please include a link to any YouTube Channels or podcasts to help everyone out.

What are you reading? Are you playing any video games in French?

The spreadsheet linked below is separated into Videos & Podcasts, Books, Movies & Native Shows, and Video Games.

Just an interesting observation that I thought might be relatable to some. I don't really have anyone in my life that can relate to this, but I thought this community probably can.

I seem to experience two forms of this now.

I've started catching myself sometimes thinking things or saying things using the Spanish "grammar" rather than the English. For example, I have been noticing that I will catch myself about to say that someone "has xx years" rather than that they "are xx years old".

Sometimes I will just straight up say a Spanish word while speaking English without realizing it (someone has to tell me) or at least only realize afterwards. Also, sometimes I can only think of the word in Spanish rather than English.

This is both a sometimes frustrating but kind of cool experience. Anyone else noticing this in their native language thoughts/speech?

I hope I'm not jumping for joy too early on this, but...

I just wanted to point out and celebrate that Dreaming French seems to have increased the number of daily videos to two a day! They've been uploading two videos more regularly for the past few weeks and have exclusively done so for almost a week now, and so I think it might be safe to say that we can expect two videos a day from now on as they continue to ramp up their production and are hiring new guides!

They've also been more regularly putting out more superbeginner and beginner videos too, which is great for everyone starting out.

If they stay on this trajectory, I could easily see that in a handful of months or so someone might be able to truly use it as their primary resource with only some lighter supplementation from other resources.

Super exciting!

However, he is keeping the 80+ videos he already has on there and he will be uploading more gaming content for members only on his main channel French With Felix