u/QuesoCadaDia

Well folks, it’s 4 months later than my goal, but Im finally at 600 hours.

I wanted to be here by the new year, but I had to submit my tenure application and my family was sick over Christmas break and I hit a slow spot. Then this semester was insane and my progress has been slow. But there has been progress!

*TL;DR* I understand a TON more than I did at 300 hours, though a lot of native stuff, including listening to people in real life (especially if I’m not used to the accent, like PR, DR, and Bolivia) is a bit tough. I’m overall happy with my progress.

*Here is my (formerly GiveMeTheCI) 300hr write-up, with links to previous in it:* https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish/comments/1gp2ttw/level\_4\_300hr\_this\_week\_writeup/

*Listening:* I think at 300 hours I was over estimating myself a bit, or video difficulty changed. I stuck with a little shy of 60 for a while. I can definitely understand 65 well now, and I just ventured into some mid 70s and while they weren’t easy to catch every word, I certainly understood them well enough. If say 75 is within my comfort zone, and even 80 isn't terrible. Probably no worse than beginner videos were to me when I first started, which is wild. At 324 hours I took an ACTFL test (https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish/comments/1hygb5s/actfl\_listening\_test\_low\_intermediate\_324\_hours/) and got Low Intermediate, and at 546 hours (https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish/comments/1ppuzne/actfl\_test\_intermediate\_mid\_546\_hours/) I was Intermediate. I suspect over the past 4 months I may have jumped to High Intermediate, but I’m not going to test again until the end of the year.

*What am I doing now?* More podcasts. About 195 of my hours are external to DS, and those consist of podcasts (162), videos (mostly documentaries), and italki lessons. A few of those podcast hours are actually reading on vacation when I don’t use tech, but not much. I’ve continued reading, but I don’t really track it except marking that I read a book. I’ve been watching documentaries on Magellan TV, listening to learner podcasts, but also some for native speakers (En Teoria), and eavesdropping on my students (I am an ESL professor) chatting. I’ve gotten much better at understanding my students, and can often at least partly follow their conversations, which is a lot of fun.

The journey from 300-600 hours was long, especially with various difficulties in life. Some notes I took. At 400 hours I started some advanced videos. At 433 hours a lot of the intermediate videos started to feel easier. I started italki lessons around this time. At 440 hours, after 4 hours of lessons, my tutor noted that I’m listening better and speaking more fluently. My speaking has continued to progress (more on that later). At 483 hours I hit a rough patch, hard to be motivated, seemed like a progress slide. I don’t have many notes after that. I can say that I listen to a lot of LatAm music, and I have been picking up more of the lyrics recently.

*What’s still hard?* At this point, mostly vocab. I understand what some people say here that speed doesn’t matter much at this point, it’s vocab. I can keep up with speed fairly well if I know the words, but with both listening and speaking, it feels like refining vocab is the big issue at this stage.

*Speaking:* Shortly after my 300 hours post i had maybe 2 or 3 italki lessons. They were hard, and while I got by, I feel like I really didn’t express myself well.I stopped until a little after 400 hours. At that point, I resumed with a new tutor. Since then I’ve had about 35 lessons with her, almost all an hour long. I definitely can understand better, and I can generally express myself well, even ifI have to talk around a subject (vocab) or I use the wrong tense or something. I ask her to repeat herself a lot less than I used to, and it’s not often that I say something and she simply doesn’t get it. I do stop to think a bit more than I’d like when talking, and I think that’s the ESL professor in me. (Plug for my wonderful tutor, Moni: https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/E0EFBe/AHFDfDe/spanish?hl=en&utm\_medium=share\_teacher&utm\_source=copylink\_share) In the real-life situations where I’ve had to talk to people, they generally have understood me fine. They haven’t really said anything about my speaking because maybe it’s strange to say to a stranger? The only criticisms I’ve received are from one of my students, who is apparently a real strictly for pronunciation. As I was typing this, I actually had a student come into my office for a placement test. They asked if I spoke Spanish and specifically commented that my pronunciation is good. So, who knows! But nobody seems to have trouble understanding the words I say, as long as I actually know the word.

*The roadmap:* I absolutely can understand people well when they speak directly to me. However, I think they do need to adapt their speech, but it’s in a way where I find that most people can do it so that I can understand, unlike when I was at 300 hours and you really need someone who knows how to talk to someone at such a low level. Conversation with 1 other person (my tutor) is not actually tiresome, but I’m sure if I were in a larger conversation it would be, or if I were talking to someone who spoke less clear and patient. Listening to things at the edge of my level, like hard podcasts or videos, definitely still tires me out. I agree what I need to do is to listen a lot. And to a variety of things. I think I need to venture into dramas and sitcoms to get more dialogue. I find that I can understand videos, podcasts, and even books about scientific topics a lot easier (thank you cognates). I agree with skipping over graded readers at this point, I am currently reading a graphic novel (Compañero) and a science/cookbook (Fermentados) and both are doable and good (images included. If you want to read more, check out your local library system as well as buscalibre.com) . I tried to start a graded reader recently, Death by Churros, and while I’m sure it’s good it’s just too slow for my currently level. I think young adult fiction could be good too, but I wouldn’t do many actual children’s (picture) books. They are often random and hard to follow, and so short.

If anyone has any questions, I‘m happy to answer! I’d like to make it to level 6 by this time next year. I’m not working over the summer (but have a small child) so I’m hoping it’s doable. Thanks the DS team, and this community for all of the encouragement and connection on this journey!