My kids started watching French dubbed cartoons at age 6 and 8. They are now almost 11 and 13, so about five years of input. We’ve never tracked their hours, but I’ve known for a long time that they understand almost everything in French, so I’d guess they are somewhere around a thousand hours give or take. They skipped learner content and went straight to regular kid cartoons, they were simply highly motivated to watch TV. (Before French TV they had been limited to an hour a week, with French TV they could watch an hour a day.) As they’ve gotten older they watch a little less often, they have more homework and other activities. I know this process works, I did it before I had them do it, but something about The Simpsons really hit me. They understand French! For real! A show that grownups actually watch, with jokes that have some legit language nuance. I’m thrilled.

Hey everyone! It was time for another update. I hit 1k a couple days ago, and it’s kind of a weird feeling. I’ve seen other posts on the Dreaming Spanish subreddit from folks hitting 1k hours and saying similar stuff, and now I get it.

It’s kind of this weird paradox. On one hand, the progress is obvious. Like, if I go back to easier content now, I can understand it almost word for word. A lot of the time I even have to speed it up because normal speed feels too slow.

But then on the other hand, you hit this big milestone, you’re like “okay, 1k hours” and then you move into harder native content and immediately get humbled lol.

That’s basically where I am right now.

I’ve been using native content the whole time, particularly Plus Belle La Vie, which I talked about in my previous updates. But lately I’ve been trying to transition more fully into unscripted native content, and man, it’s a different level.

Scripted native content is already its own thing, but unscripted YouTube, podcasts, random conversations, that type of stuff? Different beast.

Sometimes I’m listening and I just can’t catch what’s being said. I know words are being said, I know it’s French, I know I’ve put a thousand hours into this thing, and yet my brain is still like “yeah good luck with that.” So that part can be pretty frustrating at times.

But I’m trying to focus on the positive, because the positive is definitely there. I’m almost never completely lost. I pretty much always know what’s happening, or at least the general gist, the plot, the topic, or whatever. It’s usually the fine details and the nuance that I’m missing.

And honestly, I think that’s what keeps me going. Or not even “I think”, I know that over time, the ambiguity is going to start melting away. That’s basically how the whole process has worked up to this point anyways. Stuff that used to feel impossible eventually becomes normal, then easy, then almost boring. So I’m trying to trust that the same thing will happen with this next level.

As far as changes go, I’m not doing anything too crazy. The only real change I’m thinking about is starting to add a little bit of speaking practice. Not full-on conversation yet, and probably not crosstalk either. I know people love crosstalk, but I don’t think it’s really my style.

I’m thinking more like shadowing, or maybe just reading out loud here and there, just to start working the muscles of the mouth and get used to actually producing French sounds. I don’t think I’ll really dive into speaking until I hit level 7, but I do think it’s probably time to start lightly waking that part of the brain up.

Other than that, I’m staying the course.

I’m still watching Plus Belle La Vie. At this point I have this unofficial goal of finishing the whole thing someday lol. I’m really just curious what my French would look like after watching all of that.

Overall, no real complaints. It’s working. Not always in the dramatic “1k hours and now I’m fluent” way that I secretly hoped for, but it’s definitely working.

TL;DR

Hello, Level 4!!! Finally! I'm really happy with how far I've come in "just" seven months. Getting to 300 hours took longer than expected, but it hasn't felt like work at all, which is one of the joys of doing the CI approach. I feel like I can keep at this for a long time and just keep getting better. Also I haven't hit any sort of plateau (yet); maybe at 8 or 900 hours it will feel like a slog? By then I should be well into native content which everyone says makes the hours fly by a lot faster. I'm looking forward to that!

Background

I started French from zero at the end of November. I learned German the old way a few years ago with grammar books and classes, and listened to a bit of Dreaming Spanish before moving to Dreaming French. Other than trying to get through some of the Language Transfer podcast before a trip to France this spring, I have not really had any exposure to French grammar nor any speaking beyond the bits and pieces on that trip. (which was great!)

What's my DF level?

At 280 hours I re-subscribed to Dreaming French, which I had cancelled a ways back because at the start there was not a lot of content. Now that I'm at level 4, I want to get a feel for "where I'm at" and also there's more content now! So I'm curious how I fit in.

All of the videos below level 60 are a bit too slow and feel disjointed at this point. The upper 60s and low 70s are pretty much my sweet spot at 300 hours: Audrey is the most difficult, Rami is challenging but understandable, Clement and Chloe are both pretty easy for me. Level 75 is actually way too hard still -- Chloe's earthquake video was almost completely lost on me, as is Audrey's "Am I the jerk?" series. So, I still have a ways to go even with DF learner content.

What I'm working on

Native content is still, for the most part, way too hard. I've seen some updates from others who are well into native content at 300 hours, but that's just not where I'm at yet. I am fine with this, although ngl it's frustrating.

I've tried a few times to dive into native channels but it's really hit-or-miss, honestly mostly "miss". BUT, unlike at 150 or 200 hours, native content does feel a lot closer now. I'd say I'm somewhere around 0-75% understanding on a random native video. That's a HUGE range! But the number of videos where I get some comprehension is increasing every week. For truly comprehensible input, that percentage is obviously way too low to be a good use of my time, so, I occasionally check out a native video for giggles but quickly return back to my intermediate-learner playlists. Hopefully soon I will get out of learner content jail.

Content that got me where I am:

- French Happens - extremely basic but a great place to start

- French Comprehensible Input is my mainstay, there's endless content and Lucas is a great teacher. (I'm a subscriber!). In order I listened to: A1 Playlist, One Word Input A1, A2 Playlist, the three "Lucky Luke" series, B1 Playlist, "Tintin L'ile Noir", some GeoGuessr (but slowed down to 90%). I didn't only watch these, plenty of other things were mixed in, but this was my main content at the beginning

- Inner French podcast: I started this around 80-100 hours I think. See below for my thoughts on how best to use this podcast - the transcript is magic sauce

- Francais Authentique - the "Cafe Avec Johan" playlist and some other ones too, but I avoided all of his "eight verbs you need to know" and grammar videos, which is most of the channel

- I did not spend much time watching Dreaming French videos at the start. The early superbeginner stuff just didn't connect with me as much as the other A1 content available on Youtube. Now that I'm intermediate, I actually find the DF content pretty good in the 60s/70s levels!! I'm glad they're adding more and more too at a faster pace now.

What's the vibe, how's it going?

I am definitely getting pretty good at listening to content made for learners. I still feel like I'm absorbing something new with every video I watch. Things I hear in one video "for the first time" are suddenly in every subsequent video I watch, and I just never noticed before, heh. The rate of these "a-ha" moments is lower than at the very beginning, but still often enough that it keeps me motivated to keep going.

So I think I am squarely and comfortably in the early intermediate phase, which I guess is exactly where I'm supposed to be at 300 hours. In some ways it feels like I'm getting close to the moment where...

I want to -speak- French

Yes, I know speaking at 300+ hours is "too soon." Yes, I am going to go ahead and try this anyway.

I mentioned in my first update that I am absolutely dying to start speaking French. I simply cannot wait for 600 or 1000 hours to begin talking: for me, the goal of learning French is to converse with people who are already here in my life right now and they don't care if my accent is perfect. So, I'm going to take a hard, screeching turn off the CI-purist path and start figuring out how to output early. I will likely be in France in August, and I want to have a few hours of speaking practice before then.

I haven't begun output "for real" yet, so I'm really open to people's suggestions here. I've read ALL of the updates here and many from Dreaming Spanish reddit too, regarding how to start speaking. I think I need to find a tutor on one of the platforms like iTalki etc. I suppose I could try talking to a Gemini tutor but that seems so depressing to me. Perhaps I need to get over my anti-AI stance because it could be useful. Thoughts??

Also: I have a grammar book that I have not yet opened. It is staring at me 👀 from my bookshelf right now as I write this. I know for a fact that there are lots of things I'm hearing in input that don't quite "click", and I have a hunch that someone (or a book) could just explain these things to my Adult Brain and I'd be all OMG FINALLY. Yes, this would be using my thinking brain and it is a Bad Idea. Don't do it if you don't want to veer off the CI approach, but I'm going to. I fully intend to continue with CI to the next milestone at 600 hours, and I will report back here at 600 hours to see if this accelerates my ability to converse in French. Or if I give up on it and go back to full-time CI.

What about reading

I still want to avoid reading French as much as possible, because I am 100% sure that my inner voice is way off compared to natives. But "as much as possible" doesn't mean no reading at all.

First of all, I gladly flip YouTube subtitles on and then off again to sometimes catch something I missed. I don't count this as "reading" -- it is just for look-ups and I find it super useful when the host speaks too fast or mumbles something that sounded important for understanding. But mostly I keep subtitles OFF: I find them extremely distracting when I'm trying to pay attention to content.

I also find the Inner French podcast transcripts insanely helpful in deciphering some of the spoken language! For that podcast I've settled on a method that works really well for me: I listen to an episode once straight through with headphones during my commute, concentrating as much as possible on noticing the things that are just gibberish blobs. Then when I'm home, I listen a second time with my laptop web browser open to the transcript page, and I read along as the narrator speaks. It's amazing how many "a-ha" moments this produces. Then I listen a THIRD time, again just with podcast in headphones, and somewhere between 25-75% of those "a-ha" moments are actually recognized by my brain. This feels like mining gold when it happens. I have to admit though that the Inner French podcast should be titled, "Things You Should Feel Awful About." So many of the topics are dreary, or shouldn't be dreary but end up dreary (even the Christmas episode! OMG!! 😱 ) -- so I only do this 3X approach when it's a topic that is actually enjoyable to listen to.

So far I've made zero attempts at graded readers or any other genuine written French, although perhaps at some point in Level 4 I might give more structured reading a try. I know from previously learning German that reading early was massively useful for absorbing both grammar and vocab, but French spelling still seems really... "foreign" to me. Reading German early also damaged my accent, even now ten years later. So, something to think about.

Long term

I am really surprised at how easy it's been to stick to this program. I am certain I'll keep at it and my French will keep improving. I need to figure out how to start speaking and I'm open to suggestions on that. Also I'm really looking forward to the France trip at the end of summer, and I'll report back on that if there's anything interesting to tell.

Thanks to everyone who has posted their experience here before me: your updates have been super helpful and interesting to me, and really show the wide range of progress people have with this method. Knowing that makes me feel very comfortable with my own journey: it's my own and it's going how it goes!

Until then: más input!! And hopefully some speaking :-)

There’s been a few people talking about Immersion.co vs Dreaming French over the last few months and since I’ve had a chance to dive into both I thought I’d compare them for newcomers.

Both websites look kinda similar and the price is basically the same, only difference is that DF you don’t need an account and Immersion you do. It annoyed me at first but after logging in I never really thought about it again. They don’t spam my email or anything (which is what I was worried about)

Immersion.co: I like that they are an all-in-one platform for Comprehensible Input. They have videos, one-on-one tutoring (for an extra fee), an AI crosstalk feature (which was, to my surprise, way better than the normal AI slop I expected), progress tracking, and a Discord community which is still pretty small. Their videos are really good and they have a ton of rookie (their Superbeginner) content that I actually really enjoyed. They have 171 rookie videos and seem to focus on that and beginner way more. DF has only has 80 super beginner.

Dreaming French: I used Dreaming for Spanish so I thought it would basically be the same. And don’t get me wrong, the platform is the same, but I have been surprised at the video quality. Yeah, it's shot very well. But I find that I really don’t love watching the content. It feels “overproduced” (is that fair?) I don’t need the ASMR videos. And often I will sit there for like 30 seconds without hearing a single word. How can that possibly count as half a minute of CI? Having said that, there are good videos too. Its a solid platform overall and I do feel like the production quality is impressive.

Obviously Dreaming has multiple languages now, which makes their job much harder. But its great for the CI ecosystem.

I am still a fan of DS so I pay for both subscriptions just to support both companies.

But if I had to pick one: immersion.co vs. Dreaming French, immersion takes the win for me.