What are some hot takes based on your language learning journey that others may disagree with or that you find work best for you that may be counterintuitive?
I'm at 750 hours of input. I'm looking for youtube content around the level of Advanced on DreamingSpanish. I watch a lot of Spanish Boost with Mila and Martin, Andrea la Mexicana, Espanol con Juan. I understand almost everything these creators say in their videos, though I do usually learn a new word or expression each Juan video. I'm looking for slightly harder videos.
Despite what the roadmap may say I feel like harder videos will expose me to more native intonation and words. Most of my input comes while taking walks so I may not be fully fully focused. If I really sit down and focus I can watch some native content with a bit of difficulty like Calixto Cerna or PlanetaJuan.
I'm interested in videos about many topics like games, fishing, cooking, travel, physics, space, history, language, chess, exercise.
It seems to me that at the various levels (right now I’m on 55) Andrea’s videos feel noticeably faster and more advance than say Agustina or Natalia at the same level. Has anyone noticed this?
Please note this video was done without any script, just a rough mental note of what I wanted to talk about (in this case understanding, reading, and speaking). Just so you know I did have exposure to Spanish as a child (from my grandfather but I never spoke and never understood that much). I’ve also “studied” grammar before meaning I google things to clarify if I see fit (though I prefer not to do so). If I seem familiar to any of you that’s because I used to have another account. But I somehow activated a spam filter and got all my old posts removed (then appealed but only got an AI reply). I’m open to constructive criticism of any kind! I’ve been loving the method so far.
Background
I’m a middle-aged mom with a full plate of work, house and kid care, school volunteering, and family time. I'd been learning Spanish for a year or two with other resources when I found DS, and I do have an academic background in other languages, but I could barely understand a word anyone said.
It’s taken me 3.5 years to get to 1000 hours and will probably take another year and half to get to 1500. I’m okay with that! The fact that I’ve gotten this far is so amazing to me. It’s been a lifelong goal to actually learn a language, and this is farthest I’ve ever gotten after high school German, college Latin, and grad school French-for-translation.
Most of my hours are consumed while walking, doing dishes or laundry, driving, knitting, or doing other chores. I know that’s not what Pablo wants, but it would simply not get done otherwise!
Listening
I can understand just about every DS video, although I have to really focus on the hardest advanced ones. When the speakers are clear and not super fast, YouTube videos on history, language, and books (the subjects I usually pick) are comprehensible. I’m still only at about 60% of most shows and movies made for native audiences.
Reading
I’ve been reading Spanish since long before DS and am closing in on 1.7 million words. I’m very comfortable with ambiguity in reading, so I’ve tended to read books that are not really in a comprehensible sweet spot but that I enjoy. Again, probably not the most efficient, but (for me) the most sustainable approach.
Speaking
At about 800 hours, I signed up for a month trial of Worlds Across, took two lessons, had one good and one very mediocre experience, and then decided I was going to focus on reading out loud and talking to myself/ my husband for a while. I don’t live around a lot of Spanish speakers and we don’t have any trips planned, so I didn't feel a big rush.
There’s a natural experiment in my household: my husband was a Spanish minor in college, and my teenager took AP Spanish Language last year (5!) and is taking AP Spanish Lit this year. Compared to them, my grammar/ speaking is truly dire. I conjugate wildly, use the wrong pronouns, and generally make a fool of myself. However! My vocabulary is loads better than both of theirs. That’s partly just a function of my brain being sticky when it comes to words, but when we’re discussing how to say something, it often bubbles up out of some unconscious well.
Writing
I’ve done a bit of this but it really hasn’t been a focus and probably won’t be for a while.
Overall, I’m so grateful to DS for enabling me to learn and keep learning Spanish. There’s no doubt in my mind that, at this point in my life, I wouldn’t have been able to do it any other way.
I always thought that it would be cool if they started doing weekly film reviews. Or popculture reviews. Or just recommendations.
It's a content many people like to watch, because we all consume culture, and it could be for BEGINNER or INTERMEDIATE, so it wouldn't have to be too in-depth or too complex, so probably most guides could do it.
I think it should have two hosts every week, maybe with the second host changing week to week.
I thought maybe someone from DS team would see this on Reddit and maybe make it come true. :D I'd love a mini-podcast like 10-15 minutes about films, tv shows or popculutre from these guys for some nice CI.
What do you guys think?
Atleast 60% of the videos I downloaded don't work and just show this massage after a few seconds... I'm annoyed because the videos use a lot of data so it's hard for me to reach my daily goal of 2h without Wifi.... does anyone know why this keeps happening?
I have 1500+ hours of CI but am also doing 5-6 hours of more traditional lessons each week. For the past 3 weeks, I’ve only had my CI because my Spanish classes have been on pause. Earlier this week I had an italki conversation class and I felt so… fluent? I wasn’t overthinking it can the right words were coming to me. I’m sure I made some mistakes but I wasn’t in complete “modo evaluación “ as I normally am, which I think holds me back. I’ve been a bit nervous about scaling back on grammar learning but has anyone else seen positive results from doing so?
I recently reached 600 hours and wanted to share a bit of an update on how my experience has been. I really enjoy dreaming Spanish and find a lot of the videos entertaining.
When I first started dreaming Spanish I remember watching one of the Stardew Valley videos in the beginners section and not understanding a single sentence. I remember asking myself if I made a mistake by signing up for Dreaming Spanish.
At 600 hours I now feel like my Spanish vocabulary is light years ahead of when I first started and I’m able to watch level 70 videos very easily. I also recently listened to an episode of dateline Español and understood 100% of the episode, which for me is very cool because I love true crime series and it shows I’m able to understand content that’s not being made for learners.
I wanted to learn Spanish because my wife’s family is from Mexico and my mother-in-law doesn’t speak English. I’ve always had an interest in learning another language, and this was extra motivation to begin. Our conversations mostly have been very basic about how is work and how are we liking our new apartment after moving to be closer to home. More recently my dad was diagnosed with cancer and my mother-in-law asked me how he’s doing and on the fly I was able to express myself completely in Spanish about his health, treatments and overall situation. It wasn’t crazy in depth or intricate but I was really impressed and almost surprised with the way I was able to explain what’s going on in another language on the fly.
I’m planning on continuing dreaming Spanish and seeing it out to the 1500 hours. There’s so many videos and I feel like it’s difficult to know when to advance sometimes but I definitely see the personal progress with my comprehension and speech and I’m looking forward to seeing it continue to grow.
i was curious how well will I understand advanced content at 245 hours, turns out they arent that much harder than intermediate ones?
I watched about 25 random videos from the advanced category (not sorting by easy) and im consistently able to understand 75-85% Im I built different or is this standard ?
Hola Todos!
Here’s my first speaking sample at 492 hours of CI (no practice or script). I also have read ~ 150k words, all from graded readers up to this point. I also have 9 hours of speaking practice using italki. Two other resources I use is Anki (Refold ES1K deck) and language transfer for grammar.
I want to record my speaking progress between now and whenever I reach 1,500 hours so I will update the community with more speaking samples at 800 and 1200 hours, in addition to my level 5 and level 6 progress reports.
Please let me know what you think! I take all feedback as something that I can learn from and work on. And maybe this speaking sample can be useful to someone around my same number of hours or someone just getting started.
Muchas gracias!
I’ve just recently eclipsed the 150 hour mark. I’ve been with dreaming Spanish for around eight weeks, so I am pleased with how the progress is coming along timewise. I am currently watching videos in the 58-59 level range with nearly full comprehension, though anything more and I begin to falter heavily. I try to get to 200 minutes a day, but find there are a lot of days with 100 minutes (never less), and a lot of days with 250+ minutes. Now that I am away from the beginner content, I am able to enjoy and learn from what I listen to, which has been incredibly nice.
I just unlocked the dreaming Spanish podcast, or the episodes in the range I am in at least. This has been huge. Being able to cook, or workout, and listen to entertaining podcasts makes the daily supplementation feel easier.
Around the 120 hour mark I stopped translating in my head all the time, which was so relieving. I am not sure how or why I stopped doing it, but am thankful that I did. It has helped me pay more attention to the use of different words in different situations, and understand the versatility of what goes where a little more.
I still feel like my speaking has not improved at all, which makes sense, I haven’t practiced. But I have immense difficulty calling to mind words that I KNOW I know. When I hear them there isn’t a second thought, but I’ve no hope of recreating that word on my own. Nouns like ceiling, blanket, sheep, and a long list of more.
I have also been trying to microdose reading. I have changed my phone language to Spanish, which is helping me be more immersed in Spanish. I try to read one chapter of the Bible, working through Mark currently, in Spanish after reading it in English (so I have the context). I try to read aloud, focus on pronunciation, and relate what I’m reading to what I know is happening. It has helped me understand sentence structures a tiny bit better.
One last win before I get to some questions I have. Occasionally, I have a thought in Spanish. Always a very quick thought, and something I hear often. “No puede ser” is a good example. Nothing ground breaking, but the fact that it happens sparsely is cool to me.
Some questions
- I am certainly by no means a purist, I just want to speak the language as good as I can and be immersed in it. I also would prefer to be in a fairly concrete spot in the next 2ish years. What is a good place to start for larger scale reading? The Bible chapters are nice, but something that is much much much easier to read, and is much much much longer than a single chapter. If anyone has any recommendations for books to read, I welcome them. A goal is to get to the Harry Potter books by next August (12 months).
- For people who supplemented input early on with grammatical study, or a Duolingo esque application, how did that turn out? Are you regretful for not waiting until much later into CI? or are you pleased with the results of the methods you used (in that case, what did you use, and explain the function please)?
- any thoughts from DS graduates on the best way to introduce speaking and when? This part I am willing to adhere more to the roadmap, because I would like to have a good accent and such.
Thank you for the time you took to read my post, I sincerely appreciate your desire to help.
Hola a todos! I made a recording of where I'm at with about 1200 hours (I stopped counting at 1000). I'm very happy with my results from CI and so glad I found this method. I lived studied, travelled, and lived in Spanish speaking countries for about 2 years total in my youth but always stayed in my English speaking bubble and never really achieved higher than A2. I work with Spanish speakers and had cobbled together weird Spanish from my time doing that but never got much higher than B1. So I had a lot of contact with the language but it wasn't until DS that I actually started speaking in a way that people could understand me and really understanding the native speakers around me. My proudest moment on this journey is when I was invited to a world cup watch party in Spain this summer and was able to comfortably follow the conversation between 8 Spaniards and even contribute. Also - I have read a ton. Everything I read is in Spanish. This helps a lot. Anyways, here is my speaking sample - with a few cringy errors listening back but whatever! Thank you Pablo and the whole DS team! Os quiero!
Background
Four years of French at school that I don't remember at all (at least consciously). English isn't my native language, I've been learning it for over 10 years now, 4 of which I lived in English speaking countries, so I have zero delusions about being native like at 1500h. But I'm fairly confident I'll be daily life fluent by then.
Spanish wise: A1 and almost all of A2 in online group classes, daily Duolingo, and 9h of iTalki (I have no idea how I pulled that off back then) about two years ago. Then I got bored and stopped completely until June this year.
What changed: I dislocated my shoulder, needed surgery, and got benched from all sports for 6+ months. Sport has been a huge part of my life, so suddenly I had a lot of free time back. I also had 3 weeks of post-op sick leave sitting at home doing nothing, so not to go insane I decided to do Language Transfer and then dedicate every waking hour to CI and speedrun Spanish. Ngl "conversational in just over 6 months" sounds hella cool and that's a big chunk of my motivation. Seeing big progress differences each month adds even more.
A few notes:
How it actually went
I started with beginner videos and quickly realized they were way too slow and boring, so I moved to intermediate videos, which were not hard to follow, but had a step up in vocab. Then I tried Español con Juan, and even though I definitely didn't know every word, following what he was talking about was easy. So I've added 300h as a "prior Spanish exposure" and started counting CI from this point. Funnily enough, I then almost immediately stopped watching Dreaming Spanish content (I only have 16h total on the platform). I found I was spending more time deciding what to watch than actually watching. But the Dreaming Spanish community was very helpful, both in terms of resources and motivation. I've definitely spent more than 16h reading people's reports and suggestions here, so hopefully mine will be useful to someone else as well.
June: 162h. First month post-op, not counting Language Transfer. Mostly dubbed animated series: Carmen Sandiego, The Owl House, and The Legend of Korra were my favorite ones. I could understand Bluey but I hated it. A lot of my CI was coming from ECJ, and later in the month I added Hoy Hablamos and How to Spanish. At the end of the month I had my first speaking session since restarting. I barely used English, understood the guy well, and managed to tell the whole shoulder dislocation story with a lot of details. And I didn't feel like I was about to pass out afterward, which tbh was a huge win for me.
July: 68h. Rough patch. I realized that hours come easily when you find a series you're genuinely invested in, but that's hard to do even in English, and at my level in Spanish it felt almost impossible. I was also getting burned out on ECJ and podcasts generally, and I had to go back to work. First three weeks of July I only logged 22h. But then I realized I could game while listening to podcasts, and that was a game (hehe) changer. I started with Hollow Knight, which I'd played two years ago so I already knew what to do. I muted the game, put headphones on, and finished July at 68h. Mostly Hoy Hablamos while gaming since it's easier to comprehend, plus No Hay Tos on my commute. I also started reading Juan's books around here.
August: 73h so far. Rewatched Arcane in Spanish, watched Control Z season 1 (first native series!), and tried to lean harder into No Hay Tos and Mextalki. Unfortunately neither holds my attention, which is genuinely annoying given they're the two most recommended podcasts at this level. So I decided to try listening to Black Mango (a true crime podcast for natives) and holy fuck, I could actually follow it!! Definitely missing a lot of words, but following it. I felt incredible about myself for approximately eight hours, until my iTalki session that evening where I forgot the word for "legs" and had to describe them as "the part of the body you use to walk." Humbled immediately 😅
Speaking (7h)
This one is interesting. Originally I had no issues doing iTalki sessions. It obviously wasn't the prettiest Spanish my tutor had ever heard, but I wasn't afraid going in and I tried not to overthink it. I've found the less I think while talking, the better my output is. Then I spent a bunch of time reading speaking progress updates on this sub and somehow acquired a fear of speaking. I even considered waiting until 1000h to continue speaking. But then I decided if I could understand them talking to me, I should be at least somewhat able to talk back. So I decided to push through to at least 20h of output, and if I still hate it at that point, I'll stop and speedrun speaking in one month after 1000h.
So far it's going okay. My main sessions are with a Mexican tutor. I also did three trial sessions with new tutors, all Colombian, no problems understanding any of them, and I could express myself without using English. All three placed me at intermediate, and one said she wasn't adapting her speech for me and that my accent was very good. I half believe the not adapting part; I'm certain my accent is nowhere near ideal, but I'll take the compliment.
Reading (147k words)
Started with Juan's graded readers since I liked his podcast and his books get a lot of praise here as well. Finished ¡Hola, Lola!, Un Hombre Fascinante, La Profe De Español, Año Nuevo, Vida Nueva, and Fantasmas Del Pasado. I like his style but I've had a bit too much Juan at this point. I'm on El peor día de mi vida now and that's probably my last one of his. I also finished the Paco Ardit B1 bundle to mix things up. Comedia de locos was indeed very dull, but the other stories were actually engaging.
Where I'm at and what's next
My 600h landed exactly while I was on a flight for a weekend in Spain. Vocab is still clearly limited, I could understand plenty and even eavesdrop on strangers sometimes, but occasionally couldn't understand people talking directly to me. That was almost always when I wasn't expecting to be spoken to and it was a short sentence with no context to infer from. Either way, I don't feel bad about it. I'm already excited for the next trip at 1000h, which I'm aiming to hit by the end of the year, along with 50h of speaking and 1M words read.
After a year of trying to introduce my 9 year old to Spanish via Duolingo and a once a week tutor, we need to try something different. She’s AuDHD and very interest-driven. I think the minutes-watched will help, plus I’d love any insight into where to start (super beginner? Beginner?) and videos that might be interesting to her (video games, music) versus hotel/food etc.
I’m probably a B2 level, so I’m able to help with this process pretty easily, but need guidance on how to make this as interesting as possible for a kid, emphasizing exposure and interests over classes/drills/etc.
EDIT: we have 39,000 members now
when i joined this subreddit it was so small. there were no testimonials in here. i remember making a post asking where i could rind testimonial and the OGs before I was an OG told me to search the learning spanish subreddit for comprehensible input 😂
i remember i would come in here every day and try to answer questions for everyone who was new. i always pushed people to post testimonials. i wanted the community to grow so bad.
i dont know how many members we have now because for some really weird reason reddit decided to not allow us to see that anymore? wtf. what a weird feature to remove 🤣 but i know its a heck of a lot more than 2k.
thanks to everyone for being here! what a journey.
Hi everyone,
This is my third update in this subreddit, you can find the first and second ones linked here. The first also included a speaking sample.
I gave myself 250 hours just based on having done some Duolingo when I started - optimistic, I know! Hence the two different amounts of hours in the title. But I personally view it as 750 hours and am quite happy with my progress against the roadmap.
In terms of strategy, not much has changed. I'm not a purist whatsoever, started speaking more or less from the start, and am counting reading towards my goal hours now as well (it's a good motivation for me to read more)! I'm finding it a little harder to motivate myself to practice Spanish right now, the summer weather and work are making everything more of a slog! But I still aim for 3 hours a day and hit it most days.
Anyway, here is my speaking sample: https://voca.ro/12LgVGMYvlyo
I'll record another one after 1,000 hours, hopefully before my Spain holiday in November.
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’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?
Every now and then on my posts I'll just get these random comments from people in Spanish. Obviously me learning spanish I'm not complaining but I just find it odd. Why would someone see a post in english then reply in spanish? Is it an AI or something? Considering the nature of content I watch It can't be a coincidence It's spanish and not any other language. i try sometimes to see it as a challenge and reply in spanish but that normally gets me down voted. Any clues?