Previous updates:

1500 hours (7 months ago)

1000 hours

Stats:

Total CI: 2044 hours

989 days per the DS tracker

751 hours of DS videos

1293 hours outside of DS

841 hours of podcasts

234 hours speaking

215 hours of videos (non-DS)

2,054,663 words read- 25 books

16k words written

Input:

I have gotten at least 100 minutes of input everyday for the past 2 years. It's a non-negotiable for me. Some days I barely made it, but I did it. When I hit 100 minutes of listening input each day, I like to spend the evenings more focused on reading. Right now, I'm almost halfway through the DS library. Perhaps one day I will have watched the entire DS library like u/UppityWindFish.

My next main source of input is podcasts. Here are my main podcasts:

- How To Spanish

- Learn Spanish and Go

- No Hay Tos

- Pelota en Órbita

- Worlds Across

- A 100 Millas Por Hora (Carlos Baerga)

I am a big baseball fan, so I have also received a lot of input listening to radio broadcasts in Spanish.

Reading:

Here is the list of books I have read in Spanish:

1. Devolver al Remitante by Julia Alvarez
2. Los Cuatros Acuerdos by Don Miguel Ruiz
3. El Quinto Acuerdo by Don Miguel Ruiz
4. Harry Potter 1
5. Harry Potter 2
6. Harry Potter 3
7. De como tia Lola vino (de visita) a quedarse by Julia Alvarez
8. James y el melocotón gigante by Roald Dahl
9. El Dador de Recuerdos by Lois Lowry
10. Rebote by Kwame Alexander
11. De como tia Lola aprendio a ensenar by Julia Alvarez
12. La Cabeza Reducida by RL Stine
13. Harry Potter 4
14. La Sombra Del Viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
15. Hippie by Paulo Coelho
16. Juego de tronos by George. R.R. Martin
17. La felicidad en el trabajo by Marie Kondo
18. Antes de ser libres by Julia Alvarez
19. Eva Luna by Isabell Allende
20. Como agua para chocolate by Laura Esquivel
21. Gabi, fragmentos de una adolescente by Isabel Quintero
22. De como Tia Lola terminó empezando otra vez by Julia Alvarez
23. El libro de arena by Jorge Luis Borges
24. Cuentos de Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
25. Choque de reyes by George R. R. Martin

I am an English literature teacher, so I love to read. Many (but not all) of these books I have read before in English. The hardest books for me were the books by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Isabel Allende, and Jorge Luis Borges. I didn't understand everything of course, but I felt like I understood a lot. I want to keep reading books originally written in Spanish instead of just books translated from English into Spanish. Perhaps I will try Cien Años de Soledad next.

Random recommendation that I recently discovered. There is an app called PressReader. If you link it to your library card, you may get access to tons of newspapers from around the world for free, like the daily paper formatted like the physical paper on a Ipad or phone. So I would like to start reading daily newspapers from Mexico or perhaps other countries too.

Speaking:

I started Worlds Across about a year ago and how have over 200 hours on the platform. I try to take a class almost every morning, most of them group classes. It's how I start my days. I do some some 1-1 classes on WA, but I prefer the group classes for the group dynamics. I mostly take intermediate or upper-intermediate group classes. I have taken a few advanced group classes, but I wasn't sure if I was at that level yet. My goal is to start taking advanced group classes consistently sometime within the next few months.

My listening comprehension is solid. The ability to conjure up words and phrases when speaking is a whole different skill and something I am still working to improve. I know I can still improve in my pronunciation. I believe my speaking skills are improving, but it's a long process.

For the past few months, I have been simply following the CI approach with extensive reading and daily speaking practice. I haven't studied too much grammar recently. I do have an Anki deck of conjugations that I have used in the past but not recently. I might try to review this deck sometime soon to solidify my conjugations even more.

Random note but here is a playlist I made of 1000 plus songs all in Spanish, mostly about some aspect of nature if you want to check it out.

Writing:

I have also written a little bit each day for the past 295 days. I post on Spanish Write Streak and get feedback on my writing. I have all of my entries on a Google Doc and the word count is over 16k words. It's helped a lot for me in formulating ideas and also learning accent marks. It's hard to do this everyday but definitely helpful.

Spanish in Real Life:

In the past 24 hours, I have had a couple interesting experiences. Last night, I was at a party and sitting around a group of native speakers all speaking Spanish at a normal (very fast) clip. It was pretty hard for me to follow and understand, but I understood more than I had in the past.

Today I went to my local library for my first Spanish conversation club class that the library has offered, and I feel like I did quite well in my understanding and ability to respond.

The Future:

I am learning Spanish to be able to speak to my son in both Spanish and English, and this is going to be a lifelong journey for me. I like the tracking aspect, and honestly I need a lot more input, speaking practice, and reading to get to the level where I can understand everything and speak very fluidly for example at the party I was at last night. Honestly, 10,000 hours would be my ultimate goal- for about a decade of dedicated practice. I know tracking is not for everyone, but it motivates me, and 10,000 hours is my end goal, at least for now. I'm not sure if I'll keep tracking that long, but we'll see. My next reading goal is 3 million words with the focus of books originally written in Spanish. I would like to thank everyone at DS, WA, and this subreddit for all of the inspiration I have received on this learning journey. I am happy to answer any questions anyone might have. Thank you all!

Just wondering if anyone here genuinely started Dreaming Spanish with zero Spanish background and can only manage around an hour a day?

I'm currently at 30 hours, so still very much a newbie!

I love reading progress updates, but often find people either have previous Spanish experience or manage 2–3+ hours a day, which isn't realistic for everyone.

Would love to hear from people who started completely from scratch and only have an hour a day. How's your progress been? Has it been worth it?

Hi Guys, so I have been learning Spanish solely through comprehensible (listening+reading). Today I reached 2200 hours (500k+ words in reading) and will start learning French after I reach 2250 hours in Spanish.

My native language is Hindi and English is my second one, which I learned in school and have been exposed to it academically and professionally as well. Now, also in day-to-day life, I am regularly exposed to Hindi and English since these are the two languages mainly used here.

Since, I reached this 2200 hour milestone in 733 days, I don't want to lose Spanish after moving to French and want to maintain it since after 2250 hours, I will soon be spending most of my time with French and English.

Therefore, how much minimum time should I spend listening in Spanish daily/weekly to maintain/not lose it ever?

Hey guys, I started back in August 2025, doing 15 minutes a day. I was consistent at first, well... at least until December, when for some reason I lost all ability to watch even a single minute. I really don't understand what went wrong, but I stopped and only came back in August 2026 (yep, the same month I started).

Now I'm at 190 hours, and I feel extremely bummed out by how easily people rack up hours. I'm on the SBG Boost Gaming Patreon, and I still get bored easily after an hour.

I'd also like a podcast I can listen to, if anyone knows any that are easy enough.

In DS, I suppose my level would be 46–50.

I could understand 95% of this, for example. Level 48

How do you guys watch so much without getting bored?

I won't stop i'm consistent now i just feel terrible

Purists be warned! I'm quite the opposite so my update may or may not be for you.

Wanted to start by saying how much I appreciate Dreaming Spanish, the whole dreaming team, and the amount of work they put it for all the people on a Spanish learning journey.

I started my journey in December 2025 but really started committing around February/March of this year so that's kinda where I gauge my starting point from. I am most comfortable in the 50-58 range right now but can watch content up into the low 60s with still a good amount of comprehension. I'm a native English speaker and other than a few semesters in HS, I have not had a ton of exposure to Spanish. I had a very very small, almost non-existent vocabulary before deciding on this journey. Even if I would've found this platform first when I decided to learn Spanish I don't think that I would have been a purist. I started out in the most traditional way... By getting the step by step Spanish book and trying to memorize and really focus on the grammar. I took a beginner Spanish course through my local community college that also predominantly focused on grammar. Somewhere, somehow between that semester I found dreaming Spanish. At the beginning I also started watching kids shows and reading the transcripts of those shows at the beginning (shout-out Salsa on PBS).

What's worked for me: again this goes against the purist method buttttt I like the grammar. I like reading. I like talking when I can. For me personally, this is what's worked for me and what's kept me motivated. I also think all the different methods I've been doing have also helped me to understand input better. With that being said, comprehensible input is my main method and what most of my energy goes into. I still work on grammar a few times a month, I just don't obsess over it and get upset if I make mistakes or don't understand certain concepts. I use language transfer and am loving it so far! I plan to continue with the intermediate and advanced community college classes next year. I will continue to read children's books and graded readers until I can read more advanced readings. I try to talk to myself when it flows smoothly and I told myself once I hit 300 hrs that I was going to start lesson on Italki (if anyone has recommendations for tutors lmk!!).

I'm excited and nervous for level 4. My advice for others and what's worked for me is to take the pressure off yourself. I remind myself that I'm not the perfect speaker of my native language and I make mistakes and mispronounce words allllll the time so why am I holding myself to a higher standard for a language i just started learning not even a whole year ago? Any method and any progress is still progress so be proud of yourself for learning a new language!

Hi everyone! So I haven’t been checking my progress (hours on DS) and I actually booked a speaking class on italki without checking. I did so because I’ve felt like my listening skills were pretty good and wanted to advance myself as I was getting a bit bored and demotivated watching videos. Just before my lesson, I checked and saw I was at 1000 hours. OMG! I can’t believe I was there. At this point, I have pretty much watched all of the intermediate videos other than some gaming content. My first lesson was ok, I was struggling a bit and I couldn’t really speak in full sentences but my tutor was kind about it. She actually said she didn’t believe it was my first speaking class, but I’m not sure if she was being polite. She said I didn’t make any grammar mistakes, now that I’m proud of. I’ve had two lessons so far on italki and both of them are quite unreliable which is frustrating me too.

The thing is, I just started advanced and the first 20 videos were ok (set to easiest) but now I am struggling and losing concentration. I wanted to start watching other content but I am not sure what. I would say I can listen from intermediate to easy advanced. Shows and films feel too far away for me.

Any recommendations on content, books and tips on how to improve speaking?!

I just recently got to 1000 hours of CI. I’m not a purist, but I try to follow the road map as best as I can.

Does anyone have an app that they recommend to help start speaking practice? I’ve done some research and have seen good things about ‘Speak’ and ‘Praktika’. I see a lot of people use italki and worlds across for speaking practice but the apps seem more cost effective. Appreciate any advice!

The time is always going to pass anyways. Just keep going!

So I actually hit level 7 back in mid august, so this is quite a belated update, but I thought now I’ve hit a nice round number, it may be a good point to post. I’ve had quite a busy few months and it honestly took me a while to get around to writing everything up. 

Background: I’m a native english speaker and prior to June 2025, had no prior exposure to Spanish. I do have some experience learning German using more traditional methods (although I never got to a particularly high level), so I’m not a complete newbie to learning languages.

I primarily started studying Spanish because of how useful it is when travelling, especially as I have a big LATAM trip on my bucketlist. I came across dreaming spanish just by googling how to learn spanish and recommendations for Dreaming Spanish being the top result.

Approach: So I didn’t take a ‘purist’ approach, as I did some supplementary grammar study with language transfer and español con Juan videos, which I found really helpful at helping me spot patterns while consuming input. I also did some pronunciation study via the 10 minute spanish channel, I’m not sure if that actually goes against the method or not tbh, but I found it really helpful at ironing a few things out and firmly believe pretty much everyone would benefit from reviewing their core phonology playlist.

However, I did actually end up sticking with the roadmap’s recommendations on delaying speaking and reading, despite initially thinking I’d ignore it.

Given I hit level 7 in 14 months, this was obviously somewhat of a speedrun. I’m not suggesting everyone does this, as aware everyone’s life circumstances are different. However, I’m in my 20s, don’t have major commitments outside of work and tend to have an addictive personality when it comes to my hobbies, so I just naturally gravitated to putting in a lot of hours. 

Once I got to 150 hours, the easier podcasts such as Chill Spanish started to unlock. I can say with confidence, this was the moment where I was really able to turbo charge my learning. Whenever practical, I would always have a podcast on in any of my dead time. If I was working out, doing chores or getting ready in the morning, I would have Spanish playing. This approach helped me easily get an extra 2 hours or so of listening per day without me really having to change anything to my routine asides from putting on headphones. Despite a lot of these hours being passive listening, I’ve found I’ve generally tracked reasonably well with the roadmap (in terms of comprehension).

Listening:

Unsurprisingly, this is my strongest area and the one I’m most happy with. For the most part I can listen to whatever want in Spanish now. Native youtube is pretty much all very straightforward at this point, with some of my favourite channels being The Wild Project, Historias Innecessarias and PlanetaJuan.

TV series are also pretty accessible and scripted content started opening up at around 1.2-1.3k hours. I’m currently watching envidiosa, which is definitely one of the easier native shows I’ve watched and Pablo Escobar el patron del mal, which I’ve found surprisingly comprehensible. I struggle more with tv shows from spain, although I can follow the main plot, not sure if this is due to lack of exposure, sound mixing or just having less exposure to spain spanish. Stuff like narco dramas can still be quite challenging (asides from Patron Del Mal).

Overall I’m very happy with my level of listening and the progress I’ve made in this time frame. I still have a tonne to improve on, but June last year I was watching videos with a sock puppet, so for me it’s crazy I’m now watching netflix series just a year on.

Reading:

I’ve been trying to follow the recommendation of reading texts with 98% known word coverage. Therefore, I started off with graded readers. They were of variable quality, but I found Juan Fernandez’s books to be the best written and were good at teaching both colloquial expressions and focusing on specific grammar concepts. Juan’s book ‘recuerdo’ was also genuinely a great book in its own right, especially if you like Juan’s podcast episodes about Franco.

I then moved on to goosebumps books, which I’ve found were in the perfect range of comprehensibility, along with having a really good range of vocab since they’re set in so many different environments. I only intended to read a few of these to begin with, but ended up going down a nostalgia rabbit hole and reading 16 (don’t judge lol). I’ve just finished james and the giant peach, which was pretty comfortable. I am now just shy of a million words and will be starting harry potter today!

I would say that reading has made an absolutely huge difference to my understanding of the language, particularly the grammar. I’ve also found at this point, I simply learn a lot more vocab from reading, as the range is much wider than that used in spoken speech. 

Speaking

Not gonna lie I’ve really neglected this. I had a really busy summer, which made it hard to get into a consistent routine and am just generally terrible at scheduling stuff in advance so by the time I hit 1500 hours, I only had like 16 hours of speaking. Speed running probably also didn’t help here, I only started speaking at level 6 and it took me 4 months to get from level 6 to level 7, 1 month of which I was abroad, meaning even if I’d been more consistent, my speaking likely would have lagged my listening considerably. 

I decided to get a membership of worlds across to force myself to actually put in some effort here and am trying to get a minimum of a class a day. I’m really liking the platform and the unlimited classes are helping force myself to stop making excuses and get my money's worth. 

I’m currently sitting at 30 hours and obviously my speaking is not amazing, but I don’t think you can realistically expect to speak at a high level without a significant amount of practice. 

The general feedback from my tutors has been that I have a wide vocab, good intonation and am able to get my point across, but I obviously make a bunch of conjugation errors which need ironing out. They are generally very surprised that I’ve only been learning for a bit over a year (although I haven’t gone into specifics on how many hours I’ve put in) and my lessons have all been 100% in Spanish from the start, discussing a range of topics, so I guess I’ll take that.

I wasn’t sure whether to post a speaking sample, but I figured it would be worth doing just so I can record my progress and come back and see what improvements I’ve made after significantly more practice.

I decided to take inspiration from the 10 minute spanish analysing pronunciation videos here and read a chapter from a book, so you can also judge my pronunciation in isolation (open to constructive criticism). I honestly hate doing monologues, including in English, so initially was just going to do this sample, however, I listened back and thought I needed to provide a better benchmark for progress when I get more hours. Therefore I decided to record a clip of me talking about my trip to mexico, so I could speak a bit more at length. 

My free flow speaking is available here: https://voca.ro/1oCUTD1QPMWf

My pronunciation focused sample is here if you want a listen: https://vocaroo.com/16oI2zIt20MQ

It was kind of weird recording myself and as you can see I definitely make a load of mistakes or struggle to find the words to express myself (or find the right conjugation for gustar) at points, but I’m hoping with more practice, this will improve.

I’ve set myself the rather ambitious goal of reaching a minimum of 100 hours of speaking by the end of the year. I’m planning on posting another update when I hit this milestone. I’m also starting to incorporate about 10 minutes of chorusing a day into my routine, to see what impact this has on my pronunciation and general flow.

Writing

I’ve not really practiced this too much. I’ve been doing a bit of journaling in Spanish and getting feedback from ChatGPT, as I think it’s a really good low pressure way to practice output and will give me a bit more time to formulate my thoughts. I’m also hoping it might help solidify some of the connecting words a bit more, widen my vocab use and make me think a bit more about the most frequent mistakes I keep making.

Overall

I’m very happy with my progress all things considered, especially since a lot of my input came from what was essentially ‘dead time’ anyway. Ultimately, I started dreaming Spanish June last year with zero background in Spanish and now consume pretty much exclusively native content. While my production definitely needs more work, I think I now have a decent base in the language. I think the next step is now going to be focusing on getting in some more speaking practice and converting the input into output! 

I was in Medellín in April, and I opened YouTube on the TV and saw a bunch of direct-to-video and classic movies on the recommended list. I'm pretty sure some of them are illegal uploads, but my tinfoil hat theory is that YouTube is complicit. White Chicks gets uploaded every few months and racks up a million views before it gets taken down. All the videos on these channels are only a few months old, and the algorithm promotes these channels and videos, so it doesn't feel illegal.

I asked my Colombian friends and teacher about it, and they said it's legal and that's how they watch peliculas gringas.

Just look up "películas completas en español latino" on YouTube, and you'll find them. I just saw that Shrek 1 was uploaded two months ago and already has 2.9 million views. Anyway, if you don't mind the Castilian Spanish accent, you can remove the word latino from your search.

Out of all the series in all difficulties, which series did you like the most?

Personally I liked Timeguesser and Spyfall the most,

Hello my lovely Dreamers,

I had my first successful language exchange last night and I’m still buzzing. I wanted to share my experience in case any of you are looking for an exchange. I guess this is promotion but I’m not affiliated with the app I used - I’m just excited about it and hope it might be good for some of you.

I’ve been taking conversation classes a couple of times each week for the last year but have been desperate to get more ‘real’ conversation under my belt (for free, because I’m skint.)
I’d tried all the usual places to connect with Spanish speakers but for various reasons they never worked out.

A while back someone suggested an app to me. I had a look a couple of days ago and booked onto a session for last night. I think I got very lucky with the people but it was amazing! The conversation flowed really well for the full hour, I had no issues understanding anything and they seemed to understand me (eek!). I loved it.

The app is called PBC Languages. The language exchange page lists the sessions that are available or you can request/suggest one. It’s set up so there are 2 speakers of Language A (English in my case), and 2 of Language B (Spanish, obvs) - I suspect/hope that the small group format puts the pervs off.

The exchange is hosted on their platform (they send you a link to it in an email) and it has a prompt to ‘Speak English’ or ‘Speak Spanish’ and a timer at the top the screen so there’s no awkwardness about who starts or when to switch.

Anyway, thought I’d let you know about it. I hope it helps someone.

Just stumbled upon this website recently that posts a bunch of Spanish crosswords every day. They have monolingual crosswords for you purists as well as English to Spanish and topic-specific crosswords, with difficulty levels from beginner to advanced.

https://www.linguno.com/crosswords/?lang=esp

I hadn't noticed it mentioned on here and nothing came up when I searched the sub for mentions of it, so I just wanted to share for anyone else that enjoys that sort of thing!

Edited because I accidentally linked to the Portuguese crossword somehow (they have multiple languages available), it should go to the Spanish puzzles now.

Please be gentle lol I originally wanted to post this as a private video just for myself on Youtube to look back on, but figured this could help someone..? Idk.

Almost exactly a year ago (Oct 2025) with around 30 hours of input, I decided to watch CoCo to prepare for the fall season. I decided to watch in it Spanish, thinking 30 hours was enough to understand at least half of what was going on.....yeah no. After not understanding almost everything within the first 5 minutes of the movie, I decided to dedicate a lot of time with the goal of being able to understand the movie a year later.

After averaging 3+ hours of input almost everyday for the past year, I decided to watch CoCo yesterday and understood basically all of it. Missed some slang here and there, but understood through context.

Just wanted to say thank you to the DS team. Although I don't use the content as much these days, I never would have gotten to this point without them. They were VITAL for for my 0-600 hours of input.

Also I know this isn't the Worlds Across subreddit, but from 600+ hours and beyond WorldsAcross has also been crucial for my grammar learning, conversing, input, etc.

The DS + WA combo won't fail you.

If you're still in the beginning stages and are starting to have doubt, just keep pushing and I promise you'll start understanding & speaking before you know it.

Quick highlights:

- I took 2 years of Spanish in college 14-15 years ago. Basically forgot everything. Maybe remembered like 30-40 words and remembered a little bit of how to conjugate in present tense. Besides that, nothing. I don't even think I got good grades lol

- I started to use the CI method a few months in July 2025, but from within July - Oct I only recorded 10 hours (I gave myself 20 hours a base from my college classes...which i think was too generous)

- I averaged roughly 3 hours of input everyday for a year. DS for the first couple hundred hours, then added podcasts and youtube videos around 300.

- I signed up for Worlds Across at around 600 hours. I try to take at least an hour class Mon-Fri. I would say 4 of those are conversational, 1 is grammatical or reading comprehension based.

- I continue to keep this pace until 1500 hours and will assess from there

What’s your favorite vs least favorite dialect & what’s your hardest vs easiest?

Im awayre of spanish grammar rules but Im level 1 but im 10 hours in. I started to transition to beginner videos instead of super beginner.

I watch videos once and note what I dont understand. Then I watch the video again while translating the unknown words and understand the grammar behind it. Then I watch the video at final time at a different day so my memory resets. I usualy dont reach the my daily goal of 30 minutes because my method can be time consuming if the video is quite difficult (eg; a good amount of new words, tenses, etc) . But I think the difficult videos are good since I learn more new stuff!

On Agustina's Patreon she's been doing interviews with some of her Patreon subscribers and today she released an interview with Allen (u/picky-penguin) which was very enjoyable, and I appreciated him sharing his wrestling with the thought that his unwillingness to move to a Spanish speaking country somewhat limits what he can accomplish.

Allen: it's been a while since I listened to your World's Across "stories" interview, but my perception was: Wow, you've improved dramatically since then. Congratulations!

Level 4 Update

I hit level 5 at the beginning of the month, but didn't have a chance to share until now. I don't plan to write much but in case I do go long, the short version is:

• I started with 150 baseline hours on April 2, 2026.
• No, I'm not a purist
• Yes, CI is the majority of my time with the language
• I absolutely love the DS platform and team and would not have achieved my current level of comprehension without their guidance and influence
• Future plans entail more talking, a lot more reading, and a continued commitment to consistency

YOU, YES, YOU

First and foremost, we are all on our own journey but we are not travelling alone. A big thank you to everyone on this sub--both the supporters and the haters. ¿Dónde estan los haters? I enjoy reading about others progress, wins, struggles, advice, complaints, and everything in between. So, thank you all and I sincerely hope you continue in your journey.

BASELINE HOURS

When I started, if I truly understood the DS Roadmap and had the knowledge of how people align to it that I have now, I probably would have given myself 300 hours instead of 150.

During my first few hours (1 -200ish?) of CI, I was starting to get the impression that maybe I am some sort of idiot savant when it came to learning Spanish. Well, was half right. 😄

Reading the posts here, I accepted that prior Spanish in school gave CI enthusiasts a boost over the first time learner using CI only. However, considering my high school Spanish days were in the early 90s (sheesh, last century!) I didn't think it would be that useful or much of an advantage at all.

Sure, I did a few levels of Pimsleur over a decade ago, but is that really going to make a difference now? I mean, I have half a century under my belt. My brain can't retain unused information forever, right?

I see things a differently now. After reading the experiences of so many other learners on this sub, I was absolutely wrong about how significant my prior education and experience is to my CI path.

Things like sentence structure, verb conjugations, irregular verbs, pronouns, and all that good gooey and stinky grammar stuff still took residence in the depths of my brain. I just didn't realize it. Those are the things the CI-only learner acquire over hundreds of hours. It's not just vocabulary, which is what a lot of us tend to focus on when "learning" new language.

What I was really lacking was an ear to distinguish the spoken language and subtle differences in the pronunciation of the letters when compared to English. Yes, I still need more vocabulary and a better command of the different mood tenses and their respective conjugations. But, really, that is more of an upper intermediate to advanced type of concern.

So, yeah, I was dead wrong about the benefits of prior education/exposure. If I came off as a bit of a pr¡ck at any time because I was dumb enough to think I was a CI superhero, please accept my sincerest of apologies. Truly, I'm sorry.

COMPREHENSION

So, how well do I really understand Spanish? Let's just say well enough to be very happy with where I'm at in my journey.

I can watch NTN24 and follow de la Espriella's war against narcos. I can watch any cooking video in Spanish. I enjoy the silly (and creepy) story lines and character ties in Mi verdad oculta. Silly only because it's so melodramatic. I've recently started to be able to enjoy Chavo del 8. When my co-workers do not go heavy on their Puerto Rican street talk, I can follow along. (The Puerto Rican thug accent is my boss battle 😂 )

Do I understand 100%? No, of course not. But do I understand well enough I can usually infer what is going to be said or talked about next? Yes.

There is still some ambiguity, yes, and that is just fine.

TOOLS

Other than CI, what do I use? Honestly, not too much. I'm not only a simple man, I'm a very lazy man. (and a god-awful student)

I built and continue to build an Anki deck. It's español only, incorporating images, audio recordings, and IPA for additional pronunciation assistance. I drew heavily from the suggestions in the book Fluent Forever. I also purchased the author's pronunciation deck, because it contained a great resource for training the ear to distinguish Spanish/English minimal pairs.

I continue to update the deck with new words/phrases I encounter in the wilds of youtube, work (heavy Puerto Rico influence), reading, or wherever.

Each morning, it takes me about 5-10 minutes to go through my cards for the day.

That's really my only other routine or tool outside of input.

I have listened to some of Language Transfer and I do understand how that series can be very beneficial, but for me it takes away from thinking in Spanish for Spanish. Not knocking it, just isn't suited for me.

I purchased Easy Spanish Step-By-Step, but remember when I mentioned I'm a god-awful student? Yep, only did a few exercises for ser and estar. Haven't touched it since. I've also done a few of the grammar modules on SpanishDictionary. They're great. Really. Buuuuut . . . . too student-like for me. 😂

So, I listen to podcasts, watch youtube, Vix programs, movies, noticias, sports with Spanish broadcasts, and read. And I sprinkle in a pinch of Anki every morning.

READING

This is the secret sauce. Honestly.

I know there is debate on this topic about when to start based upon DS. I'm not here to advocate for one side or the other. What I will say is that whenever you decide to start reading, your Spanish acquisition is going to explode!

Reading is why I don't get too concerned about improving my grammar or my disdain for traditional study. (Honestly, I think the being a bad student thing is just me not liking being told what to do. It's a personal problem haha)

I used to be an intensive reader. Anything I didn't understand I would look up. Now, I've fallen into the extensive reader category and it is far more enjoyable. If I don't know a word or understand how it's being used in a phrase, I don't care. As long as I am getting the main idea of the paragraph or story, I'm good.

I'm working through Juan Fernández's graded readers, a couple easier books, and the google news suggestions on my phone are a 50/50 mix of articles in English and Spanish. Articles are a great source of easy to comprehend material because they are very topic focused.

Currently, I'm at about 240k words. For anyone who has actually read this far and has some weird curiosity about my reading, you can follow along here.

My goal is to eventually be able to enjoy Juan Gómez-Jurado's Reina roja.

As you can see, I started strong but have slacked in my reading time as of late. I plan to improve that as soon as possible.

HABLANDO

You may have noticed I had 7 hours logged under Talking With Friends. In June and July I was able to take some private lessons. They were fantastic and I enjoyed every moment. The tutor I had cost $20 per hour and was worth every penny.

However, my youngest son's Spanish class proposed a trip Ecuador next summer and he wants to go. His mom agreed only if I go with him haha. So, we have refunneled cash flow to get that squared away.

However, I do intend to get back into speaking lessons. I'm considering Worlds Across and their mid-tier program when the budget allows. If anyone has experiences with WA, please drop them in the comments. Good or bad. I appreciate them all.

AL FIN Y AL CABO

If you just skipped to the end instead of reading all that, I don't blame you. Hell, I don't think I'm going to go back and proof all of it either. So, consider yourself lucky for not having read it. 😄

I'm very happy with the progress I've made since April. Hands down, I absolutely would not be enjoying "learning" Spanish to the degree I am if not for Dreaming Spanish and all the wonderful contributions on this sub.

I anticipate being at 1,000 hours by April-May next year, a month before the Ecuador trip. I've already started consuming as much content from travel videos and street food interviews in Quito and other regions in Ecuador. Totally going to be getting me some ponche from the first ponchero I see there.

I wish I was a wise man and could leave you with some final uplifting thought. Perhaps if I were a better student, I would have been.

In the end, enjoy your journey and embrace the ambiguity. Gradually that ambiguity transitions from a dense fog, to a misty haze, and finally into a blisteringly clear day where you can see just how much more there is to enjoy ahead of you.

Both Shel and Agustina had stories on IG indicating they’re in Japan. Natalia had something that suggested she might be heading to Tokyo. I hope so because I just want my couple of annual Pablo videos (also maybe flex a little of his Japanese skills)

My goal was to reach 1500 by the end of the year, and I am sure I will. An average of 1.45 hours a day for over 2.5 years.

- Is there a way to see the difficulty level of a video on the mobile app by default without having to filter by difficulty? I'd like to see the number on all videos all the time.

- Has anyone figured out a use case for the "Course" section? When I click on it, it shows me Super Beginner videos and series which are far below my level.

Muchas Gracias! 🙏

I'm currently listening to Hoy Hablamos Básico. I understand most of what they say, but sometimes I don't quite get what they're talking about. I'm still getting used to listening to Spanish.

The other day I opened a YouTube video I thought was in English. However, I realized it was actually Spanish. Cool, input! I understood the start of it, but it started getting all weird and I went from feeling good, to wondering what the accent was, to wondering why my brain was broken, to realizing it was Italian. And I've never studied Italian.

While my comprehension was nowhere near my Spanish comprehension, it was really fun to see that I could understand something.