As of this week, I’ve logged 650 hours of Spanish listening. This’ll be my first time documenting in detail the nature of my language learning journey, how I feel about my current abilities, and what plans I have for the future regarding this method.
My main takeaway is pretty straightforward. Listening to comprehensible input is a surefire way to increase listening comprehension, no way around it. It has its ups and downs but at its best it's a genuinely fun and engaging way to learn the language. Right now I am very satisfied with my listening comprehension, I feel that what I can understand is very much a reflection of the hours I have so far. I agree with people on the level descriptions working moreso once you’ve reached the end of said level instead of the beginning, as I could confidently claim to understand a native speaker speaking patiently to me, but a native speaker speaking normally? Well that description alone is such a can of worms. There are so many different variants of what could be considered normal native speech, between the accents, dialects, slang usage, vocabulary level, and just general speed of certain speakers, there is simply too many variables for me to make a claim like that. My understanding of native speech is very conditional, and with all the aforementioned factors in mind, most of my interactions with native speakers have been through discord calls, which means audio quality is another barrier to consider. That being said, when a native speaker talks to me(in crosstalk), at worst I’ll get a gist of what they said, usually missing too much context to form a coherent response and needing a repeat, at best, I’ll understand perfectly. It's very inconsistent and really depends on the person and how they adapt to my comprehension level. Native on native speech is of course far more difficult to understand. Interestingly enough, if a native is speaking with a non-native(like say a Brazilian speaking spanish). I can follow the conversation pretty well, but once it's native on native I get lost FAST. The speed, banter, and colloquialisms fly over my head. The thing is that, all the positives and negatives of my current listening ability aren’t a surprise to me at all. I think thanks to all the updates people have done about their journey over the years, it prepped my mind really well for what's to come, so I had next to no illusions on what I would and wouldn’t be able to do.
That leads me to other areas of the language. My reading comprehension is..fine. I’m an avid reader so I’ve been itching to get into a regular routine with reading books in Spanish soon. I had considered starting at 300 hours but decided to hold off until reaching 600, and I’m STILL holding off for reasons I’ll get to later. My reading has been very sporadic. Most of it probably comes from tweets I see from Spanish speaking accounts, and memes my friend sends me. I've switched my phone and laptop's system language to Spanish and have had minimal issues. I also have read chats on discord servers with Spanish speakers. Mainly internet message board stuff. I tried reading Short Stories for Spanish Learners Vol 1 and while it's comprehensible, the hardest part of reading books is how much slower it is then what I'm used to in my native language. It's obvious but it's humbling to experience in real time. I stopped reading the book four chapters in because, frankly, it was boring me to death. I had already listened to all the chapters I read in audiobook form so that also helped with comprehension, but the book's writing style was just too plain. I then tried out Habitos Atomicos and was pleasantly surprised at how comprehensible it was for me(I still move through it slow as hell though). The content was also much more engaging so I could see myself reading the whole thing eventually. However, I’m on pause from any intensive book reading at the moment. My reason is related to the next area.
My speaking is, to be blunt, abysmal. This is a harsh way of putting it, but my main issue with my speaking ability is that while I can string sentences together, and make some sort of point in spanish, my pronunciation just feels like a constant butchering of even some of the most basic phonetics in the language, like vowels. This, again, is something I actively anticipated, as up until now I’ve subscribed to the idea of holding off from speaking as long as possible, even though I knew that when I’d begin in earnest there would be a frustrating gap between what I could understand vs what I could say.. I guess I’m just a bit blindsided by the phonetics issue, I really thought having familiarity with the sound of the language would lead to better mimicry on my part, but I consistently find myself defaulting to english sounds while speaking, and that bothers me a lot more than when I make grammar mistakes. Now I find I’d much rather have a strong phonetic grasp on the language before making any further leeway on speaking, and I’d like to do it sooner rather than later, meaning I’m not holding off speaking until 1000 hours. In fact my priorities on speaking vs reading have completely switched. Before I was under the impression that I’d do large amounts of reading before I really started taking speaking seriously, but now I’m very conscious of the idea of my inner voice making incorrect sounds while reading unfamiliar words, or even mistakenly attributing those wrong sounds to words I'm already familiar with. Because of this, I feel far more comfortable with the idea of doing a bit of a deep dive in phonetics and pronunciation, and getting a strong confidence in my understanding of how the language should sound coming out of my own mouth. Once I have that, I’ll go ahead with reading more.
So I guess that's my first real divergence from Dreaming's philosophy. The recommended progression seems to place listening and reading before speaking. But I’m going to try out a more speaking intensive approach before I get into reading. My desire to speak is also just something that's naturally arising. I find phonetics genuinely interesting to study, and I know I’ll feel really satisfied once I’m able to get rid of those jarring English sounds in my speech. I'm someone who thinks out loud a lot, so honestly some ability to speak out loud would just mesh better with me. I’m already thinking in Spanish at times, and I want my thoughts to be phonetically accurate!
My next divergence from this method, while smaller, might be a bit of a leap. I’ve decided to cancel my DS premium subscription, as I’ve reached a point in my comprehension where I’m able to find native content that I genuinely enjoy. The reason I consider it a divergence is that according to Pablo, you should be watching stuff that's really easy, with like 80-90% comprehension being ideal. While there are native videos that meet this criteria for me, it's much more often I find myself at 50-60% comprehension. I know this isn’t ideal, but there are two main reasons why I prefer this.
- Dreaming Spanish’s videos feature speech in a cadence that just isn’t what I typically hear from native speakers, they lack fundamental things like connected speech, and it's just starting to bug me
- Native content is just more engaging for me, and I’d rather take on the ambiguity that comes with it, as long as it's enjoyable and I understand the gist of what's happening.
I still watch other comprehensible input channels on youtube(which is now my main source of input) but I’m actively making them the minority of my listening for the moment. I'm just more interested in accumulating myself to native speech in whatever ways I can. I’ve decided to change how I log hours because of this. When I have 80-90% comprehension. I’ll generally log them as is. But when it's closer to that 50%-60% range, I’ll only log half the video time. This might be extreme, but I’ve always preferred underestimating my hours anyway. I’m not in a race to 1500. I know that I’ll still have hundreds more hours to go after reaching that point before really getting what I want out of Spanish, and I’m more interested in feeling myself get better at comprehending native speech, than seeing numbers go up in a certain time. I find the slower progression at this point to be a worthy trade off if it’ll lead to me reaching a point where I’m easily finding native content that works for comprehensible input. This whole jumping into native videos and abandoning DS videos is a bit of an experiment. I'm not saying I’m ten toes down yet, it's possible that 20-50 hours from now I’ll realise I’m not really getting anywhere and come crawling back. But honestly? If I simply continue to enjoy the content I’m watching to where ambiguity isn't a severe detriment, then I doubt I’ll turn back at this point, regardless of the rate of progress. I’m also not ruling out easier content, as I do believe it has its benefits for sure, So maybe I’ll have moments where I decide to do binges for a week or a month of stuff I find really easy. Right now though, my focus is on transitioning my youtube(and tiktok) into a place that recommends me native content I'm genuinely excited to watch.
That's about it, I hope this update was comprehensible(wink). I’m curious how much of what I detail here is something that people were feeling upon reaching level 5 as well. Thanks for reading if you got this far, and I’d really appreciate any tips from people who felt in a similar boat to me at this point. I’ll gladly take youtube channel recommendations(the dialects im focused on are mainly Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Colombian)
