You are doing great! I have been learning for many years and suddenly one day you will be able to understand everything , little by little. Keep exposing yourself to music, writing, videos, various accents of different places. Estás en el camino correcto. No desanimes si un dia no entiendes nada, y el otro entiendes todo. Es realmente normal y comun. Sigue practicando :)
I love Dreaming Spanish but I agree with you 100% about the overly optimistic roadmap. I’m at a little over 900 hours and my speaking ability is nowhere near what is suggested for someone approaching 1k hours. Anyway, like you, I will persevere. Keep it up!
I'm at about 150 hours of comprehensible input in Spanish after 6 months. I spend most of my time listening and reading at the same time. I've already learnt a language to fluency as an adult, so I know it's just a matter of time before words and grammar patterns start to 'stick'.
You're doing amazing!!!!!! My experience with reading has been the easier the better. Find stuff that is so easy that you don't even need to "think" to read. At the start for me this was mostly A1 graded readers (even having 700/800 hours of input) but my reading skills rapidly improved from doing this super easy reading.
Hola! So happy for your progress. I’m doing Comprehensible input to learn French from scratch right now, but I am fluent in Spanish from high school/traveling. I found Spanish so hard to read at first, since the words writers use tend to be way more diverse than speakers’. My advice is to read something you’re extremely familiar with in English.. (the Bible for me) Or some other favorite book. You will still probably need to make a vocabulary list for words you can’t understand, but the context is built in if you’re already familiar with the content. Also repetition with the same selection helps to nail down the comprehension. The other thing I recommend is repeating after the native speakers out loud over and over again to practice the accent. Pausing the video and just repeating whatever they said. I’m doing this for French now to get my mouth used to mimicking those new sounds. But you are well on your way and it’s inspiring to see your progress! ¡Que te vaya bien! :)
Nice to see another update, Dave! 👏 Well done! I am at 172 hrs. I am really hoping I will be able to watch at least dubbed movies and shows by 300 hrs. I can do it now if I put the (Spanish) subtitles on.
I'm really enjoying watching your content and seeing your progress. It helps me stay motivated to learn spanish. I've recently been trying to read more in Spanish within the past couple months, and it can be difficult at times. Keep up the good work! I hope we can all reach our language goals!
Nice to see a mature person learning languages- remember Comprehensible Input also means- watch Krashen- when we understand the message- so it doens't mean you can't also study, I recommend get a course level A1 they cover important points ALONG with input for SURE. ALSO listen even in background to Spanish. I also recommend polyglot Robin MacPherson, and Luca Lampariello. AND IF YOUR GOAL is to speak, take 1/2 hr conversation on ITalki and find language exchange partner: 1/2 hour you talk in English (they are learning) 1/2 hour in Spanish (for you!)
Reading text with audio is ideal, so you can hear individual words pronounced clearly and accurately, plus you will connect the sounds to the written language. Try various combinations of listening, listening & reading silently, listening to short bits and copy-catting, reading aloud slowly with attention to pronunciation, listening again, etc. If you use Audible books, you can lower the speed. Start at 60%, and work your way up to 100%. Best wishes!
Hi Dave. Good efforts with your learning. From my own experience I would say don't fear using a translator to help with your reading. You have a gift of English which you should take advantage of. Once you look up a word, you can keep reading and the other words should be easier to decipher. If a word keeps popping up and you keep needing to look it up, write it down to review in study sessions. Getting used to the structure of a language is very useful and struggling through beginner books won't help your motivation in the long run. Also, try using more intermediate factual books! You'll find them more interesting and may be able to get some of the context from your existing knowledge; fiction and children's books are hard to follow as they can go anywhere in terms of story. With nonfiction you'll have a better idea of where it's going so context will be easier. Good luck
I recently stopped my DS subscription after finding that I they just weren't putting out content interesting enough for me to watch (I don't care to watch their videos of people playing games, for instance.), so most days I was just going to TH-cam and hitting up other comprehensible input channels. But I was already at least in the high A2 to B1 zone before I started consuming DS videos in a serious way, so there just wasn't as much. Although I believe that consuming a ton of comprehensible input is *necessary* to get to an upper intermediate level, at this point I seriously doubt it's *sufficient* for most people living regular adult lives. I ultimately found myself talking with conversation tutors on Italki about 4 days a week, and in general reading & listening to Spanish content ranging from easy stuff to borderline incomprehensible but personally compelling. In this way I've become quite comfortable talking about routine daily matters and engaging in certain familiar subjects pretty reasonably. But I always check out your videos to see how you're coming along. Honestly? It sounds to me like you're beyond ready for frequent practice with a patient conversation tutor.
How long have you been on your journey? I've been "studying" Spanish with this method since last year and while I've made leaps and bounds with my comprehension, it still by no means is sufficient for fluent conversations, I need more input. I think the most important thing to realize is that getting the accent down as much as you can isn't the only important thing, and that it takes a long time to fully grasp the majority of the language.
@@Rpgist359 I was exposed to Spanish environmentally when I was a toddler in Texas. For example, I never realized until a few years ago that many people have difficulty with the "rolling r" and always heard from my mother that when I was little I knew simple Spanish commands like "Close the door" from neighbors. But I grew up elsewhere and didn't actually learn the language beyond not finding the sound of it alien and being able to pronounce the "rr" sound. Took 4 trimesters of Spanish in university, then throughout adulthood would try to read or listen to the rare bits of Spanish I encountered. Never understood much. Then about 20 years ago I had a job that involved a lot of driving around, and I practiced daily with Pimsleur Spanish levels 1 through 3 for several months and chatted primitively with restaurant staff in random towns. I fiddled with duolingo, memrise, and other random resources here and there over time. Then about a year and a half ago I decided to quit fooling around. I was somewhere in the A2-ish space at the time. Fortunately around this time a bunch of Spanish input for learners started becoming available and just needed finding (such as DS). I can't read as much as I'd like at my age, so I focus heavily on listening practice and conversation (and of course conversation provides lots of additional input). As far as accent goes, I've heard from several tutors and practice partners that I speak with a clear, neutral accent. One tutor said his one nitpick was how I pronounce certain "L" sounds and showed me how. So I've put in some targeted practice on that. But I don't try to speak with a native accent, just a decent one. I hope all that helps.
I agree. I don't care for the DS guessing games or virtual reality videos. I just watch what I'm interested in. I watch other CI channels too, such as Espanol con Juan and Andrea la Mexicana. Before they were too difficult for me but now I understand most of what they are saying. I have 2 friends from Argentina at the martial arts school I go to. I am beginning to speak more with them in Spanish. They know I am learning and are very supportive.
Agree with all your suggestions for him. I'm also older and learning language. Esp this advice "I ultimately found myself talking with conversation tutors on Italki about 4 days a week, and in general reading & listening to Spanish content ranging from easy stuff to borderline incomprehensible but personally compelling. In this way I've become quite comfortable talking about routine daily matters and engaging in certain familiar subjects pretty reasonably." you gave.
Agreed, DS is most useful in the super beginner and beginner stage as there's nothing close to it to get people comfortable with the sounds and rhythm of spanish. Once you get to intermediate you'd find a lot of the content uninteresting and you have to take the reigns of your learning journey and go for content that truly interests you.
I also reached 900 hours a couple of weeks ago, and reading is still hard. Seems like they do not use comma as much, and that is a bit frustrating (and of course new words). haha. I also cannot talk that well yet, but it feels a bit more natural every day. Or every month, I should say. Let us keep going, and we will get there. :) Greetings from c-c-c-cold Norway!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Check out Pablo's 2024 New years video where he describes how to use ChatGPT to do Crosstalk. It works in any languages that ChatGPT understands and you can tell it what difficulty level to answer with (A1, B1, etc.). It is still fairly warm here in New England, -5 Celsius.
Before I started learning with Dreaming Spanish I learnt the basics wort TH-cam videos in my mother language. And I practice my vocabulary every day with Anki. Until this day (446 hours of CI) the roadmap works. But only if you practice also with other sources than Dreaming Spanish. Listen to podcasts helped me a lot...
I studied several Spanish courses before starting Dreaming Spanish. The best was Language Transfer. I listen to podcasts all the time when I am driving.
If you find reading challenging then perhaps that is exactly what you should prioritize. There is a book that teaches Spanish through reading by the nature method called Poco a Poco, although it may be beneath your level if you have been at it for over a year.
You should do both. Read out loud and read silently. Luckily Spanish is an extremely phonetic language with only 5 vowel phonemes. So, every thing is pronounced exactly as it's spelled. Perhaps try some mirroring exercises where you listen to audio of content and repeat it.
I personally think you can learn best using tons and tons of input and some explanations. I love Paul Noble and Language transfer, even though in some ways they are the opposite of ALG. I just feel like going at it from both angles is best. I guess I just don't buy into the idea that ALG is the best overall. I know tons of missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints who go on missions for 2 years and come back more fluent than others learning a language for much longer. In the Mission Training Center, they learn the language by intense immersion and study for 2-3 months and then go to the country. They speak with people everyday and improve by being in the county and trying to communicate. My brother went to Japan, and is fluent in Japanese both written and spoken after just two years. He studied 1 hour a day and then was also immersed. He says his pitch accent isn't perfect, but he is very fluent. My dad speaks Thai from the same or similar experience 40 years ago. You can't get too much input, but for speaking, a little instruction with grammar wouldn't hurt you. I have 6 children, and contrary to what people say, moms do teach grammar. Children babble from birth, and when they say something to us that we can understand, we say it back to them a little more correctly. My 20 month old cannot pronounce bottle. He tries, and because I know his baby accent, I know what he is trying to say. When he says it to me, I say something like, "You want a bottle? Okay. I'll get you a bottle. Here is the bottle. (Holding it up). Let's put milk in it. Here you go. Here is your bottle. Yummy bottle. Yummy yummy bottle." This comes natural to me. When my children try to communicate, I meet them where they are and help them up. Babies learn from being talked to, but also from saying things amd seeing that it works. When children are a little older and they say things like, "We goed to the park yesterday.". I say, "we went to the park yesterday." They also learn from audiobooks and such, but parents model back correct grammar to children and help them when they struggle. Also, just do you know, kids often have a child accent where they mispronounce words till they are about 7-8 years old. It's okay to have an accent if you've only been immersed for less than 8 years. If you want to improve pronunciation, I would suggest the channel Spanish Input. It's immersive, and explains pronunciation in Spanish, with pictures too help you know how to pronounce things. :).
I think Language Transfer is great. I listened to all 90 of his Spanish lessons before I discovered DS and comprehensible input. I downloaded a full pdf printout of LT and I search through it when I want to remember a topic.
I don’t think holding off on reading for another 100-200 hrs is a big deal if you aren’t ready yet. As Pablo and the research says, your pronunciation will be better if you wait. All the best and feliz navidad!! 🎄
I would be interested to see results of people's conversational level that have clocked lots of hours of listening. No doubt you will improve your comprehension listening a lot, but I feel like there are gaps in the equation. If you are not also practicing consistently speaking, you are not using your mouth, tongue, cheeks to produce the sounds you need for spanish. They are muscles that need to be exercised in order to have good pronunciation. Just listening eliminates the very human side of speaking a language. We get nervous when we speak, we can't pronounce the words that are pronounced perfectly "inside our head", we freeze up and can't find the words. It's unlikely that most of the vocabulary that you understand perfectly while listening, will just hang out in your brain, until you are ready to use it, and then magically be remembered when you need it. To speak well, you have to practice that skill. O sea, si quieres comunicarte bien, es sumamente importante practicar esa habilidad. I admire your dedication, as I too am a person that loves spanish, and continues to look for ways to improve "la fluidez"
Interesting theory. You might not know that in immersion there is a 2 month period where one begins to speak. The advantage is that when speaking commences the listener knows exactly how a word sounds. In this way the accent is minimized. And the learner is not dependent on the kindness of another to correct them. What is your theory as to why some learners have done so well with this method?
What I have seen with people's videos, are updates after 100-, 500, 1000 hours with CI. The videos are mostly in english, which tells me they're not yet confident enough to record something in spanish, so it makes me wonder how many people "have done so well" with this method Actually just recording a conversation with someone would be better, because editing a video can make you sound a lot more fluent than you reallly are. I applaud their efforts because it doesn't really matter, language learning should be fun, however you like to learn. @@Alex-Learns-Spanish
Im not far off 200 hours and the jump from beginner vids to intermediate is very tough, i find pablos videos harder to watch. I doubt my comprehension is 60%
When I started DS, I watched super beginner and beginner videos multiple times. I started very slowly with the intermediate videos, watching only the ones which interested me. Now at 1,000 hours, I understand all the intermediate videos but a lot of the advanced videos are still difficult for me. If you haven't done so already, go to the DS playlist called How to Learn a Language. Watch the 12 videos there using subtitles in English. These videos explain Pablo's philosophy and how he recommends watching videos. Congrats on getting to 200 hours! We got this!
@@tinynhhouse5467 thank you. I haven’t had great luck with those. Many people with bad microphones and slow internet. Many people lecturing me on how I should speak Spanish early etc. I will figure it out eventually but it has been a battle.
I am using only comprehensible input. I took the Language Transfer The Thinking Method Spanish course before doing CI, so I learned (and have forgotten) all the verb conjugations. CI uses the subconscious, pattern matching part of the brain, while traditional methods use the conscious part of the brain. Thanks for watching!
@tinynhhouse5467 you won't learn with only C.I It's a combination all I mentioned. C.i being the major part though , children watch and listen to parents (C.I) to learn to understand but parents teach children how to talk and say words properly.
No, Pablo of DS does not recommend Duolingo because it is not CI input; it is output. He does not recommend speaking (output) until 800 - 1000 hours of listening / reading. I used Language Transfer - The Thinking Method to learn Spanish grammar before I knew about DS and CI. I think Language Transfer is excellent but it is not CI.
@@tinynhhouse5467 ah I understand. I've been watching your update videos and they've given me confidence to continue. Thanks for adding to the community, it means more than you think.
@@Cenlalowell My method of acquiring Spanish over the past 2 years is strictly Comprehensible Input. Here is some info on why I do not use Duolingo: th-cam.com/video/ah3GH6fDq3E/w-d-xo.html
i think you might benefit more from talking more now on italki and focus more on reading. And also some structured learning from text books may be benecial now also, as even native kids go to school to learn grammar, reading etc You might be benefit more from reading with the audio attached to it also.
HINT: Everything is comprehensible if you also have a translated version. For example, you could just get some side-by-side dual-language books of short stories. Dover has very affordable titles like "A first reader" and "A second reader" to help you plan, but there are editions (from Dover, Penguin, etc.) that include more modern literature if you don't care for traditional stories. The "Stories from..." from McGraw Hill are nicely done, and they provide audio online so that you can model pronunciation. In much less than 1000 hours, you could learn one of these books (like "Stories from Mexico) by heart in both languages as well as learn to imitate the speech sounds in the recordings. You would then have a few hours of fluent Spanish at the tip of your tongue at all times, you'd pronounce things properly, and you'd understand the culture a bit. An uneducated native speaker of Spanish has a vocabulary of about 5000 words. I'd imagine one or two of these side-by-side readers would provide at least this many, and you'd have the verb forms, articles, etc. covered too as part of the 100%-comprehensible input. The entire idea behind comprehensible input is that you acquire language when you _understand_ it. Parallel texts don't slow you down one bit and you understand everything once you get the hang of how to move your eyes. The best approach doesn't have to include new technology, although people selling things based on new technology would naturally think so. Good luck and make sure to enjoy your input!
The most important thing in a language is pronunciation, so you shouldn't read out loud until you get down the good pronunciation, otherwise you're gonna get yourself used to reading them that way.
You're in a deep mistake, the most important thing in a language is the ENTONATION, as a foreigner, you'll never achieve a perfect pronunciation in any language, especially Spanish.
You should be speaking Spanish out loud every day! And using other learning methods in addition to Dreaming Spanish which I watch every day. You must learn the subjunctive tense or you will NEVER learn how to speak Spanish. The language will never emerge on its own if you’re only using Dreaming Spanish. Sorry, Pablo.
It's not too bad so far, the hardest part is the grammer imo. I've heard it's much harder for spainsh speakers to learn english vs the other way around. You definitely need the drive and a concrete reason to learn it. For me when I was younger I enjoyed taking to people all over the world learning about their culture. My other reasons is 1. My pompous ass brother and nephew, my nephew is learning spainsh because he has spainsh people working for him, he just wants to control them. I'm going to beat him at learning it and use language for good. I also think it will come in handy for the future. Last reason is I've been having fun, I didn't make much spanish conversation with the cubans I was working with, but what little I did I enjoyed it. I think before I left they started to show more interest in english and I also got all the other gringos there interested in spanish. They all pretty much came to me asking about how I was learning spainsh so it was a cool experience!
It's actually easy for english speakers. I am german and you can deduce around 3000 words from english for spanish. That's a huge advantage if you want to learn a language. + comprehensible input and here and there some grammar and you can get fast to a good level. English isn't my mothertongue, but it helped me a lot.
@@OxysLokiMoros spanish is a lot easier then pronouncing german and spelling it no doubt! I grew up around 3 families that were German and my granddad was german. I wanted to learn german, but Sadly no one wanted to teach it. All I know is Hallo, guten Tag, guten Morgen, ja, nein, bitte, auf Wiedersehen, Sprechen sie Deutsch? And maybe a few others.
@@thetightwadhomesteader3089 German would be "easy" if you would speak Dutch. Japanese if you would speak Chinese etc. ... English gives you a huge advantage for learning spanish. There is a channel on TH-cam called "Natürlich German" ... It's basically like Dreaming Spanish, if you want to learn with comprehensible input and for spanish and german I can also recommend the app "Language Transfer" ... ;) Merry Christmas
@@OxysLokiMorosthanks! I heard that learning dutch would make it easier. Actually on my breaks from spanish I've been playing around with a little Italian, dutch, and portuguese for fun lol. I'm decent at Italian since it's close to Spanish. They claim portuguese is closer to spainsh, but for me Italian is easier. I had a much harder time with portuguese vs italian....but then I don't have the same passion to learn it. I want to learn italian since I'm part italian, plus I love how the language is spoken. I want to learn Spanish to talk to native speakers here in the states, but also as a viechle to italian. Merry Christmas, have a good one! Edit: btw I can see your comment in my notice box, but not here in the comment section.
Congratulations from Spain, I hope that you become fluent one day and be able to communicate proper, you're doing great!
You are doing great! I have been learning for many years and suddenly one day you will be able to understand everything , little by little. Keep exposing yourself to music, writing, videos, various accents of different places.
Estás en el camino correcto. No desanimes si un dia no entiendes nada, y el otro entiendes todo. Es realmente normal y comun. Sigue practicando :)
your doing just fine i have been studying Spanish for about two years started when i was 64
I love Dreaming Spanish but I agree with you 100% about the overly optimistic roadmap. I’m at a little over 900 hours and my speaking ability is nowhere near what is suggested for someone approaching 1k hours. Anyway, like you, I will persevere. Keep it up!
Well done! Keep it up!
I'm at about 150 hours of comprehensible input in Spanish after 6 months. I spend most of my time listening and reading at the same time. I've already learnt a language to fluency as an adult, so I know it's just a matter of time before words and grammar patterns start to 'stick'.
You're doing amazing!!!!!!
My experience with reading has been the easier the better. Find stuff that is so easy that you don't even need to "think" to read. At the start for me this was mostly A1 graded readers (even having 700/800 hours of input) but my reading skills rapidly improved from doing this super easy reading.
Hola! So happy for your progress. I’m doing Comprehensible input to learn French from scratch right now, but I am fluent in Spanish from high school/traveling.
I found Spanish so hard to read at first, since the words writers use tend to be way more diverse than speakers’. My advice is to read something you’re extremely familiar with in English.. (the Bible for me) Or some other favorite book. You will still probably need to make a vocabulary list for words you can’t understand, but the context is built in if you’re already familiar with the content. Also repetition with the same selection helps to nail down the comprehension.
The other thing I recommend is repeating after the native speakers out loud over and over again to practice the accent. Pausing the video and just repeating whatever they said. I’m doing this for French now to get my mouth used to mimicking those new sounds. But you are well on your way and it’s inspiring to see your progress! ¡Que te vaya bien! :)
Nice to see another update, Dave! 👏 Well done! I am at 172 hrs. I am really hoping I will be able to watch at least dubbed movies and shows by 300 hrs. I can do it now if I put the (Spanish) subtitles on.
We got this! 🙂
I love seeing videos like these! Keep up with the good work 👍
I'm really enjoying watching your content and seeing your progress. It helps me stay motivated to learn spanish. I've recently been trying to read more in Spanish within the past couple months, and it can be difficult at times. Keep up the good work! I hope we can all reach our language goals!
Nice to see a mature person learning languages- remember Comprehensible Input also means- watch Krashen- when we understand the message- so it doens't mean you can't also study, I recommend get a course level A1 they cover important points ALONG with input for SURE.
ALSO listen even in background to Spanish.
I also recommend polyglot Robin MacPherson, and Luca Lampariello. AND IF YOUR GOAL is to speak, take 1/2 hr conversation on ITalki and find language exchange partner: 1/2 hour you talk in English (they are learning) 1/2 hour in Spanish (for you!)
I had completed Language Transfer - The Thinking Method before I started DS, so I already knew the basic Spanish grammar.
Thank you so much for sharing your journey!! I am on the same journey and appreciate your honesty.
Reading text with audio is ideal, so you can hear individual words pronounced clearly and accurately, plus you will connect the sounds to the written language. Try various combinations of listening, listening & reading silently, listening to short bits and copy-catting, reading aloud slowly with attention to pronunciation, listening again, etc. If you use Audible books, you can lower the speed. Start at 60%, and work your way up to 100%. Best wishes!
3:58 I agree with this. I think they do it not to scare away people, but it's the harsh reality. It takes effort.
Hi Dave. Good efforts with your learning. From my own experience I would say don't fear using a translator to help with your reading. You have a gift of English which you should take advantage of. Once you look up a word, you can keep reading and the other words should be easier to decipher. If a word keeps popping up and you keep needing to look it up, write it down to review in study sessions. Getting used to the structure of a language is very useful and struggling through beginner books won't help your motivation in the long run. Also, try using more intermediate factual books! You'll find them more interesting and may be able to get some of the context from your existing knowledge; fiction and children's books are hard to follow as they can go anywhere in terms of story. With nonfiction you'll have a better idea of where it's going so context will be easier. Good luck
Great idea about reading nonfiction. I think that is why I enjoy reading the news and Wikipedia in Spanish.
I recently stopped my DS subscription after finding that I they just weren't putting out content interesting enough for me to watch (I don't care to watch their videos of people playing games, for instance.), so most days I was just going to TH-cam and hitting up other comprehensible input channels. But I was already at least in the high A2 to B1 zone before I started consuming DS videos in a serious way, so there just wasn't as much.
Although I believe that consuming a ton of comprehensible input is *necessary* to get to an upper intermediate level, at this point I seriously doubt it's *sufficient* for most people living regular adult lives.
I ultimately found myself talking with conversation tutors on Italki about 4 days a week, and in general reading & listening to Spanish content ranging from easy stuff to borderline incomprehensible but personally compelling. In this way I've become quite comfortable talking about routine daily matters and engaging in certain familiar subjects pretty reasonably.
But I always check out your videos to see how you're coming along. Honestly? It sounds to me like you're beyond ready for frequent practice with a patient conversation tutor.
How long have you been on your journey? I've been "studying" Spanish with this method since last year and while I've made leaps and bounds with my comprehension, it still by no means is sufficient for fluent conversations, I need more input. I think the most important thing to realize is that getting the accent down as much as you can isn't the only important thing, and that it takes a long time to fully grasp the majority of the language.
@@Rpgist359 I was exposed to Spanish environmentally when I was a toddler in Texas. For example, I never realized until a few years ago that many people have difficulty with the "rolling r" and always heard from my mother that when I was little I knew simple Spanish commands like "Close the door" from neighbors.
But I grew up elsewhere and didn't actually learn the language beyond not finding the sound of it alien and being able to pronounce the "rr" sound.
Took 4 trimesters of Spanish in university, then throughout adulthood would try to read or listen to the rare bits of Spanish I encountered. Never understood much.
Then about 20 years ago I had a job that involved a lot of driving around, and I practiced daily with Pimsleur Spanish levels 1 through 3 for several months and chatted primitively with restaurant staff in random towns. I fiddled with duolingo, memrise, and other random resources here and there over time.
Then about a year and a half ago I decided to quit fooling around. I was somewhere in the A2-ish space at the time. Fortunately around this time a bunch of Spanish input for learners started becoming available and just needed finding (such as DS). I can't read as much as I'd like at my age, so I focus heavily on listening practice and conversation (and of course conversation provides lots of additional input).
As far as accent goes, I've heard from several tutors and practice partners that I speak with a clear, neutral accent. One tutor said his one nitpick was how I pronounce certain "L" sounds and showed me how. So I've put in some targeted practice on that. But I don't try to speak with a native accent, just a decent one.
I hope all that helps.
I agree. I don't care for the DS guessing games or virtual reality videos. I just watch what I'm interested in. I watch other CI channels too, such as Espanol con Juan and Andrea la Mexicana. Before they were too difficult for me but now I understand most of what they are saying.
I have 2 friends from Argentina at the martial arts school I go to. I am beginning to speak more with them in Spanish. They know I am learning and are very supportive.
Agree with all your suggestions for him. I'm also older and learning language. Esp this advice
"I ultimately found myself talking with conversation tutors on Italki about 4 days a week, and in general reading & listening to Spanish content ranging from easy stuff to borderline incomprehensible but personally compelling. In this way I've become quite comfortable talking about routine daily matters and engaging in certain familiar subjects pretty reasonably." you gave.
Agreed, DS is most useful in the super beginner and beginner stage as there's nothing close to it to get people comfortable with the sounds and rhythm of spanish. Once you get to intermediate you'd find a lot of the content uninteresting and you have to take the reigns of your learning journey and go for content that truly interests you.
Muy bien!! Sigue adelante.
More power too u
I also reached 900 hours a couple of weeks ago, and reading is still hard. Seems like they do not use comma as much, and that is a bit frustrating (and of course new words). haha. I also cannot talk that well yet, but it feels a bit more natural every day. Or every month, I should say. Let us keep going, and we will get there. :) Greetings from c-c-c-cold Norway!
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Check out Pablo's 2024 New years video where he describes how to use ChatGPT to do Crosstalk. It works in any languages that ChatGPT understands and you can tell it what difficulty level to answer with (A1, B1, etc.). It is still fairly warm here in New England, -5 Celsius.
Before I started learning with Dreaming Spanish I learnt the basics wort TH-cam videos in my mother language. And I practice my vocabulary every day with Anki. Until this day (446 hours of CI) the roadmap works. But only if you practice also with other sources than Dreaming Spanish. Listen to podcasts helped me a lot...
I studied several Spanish courses before starting Dreaming Spanish. The best was Language Transfer. I listen to podcasts all the time when I am driving.
If you find reading challenging then perhaps that is exactly what you should prioritize. There is a book that teaches Spanish through reading by the nature method called Poco a Poco, although it may be beneath your level if you have been at it for over a year.
You should do both. Read out loud and read silently. Luckily Spanish is an extremely phonetic language with only 5 vowel phonemes. So, every thing is pronounced exactly as it's spelled. Perhaps try some mirroring exercises where you listen to audio of content and repeat it.
I personally think you can learn best using tons and tons of input and some explanations. I love Paul Noble and Language transfer, even though in some ways they are the opposite of ALG. I just feel like going at it from both angles is best. I guess I just don't buy into the idea that ALG is the best overall. I know tons of missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints who go on missions for 2 years and come back more fluent than others learning a language for much longer. In the Mission Training Center, they learn the language by intense immersion and study for 2-3 months and then go to the country. They speak with people everyday and improve by being in the county and trying to communicate. My brother went to Japan, and is fluent in Japanese both written and spoken after just two years. He studied 1 hour a day and then was also immersed. He says his pitch accent isn't perfect, but he is very fluent. My dad speaks Thai from the same or similar experience 40 years ago. You can't get too much input, but for speaking, a little instruction with grammar wouldn't hurt you. I have 6 children, and contrary to what people say, moms do teach grammar. Children babble from birth, and when they say something to us that we can understand, we say it back to them a little more correctly. My 20 month old cannot pronounce bottle. He tries, and because I know his baby accent, I know what he is trying to say. When he says it to me, I say something like, "You want a bottle? Okay. I'll get you a bottle. Here is the bottle. (Holding it up). Let's put milk in it. Here you go. Here is your bottle. Yummy bottle. Yummy yummy bottle." This comes natural to me. When my children try to communicate, I meet them where they are and help them up. Babies learn from being talked to, but also from saying things amd seeing that it works. When children are a little older and they say things like, "We goed to the park yesterday.". I say, "we went to the park yesterday." They also learn from audiobooks and such, but parents model back correct grammar to children and help them when they struggle. Also, just do you know, kids often have a child accent where they mispronounce words till they are about 7-8 years old. It's okay to have an accent if you've only been immersed for less than 8 years.
If you want to improve pronunciation, I would suggest the channel Spanish Input. It's immersive, and explains pronunciation in Spanish, with pictures too help you know how to pronounce things. :).
I think Language Transfer is great. I listened to all 90 of his Spanish lessons before I discovered DS and comprehensible input. I downloaded a full pdf printout of LT and I search through it when I want to remember a topic.
bien hecho
I don’t think holding off on reading for another 100-200 hrs is a big deal if you aren’t ready yet. As Pablo and the research says, your pronunciation will be better if you wait. All the best and feliz navidad!! 🎄
Feliz Navidad!
I would be interested to see results of people's conversational level that have clocked lots of hours of listening. No doubt you will improve your comprehension listening a lot, but I feel like there are gaps in the equation. If you are not also practicing consistently speaking, you are not using your mouth, tongue, cheeks to produce the sounds you need for spanish. They are muscles that need to be exercised in order to have good pronunciation. Just listening eliminates the very human side of speaking a language. We get nervous when we speak, we can't pronounce the words that are pronounced perfectly "inside our head", we freeze up and can't find the words. It's unlikely that most of the vocabulary that you understand perfectly while listening, will just hang out in your brain, until you are ready to use it, and then magically be remembered when you need it. To speak well, you have to practice that skill. O sea, si quieres comunicarte bien, es sumamente importante practicar esa habilidad. I admire your dedication, as I too am a person that loves spanish, and continues to look for ways to improve "la fluidez"
Interesting theory. You might not know that in immersion there is a 2 month period where one begins to speak. The advantage is that when speaking commences the listener knows exactly how a word sounds. In this way the accent is minimized. And the learner is not dependent on the kindness of another to correct them. What is your theory as to why some learners have done so well with this method?
What I have seen with people's videos, are updates after 100-, 500, 1000 hours with CI. The videos are mostly in english, which tells me they're not yet confident enough to record something in spanish, so it makes me wonder how many people "have done so well" with this method Actually just recording a conversation with someone would be better, because editing a video can make you sound a lot more fluent than you reallly are. I applaud their efforts because it doesn't really matter, language learning should be fun, however you like to learn. @@Alex-Learns-Spanish
There are many varieties of Spanish. Mexican Spanish, Colombian Spanish, Cuban Spanish, you name it.
Reading out loud and reading with your lips moving are normal developmental steps toward reading more fluently.
Im not far off 200 hours and the jump from beginner vids to intermediate is very tough, i find pablos videos harder to watch. I doubt my comprehension is 60%
When I started DS, I watched super beginner and beginner videos multiple times. I started very slowly with the intermediate videos, watching only the ones which interested me. Now at 1,000 hours, I understand all the intermediate videos but a lot of the advanced videos are still difficult for me.
If you haven't done so already, go to the DS playlist called How to Learn a Language. Watch the 12 videos there using subtitles in English. These videos explain Pablo's philosophy and how he recommends watching videos.
Congrats on getting to 200 hours! We got this!
How do you find crosstalk partners?
There is a group on Facebook called Crosstalk Language Exchange Network. Pablo of Dreaming Spanish recommends Tandem Language Exchange and HelloTalk.
@@tinynhhouse5467 thank you. I haven’t had great luck with those. Many people with bad microphones and slow internet. Many people lecturing me on how I should speak Spanish early etc. I will figure it out eventually but it has been a battle.
Do you only study using comprehensive input or along with this you study vocab,sentence structuring and other stuff
I am using only comprehensible input. I took the Language Transfer The Thinking Method Spanish course before doing CI, so I learned (and have forgotten) all the verb conjugations. CI uses the subconscious, pattern matching part of the brain, while traditional methods use the conscious part of the brain. Thanks for watching!
You need a Spanish course like Pimsler and a Spanish teacher to guide you. Try italk or base lang for online training
Take another look at the definition of Comprehensible Input, which is the method that I am following.
@tinynhhouse5467 you won't learn with only C.I
It's a combination all I mentioned. C.i being the major part though , children watch and listen to parents
(C.I) to learn to understand but parents teach children how to talk and say words properly.
also i found simple stories in Spanish podcast by small town Spanish teacher
Good shit
It's crazy how with just watching videos you can learn a new language. Do you use Duolingo?
No, Pablo of DS does not recommend Duolingo because it is not CI input; it is output. He does not recommend speaking (output) until 800 - 1000 hours of listening / reading. I used Language Transfer - The Thinking Method to learn Spanish grammar before I knew about DS and CI. I think Language Transfer is excellent but it is not CI.
@@tinynhhouse5467 ah I understand. I've been watching your update videos and they've given me confidence to continue. Thanks for adding to the community, it means more than you think.
Nah you should use every tool at your disposal Duolingo included
@@Cenlalowell My method of acquiring Spanish over the past 2 years is strictly Comprehensible Input. Here is some info on why I do not use Duolingo: th-cam.com/video/ah3GH6fDq3E/w-d-xo.html
4:07 between 40000 to 50000 hours would be more realistic.
Add roughly 1000 hours for every year of age beyond the age of 12.
i think you might benefit more from talking more now on italki and focus more on reading. And also some structured learning from text books may be benecial now also, as even native kids go to school to learn grammar, reading etc
You might be benefit more from reading with the audio attached to it also.
HINT: Everything is comprehensible if you also have a translated version. For example, you could just get some side-by-side dual-language books of short stories. Dover has very affordable titles like "A first reader" and "A second reader" to help you plan, but there are editions (from Dover, Penguin, etc.) that include more modern literature if you don't care for traditional stories. The "Stories from..." from McGraw Hill are nicely done, and they provide audio online so that you can model pronunciation. In much less than 1000 hours, you could learn one of these books (like "Stories from Mexico) by heart in both languages as well as learn to imitate the speech sounds in the recordings. You would then have a few hours of fluent Spanish at the tip of your tongue at all times, you'd pronounce things properly, and you'd understand the culture a bit. An uneducated native speaker of Spanish has a vocabulary of about 5000 words. I'd imagine one or two of these side-by-side readers would provide at least this many, and you'd have the verb forms, articles, etc. covered too as part of the 100%-comprehensible input. The entire idea behind comprehensible input is that you acquire language when you _understand_ it. Parallel texts don't slow you down one bit and you understand everything once you get the hang of how to move your eyes. The best approach doesn't have to include new technology, although people selling things based on new technology would naturally think so. Good luck and make sure to enjoy your input!
Great suggestions. Thank you!
The most important thing in a language is pronunciation, so you shouldn't read out loud until you get down the good pronunciation, otherwise you're gonna get yourself used to reading them that way.
That makes perfect sense. Thanks! I am getting better at reading silently
You should read aloud, so that you can practice pronouncing words with the sound system of the language you are learning.
You're in a deep mistake, the most important thing in a language is the ENTONATION, as a foreigner, you'll never achieve a perfect pronunciation in any language, especially Spanish.
You should be speaking Spanish out loud every day! And using other learning methods in addition to Dreaming Spanish which I watch every day. You must learn the subjunctive tense or you will NEVER learn how to speak Spanish. The language will never emerge on its own if you’re only using Dreaming Spanish. Sorry, Pablo.
Spanish is too hard for english native speakers, I wish you luck
It's not too bad so far, the hardest part is the grammer imo. I've heard it's much harder for spainsh speakers to learn english vs the other way around. You definitely need the drive and a concrete reason to learn it. For me when I was younger I enjoyed taking to people all over the world learning about their culture. My other reasons is 1. My pompous ass brother and nephew, my nephew is learning spainsh because he has spainsh people working for him, he just wants to control them. I'm going to beat him at learning it and use language for good. I also think it will come in handy for the future. Last reason is I've been having fun, I didn't make much spanish conversation with the cubans I was working with, but what little I did I enjoyed it. I think before I left they started to show more interest in english and I also got all the other gringos there interested in spanish. They all pretty much came to me asking about how I was learning spainsh so it was a cool experience!
It's actually easy for english speakers. I am german and you can deduce around 3000 words from english for spanish.
That's a huge advantage if you want to learn a language.
+ comprehensible input and here and there some grammar and you can get fast to a good level.
English isn't my mothertongue, but it helped me a lot.
@@OxysLokiMoros spanish is a lot easier then pronouncing german and spelling it no doubt! I grew up around 3 families that were German and my granddad was german. I wanted to learn german, but Sadly no one wanted to teach it. All I know is Hallo, guten Tag, guten Morgen, ja, nein, bitte, auf Wiedersehen, Sprechen sie Deutsch? And maybe a few others.
@@thetightwadhomesteader3089 German would be "easy" if you would speak Dutch. Japanese if you would speak Chinese etc. ... English gives you a huge advantage for learning spanish.
There is a channel on TH-cam called "Natürlich German" ... It's basically like Dreaming Spanish, if you want to learn with comprehensible input and for spanish and german I can also recommend the app "Language Transfer" ... ;)
Merry Christmas
@@OxysLokiMorosthanks! I heard that learning dutch would make it easier. Actually on my breaks from spanish I've been playing around with a little Italian, dutch, and portuguese for fun lol. I'm decent at Italian since it's close to Spanish. They claim portuguese is closer to spainsh, but for me Italian is easier. I had a much harder time with portuguese vs italian....but then I don't have the same passion to learn it. I want to learn italian since I'm part italian, plus I love how the language is spoken. I want to learn Spanish to talk to native speakers here in the states, but also as a viechle to italian. Merry Christmas, have a good one! Edit: btw I can see your comment in my notice box, but not here in the comment section.