750 hour update

I hit 750 hours of comprehensible input today following the Dreaming Spanish methodology (the halfway point on the roadmap) and wanted to submit a progress report after never getting around to doing so at each of the milestones. I’m also writing this in part to get all my experiences and thoughts about language learning down in one place, so apologies in advance for the rambling.

Language learning experience:

1988- Present. I was born and started getting (mostly incomprehensible at first) input in English

1996 . In second grade, the German mother of one of my classmates ran a German club after school that I joined with a handful of other students. My German vocabulary today consists of numbers 1-10, auf Wiedersehen (goodbye), Schlange (snake), and some scatological insults that probably should not have been taught to second graders.

2001-2003. In middle school we started taking language classes and I took Latin for 2 or 3 years. I had two really great teachers who made the classes enjoyable. We were supposed to take a class trip to Rome but that was squashed after either 9/11 or the Iraq war - my timeline is a bit fuzzy. All the conjugations and vocabulary I once knew have kind of just morphed into Spanish at this point, so I can’t say I really retained much.

2004-2007. In high school I took 3 (or possibly 2) years of Spanish. I learned the basics that most students knew but there was very little focus on input, the teacher was not a native speaker, and I never pursued any additional study or content on my own, so I didn’t leave with any significant Spanish ability.

2010 . My junior year of college I took a 6 credit Arabic class (Modern Standard) and got very good grades and enjoyed learning the script, pronunciation, etc. Towards the end of the class I asked the professor how long it would take to become fluent. He said about 5 years which seemed absurdly long at the time, so I never took the subsequent class. In retrospect, that was a realistic answer and 5 years is a much shorter period of time to me now at 35 than it was in my early 20s.

2011 . In order to graduate, I needed 9 credits in a single language, so after my last semester I did a summer program in Montreal where we had daily classes entirely in French taught by native speakers. I’d estimate about 100 hours total of class time over 6 weeks. Despite getting drunk nearly every day of the program, by the end I was having some rudimentary conversations in French, which makes sense given that I probably received 100+ hours of comprehensible input, albeit mostly in the form of formal language instruction. A big breakthrough occurred when I was mocking our professor one night using an exaggerated and offensive French accent and realized all the words flowed much better when I actually attempted to speak the language the way it actually sounds, instead of in a stilted American accent. I don’t recall much French now, but at least once I impressed a French speaker by pronouncing a menu item correctly, and as my Spanish CI hours have added up I find myself able to sort of make out some French when I happen to hear it.

2014-2023. I started dating my now wife, who is from South America and speaks Spanish (and English) fluently. I made a decent attempt for a few months to relearn Spanish using the Fluent Forever methodology, making around 500 flashcards and reviewing a Spanish pronunciation trainer, but my motivation fizzled out fairly quickly. We made a few 1-2 week long trips to South America, and I’d find myself starting to understand more and more after a week or so of immersion, but it usually faded after the trips ended.

2023-present: Dreaming Spanish. I used Babbel to review some basic Italian phrases before our honeymoon to Italy in 2023. Even though I couldn’t say much, I was reminded how much people (at least Italians and Hispanics) appreciate a modicum of effort to communication in their language, so when we got back I started Dreaming Spanish, which I had stumbled across a few months earlier. I started on October 16th. I gave myself 50 hours after a few weeks to account for my previous Spanish study and exposure. It’s worth noting that over the last ten years I’ve probably received thousands of hours of incomprehensible input from being around my wife and her family. While this didn’t do much for my abilities, I do think it have me a good foundation with the sounds of the language, so I’ve always been comfortable with the idea of reading and speaking as early as the roadmap allows (600 hours) At first I watched 15-20 minutes a day, which could still be a bit of a strain, but after a week or so we found out my wife was pregnant with our daughter This really lit a fire under me to start increasing my CI time, since I wanted to be able to speak Spanish with her, and because I figured it’d be harder to get a lot of CI time once she was born. I increased my daily CI goal to an hour, which I hit about half the time, at first but had a hard time meeting it in December. In January my motivation increased and I set a goal for 3 hours a day and have mostly hit that ever since. This would put me at around 600 hours at my daughter’s due date this past summer. The level 5 (600 hour) description seemed lofty at the time, and I figured that if I opened up reading and basic conversations, I could continue to make progress in Spanish with all the interaction I get with my wife’s family, even if my life gets crazy and I can’t watch/listen to CI.

I hit 600 hours a few days after my daughter was born. I even managed to not have any zero CI days the first two days of her life at the hospital - I wasn’t a lunatic listening to Dreaming Spanish in the delivery room or anything, but I gave myself 5 minutes each day for listening to my wife converse with the Ecuadorian cleaning staff. My hours took a big hit the first week or so after this, but I still hit 20-60 minutes. Within 2 or 3 weeks I was back up to 3 hours a day. I’m still on paternity leave, so we’ll see how I do when I return to work in a couple weeks.

This is already too long, so I won’t walk through every stage of learning here, but my experiences have basically followed the roadmap. I’m probably slightly ahead, which I credit to all the time I spend with my wife’s family. For a long time, I was following conversations with ~50% comprehension, which isn’t ideal, so I didn’t count it towards my CI hours, but it definitely still adds up and helps. Since hitting 600 hours, I’ve been participating in conversations a lot more and comprehending more (70-90% maybe), so I do give myself some pro-rated CI time after hanging out with them. Below are some observations of my current abilities.

Current abilities:

Listening: I can listen to some advanced DS videos, but still prefer intermediate. I watch a lot of Youtube travel vlogs and listen to a lot of intermediate+ learner podcasts. When someone speaks to me directly in Spanish I can usually understand it, though some people are better at being comprehensible than others. I can follow along with native conversations at times, but have to concentrate and can easily get lost quickly. I’ve been watching the Clone Wars and the Good Place (dubbed) and find them both a good level for me. My wife and I watched Las Azules on Apple TV, which is in Mexican Spanish, with Spanish subtitles, and I could follow it closely enough to enjoy - maybe 70% comprehension? I didn’t count it towards my CI hours however. Overall I’m very happy with my listening skills.

Reading: I’ve been working my way through Juan Fernandez’s graded readers since hitting 600 hours (I figured I owe the man some money after all the free content of his I’ve consumed. So far I’ve read Hola Lola, Un Hombre Fascinante, La Profe de Espanol, Dracula A1/A2 (not Juan’s), Ano Nuevo Vida Nueva, Me Voy o me quedo, and am currently finishing up Fantasmas del Pasado, which will put me at ~115,000 words read (according to some random internet sources). Fantasmas del Casado is B1 supposedly and I find it very easy to read. I’ve read a few pages of Harry Potter and Animorphs and find them pretty comphrensible - enough to enjoy at least even if they don’t hit the 98% comprehension rate Pablo has mentioned elsewhere for optimal extensive reading. Overall happy with my reading abilities, I understand a lot of grammatical stuff that I can’t produce myself. I think I’m mostly held back by vocabulary at this point. I also read some news and stuff online and can usually follow it ok. I’ll look up words using the Kindle dictionary from time to time, but not too often, and mostly for my own enjoyment.

Speaking: My speaking ability is pretty dismal, which is to be expected at this level, though it’s still frustrating. I haven’t been practicing in a rigorous way, just some piecemeal stuff with my wife and family. I don’t think I’m going to stress about this until 1000 hours, which I should hit by the end of the year, at which point I’ll be a little more rigorous about practicing.

Writing: N/A - Haven’t tried outside some short text messages and I expect its pretty bad. Might start practicing between 1000-1500 hours since i would like to take a DELE/SIELE exam someday, but not going to stress about it now.

Favorite content over 750 hours:

DS - I listen to all the guides, mostly just intermediate and advanced at this point. This probably makes up ~10% of my total input but I still pay for premium and get value from it. Augustine is my favorite teacher I think, but I enjoy all of them really.

Podcasts - I started with Chill Spanish and Cuentame at ~100 hours like most people - these were important but it’s been a long time since I listened to them. I spent some time with Joel Zarate’s podcasts, which were good for input but a bit boring and repetitive. Espanol Con Juan was a game changer and really made it easy to rack up hours. I was sad when I finished all his podcasts, but then I started over from the beginning. I don’t binge listen to them like I did the first go-around, but I still listen to him most days. He’s especially good when I’m tired or exercising - I think familiarity makes him easier to follow. The past couple hundred hours my biggest podcasts have been Espanol Con Juan, Que Pasa, Intermediate Spanish Podcast (with Cesar), and Pocket Spanish Podcast. I’ve either finished or am nearly finished with all of these. I may spring for some of their paid platforms for a month or two if there’s enough content. I’ve been dabbling with Hoy Hablamos and find the conversation podcasts comprehensible. A week or so ago someone recommended Spanish Boost. I’ve really enjoyed his podcast/videos - I wish I had found him a couple hundred hours ago but he’s still enjoyable now at 750 hours.

Youtube. I like all the usual travel podcast here: Luisito, Ramilla, Planeta Juan. One guy I really like who I don’t see mentioned much is Frans (@Fransito). He’s Peruvian and more comprehensible (to me) than any of the other big names here. He travels around Peru and Latin America/Caribbean but he’s a little less slickly produced than the previously mentioned channels, which I like. He’s also recorded with an account called Epicrol, who has really cool videos mostly in rural Peru, though some of his videos don’t have a ton of dialogue or have a lot of Quechua, so not always ideal CI. But he’s worth checking out regardless. I also like Pasaje en Mano - another Peruvian who’s pretty goofy but a good level of comprehensible for me. He has some cool cooking content too. One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is to watch videos about language learning rather than actual Spanish, but now I’ve found a lot of “polyglot” accounts in Spanish that make that procrastination more productive. Luca Lampariello and Steve Kaufmann have been interviewed on most of them in Spanish. Luca’s accent is good enough that I don’t mind him not being a native speaker. Kaufmann’s accent isn’t always great and he makes some mistakes but I still like interviews with him, I just don’t make it to high a proportion of my daily input. There’s more accounts I like but these are the ones that come to mind. I also watch all sorts of cheesy self help accounts that would be trite and repetitive in English but are annoyingly compelling and make for good CI.

Shows- Avatar was comprehensible and good but I never finished it. Now I’m watching Clone Wars and rewatching the Good Place in Spanish and both are a good level and entertaining. I can follow more advanced shows with subtitles but my comprehension is probably lower than ideal.

Crosstalk- My wife and I get 30 minutes of crosstalk most days while we walk our dog which is a great source of input.

Going forward, I hope to get to 1000 hours by the end of the year and 1500 hours by next summer, but we’ll see. At this point I can talk and consume interesting enough content that I’ll get there one way or another as long as I’m patient. We’re going to South American next spring so I want to get some decent speaking practice before then. Once I get to 1500 hours I’ll look into taking the DELE or SIELE tests and see what I need to work on. I’d like to get a C1 or C2 certificate eventually, but it’s not too high of a priority. I’m going to keep reading and will probably try to get through the entire Harry Potter series, at which point my reading skills will hopefully be on autopilot and i can just read whatever I want naturally.

At some point, I’ll start learning French with a CI style approach. I’m not a super strict DS hardliner but so far its worked for me. I think I’ll start reading earlier than I have with Spanish. There’s a cool series of old books called the Nature Method, which is basically book form gradual CI, with Youtube videos of audio you can follow along with. I think starting with something like this makes a lot of sense and don’t foresee any problems. Then again, if there’s a Dreaming French (or any other language probably) by that point I might just stick with that.

One random thought that has occurred to me when I read some posts in this forum: People here will rack up 1000+ hours, start the feel pretty confident, and then watch Casa de Papel or some Caribbean content and start to doubt if they really know Spanish. I think it's worth pointing out that my wife, a native Spanish speaker, had to use subtitles with Casa de Papel since there was so much Spanish slang. She also speaks English perfectly with really no detectable accent, but if we watch a British crime show with Scottish characters she'll sometimes completely miss important points. In Cusco I was in a cab with my wife, a Peruvian, and our Argentinian friend. The driver was a native Quechua speaker and had a distinct accent in Spanish. My wife(not Quechua and not from Cusco) could understand him but the Argentinian could not at all. The Frans Youtuber I mentioned above has a series in Cuba and there's a couple times where he has no idea what a Cuban is saying to him, even though they're both Spanish speakers. We have a group of friends from Latin American and Spain who speak great English and use it at their jobs every day, but I guarantee they'd have trouble understanding the Wire or someone with a Cajun accent. The line between accent, dialect, and language is fuzzy and often determined by politics more than anything objective, and the Spanish speaking world is huge with a ton of variety, so don't get too dismayed if you have some initial trouble with certain accents.

Sorry for the long and rambling post. Long story short, the Dreaming Spanish approach works - though at this point my passive skills are far ahead of my active skills, as expected. Hopefully there’s some details here that are helpful to somebody. Let me know if you have any questions.