4 years, 6 months, 1,500 hours: Level 7 Update
Speaking Example (without further ado): https://voca.ro/1gnbsswcBc23
Background
5 semesters of Spanish in high school/college, 20+ years ago
10 years ago, I traveled to Spain and couldn’t say or understand anything. It was disheartening. All I understood was cerveza, baño, and playa.
At the time, I’d learned Chinese to a B2 level through a mix of (a little) traditional study and (a lot of) immersion. In Spain, when I tried to speak my old Spanish, Chinese words came out.
I started DS in July, 2020, doing 15 minutes a day
I’ve never really managed more than 90 minutes a day
DS Profile
Purist—i.e. I try to follow Pablo’s advice 100%, so no vocab memorization or grammar study. I did start looking up definitions in the RAE Spanish dictionary after I started reading.
979 hours of DS videos
521 hours outside
Speaking
No speaking until 1,000 hours
12 hours of italki classes between 1,000 and 1,100 hours. Zero since.
Probably 20-30 hours of talking to myself in the shower (at least 5 minutes a day...my wife thinks I'm a nut)
500+ pages read out loud, maybe more (super effective)
Reading
1 million words officially, probably 1.2 million unofficially. This is a bit embarrassing because I’m a novelist and hyper-reader in real life, but my wife and I had a kid and boom, time disappeared.
How I Match the Roadmap
I’m extremely happy with my progress and Spanish abilities today. Extremely happy. In fact, my Spanish is significantly better than my Chinese now, and that feels like the greatest accomplishment ever. That said, I have to admit that my comparison to the roadmap isn’t quite on point.
You can understand any general content effortlessly, including newspapers, novels, and all types of TV shows and movies.
No way. The word “effortlessly” means a lot, and the vast majority of native content still requires effort. Any native content with rapid speech and heavy accents is still either incomprehensible or requires heavy focus. (And as you’ll see below, I try to avoid heavy focus.)
You might still struggle with technical texts in unfamiliar fields, heavy regional slang, and shows with intricate plots.
I struggle with a lot more than that. Some native content, like Raquel de la Morena or Juan José Ramos Libros, I pretty much always understand at 95+%. Other things, like snappy Netflix shows and movies, are often totally incomprehensible (by my personal metric) just because of the way speed and new vocabulary tend to cannabalize dialogue.
You speak fluently and effortlessly, without thinking about the language.
Lol…no. Given, I haven’t practiced speaking much, but this seems ludicrous to me. Again, that word “effortlessly.” I’m confident this will come in time, but for now, I still have to think about the language a lot.
While native speakers might still detect a slight accent, your clarity and fluidity make your speech easy to understand, and no one considers you a learner anymore.
This is true. At least based on the handful of short (but rewarding) conversations I've had with neighbors.
You may still make some mistakes, or miss a specific word here and there, but it doesn’t hinder you from being an effective member of society.
Also true. I make tons of mistakes, obviously, but I'm usually quite aware of it. At least, I think.
Magic Trick: The Easiest Content Possible
I’ve had three moments where my Spanish seemed to skyrocket out of nowhere: at 800, 1,200, and 1,400 hours. In each case, I’d spent the previous 100 hours (and 300 hours in the final case) focusing almost exclusively on the easiest content possible—mostly DS intermediate and advanced videos.
Experiencing these huge jumps three times has totally reshaped my philosophy and listening habits. These days, I try to keep everything as easy and effortless as English. There were things I watched at 800-900 hours that I wouldn’t touch at 1,300-1,400 hours. Other than the occasional Netflix show I really want to watch, if it requires focus, I ignore it.
Now, I think all this easy, 99+% comprehensible input has a direct effect on output/speaking ability. I can’t really explain why. But I am convinced that if any cheat code exists, it’s finding the patience to stay a learner, and to plow through things that feel way, way, way too easy. After all, if we’re attempting to be like native speakers during childhood, then we have to admit how each of us spent six hours a day in primary school classrooms, listening to teachers speak as slowly and clearly as possible.
Lazy Spanish
I should also add that I’m probably the laziest person on this subreddit. I’d guess 80% of my input came while I was doing something else—showering, washing the dishes, working out at the gym, etc. Outside Netflix shows, I’m almost never purely focused on the input. This is another reason why I focus on the easiest content possible. I can understand 99-100% of a DS intermediate/advanced video while washing the dishes, and I learn fascinating things in the process. That level of laziness, for me, is the sweet spot.
Benchmark Content
Since somewhere in Level 5, my benchmark has been Netflix’s Castlevania anime series (dubbed). At around 700 hours, I think, I watched it with subtitles and most of it was still way over my head. It was a waste of time. At around 1,200 to 1,300 hours, I watched it without subtitles and it ranged from 75-95% comprehensible.
This week, I watched season 2 of Netflix’s followup series, Castlevania Nocturne, and the grammar and speed were almost as easy as English. It was pure fun. The only hiccups were random new vocab. This is exactly where I want to be: the input/grammar/speed is so easy that any new vocab words just “glow,” so much so that I can remember and look up them later in the RAE dictionary on my own, if I want (I rarely do).
Experiments for the Future
All along, I'd intended to take a break at 1,500 and start a new language, but Spanish is such a deeply meaningful part of my life now, I can’t quit. I have a few experiments planned:
Reading Only: I really want to get to 3 million words, and I think I’m going to quit all audio/video content until I get there. At this point, I think reading might be the most effective thing I can do, especially considering my limited time.
Copywork: This is an old method of improving writing style in your native language, and I want to apply it to Spanish. Basically, I’ll hand copy sentences/passages from great Spanish writers and journalists, fill up a few notebooks, and hope to ingrain an instinct for rhythm and style.
Talking! These days, I really have the itch to talk to people in Spanish. I never had this before, and speaking was never important to me. Now, however, I really just want to talk to people, and I hope to hire a Spanish Literature tutor to coach me through some high-school level coursework.
Conclusion
Pablo, my man, you’re the greatest. I wish you nothing but health, wealth, happiness, and all the success in the world. It still blows my mind that 1,500 hours of Spanish filtered down from satellites into my phone, then into my head, and now a whole world of language comes out. Though I’m not quite as fluent as I hoped to be at 1,500 hours, I still couldn’t be any happier with where I am, and I know—with 100% certainty—how to reach true, native-like fluency in the future.
Postscript—Everything Works
I’ve been a DS purist from Day 1. In fact, if you scroll WAY back through the subreddit, you’ll see that I was one of the first people to use this term. (u/JBark1990 was the first!)
I never doubted the method because I knew from my previous experience with Chinese that it would work. Yet, I’ve often been dismayed by how regularly people express antagonism about others’ preferred learning methods, whether they’re purists, like me, or use all kinds of “active learning” methods. I understand—it’s a huge undertaking, spending 1,500 hours acquiring a language, and we all want to feel like we’re not wasting time.
So, I’d like to politely point out a truth that often goes unacknowledged:
Everything works.
u/betterathalo was more pure than pure, doing almost nothing but passive listening for 1,500 hours.
u/helenesedai was the exact opposite, using Duolingo and early reading and all kinds of other methods.
Both now speak magnificent Spanish. This is all the example we need.
At the same time, both have been great inspirations to me (and all of us) over the past few years, and both have been incredibly supportive and positive toward others, and this too is an example we need.
Everything works. Pure DS and ALG works. Grammar study works. Speaking early works. Memorizing vocab works. Speaking almost none at all (like me)…even this works apparently.
The only thing that doesn’t work…is stopping. Is not getting more input.
So, instead of worrying about who’s following the best method, I humbly suggest we celebrate that which we’re all accomplishing together—acquiring Spanish. There will come a time when everyone (who doesn’t stop) speaks the language wonderfully, and it will seem silly worrying about whether it was a mistake to look up subjunctive conjugations.
Everything works. Just keep going. Do whatever you need to do. Just keep going. We’ll all get there in the end.
Thank you, and más input.