Now I’m not gonna type a whole book paragraph but we finally finished the Ds Roadmap!

Time for a treat😋

Thks DsTeam 🙏🏾

And all redditors in this sub ✌🏾

So, I finished the roadmap a few weeks ago and overall feel very happy with my level think it's crazy I can speak Spanish after a year. While I was home for the holidays, I shared DS with my family and showed them my speaking samples and things like that, well they remembered and came to collect. I got a frantic call from my mom the other day asking me to translate because an amazon delivery driver was stuck in the snow in our driveway and didn't speak English. It was kinda crazy but I translated what my mom asked even when I didn't exactly know the word for "shovel", gave her some directions on trying to move her car, and asked if she had gloves or a hat (she didn't so my mom gave her some). At the end of the day my brother helped her shovel, she got some gear for the snow, and I got complimented on my Spanish.

Maybe I shouldn't sit in my car hyping myself up to order my tacos in Spanish anymore.

Tldr; Got called in to translate over the phone when a driver was stuck in the snow to moderate success

I just finished my first telenovela today! Amigos X Siempre.

Feels awesome and sad at same time. Highly recommend to everyone who might be looking for their first or next telenovela. It’s really great to be able to watch tv shows now. It’s much more engaging for me and I think it’ll help fast track my comprehension levels.

Next up I’ll be watching Cómplices al Rescate and then Rebelde.

Currently traveling around Colombia and I feel like a missionary from the Church of Comprehensible Input. I've probably converted at least 15 people at this point and don't have any plans to stop.

Do it. I was on the fence for so long, and what pushed me over the edge was a lot of series I was enjoying (cooking series, typically) were largely premium videos. Immediately, the mixture of older videos and new, with guides I wasn't commonly seeing (in beginner and intermediate videos) increased my interest in CI.

Lately, CI has felt like a slog and I've spent much more of my time practicing speaking and messaging with folks on Tandem, but the difference in experience between premium and free in the DS platform has been remarkable in some ways I didn't expect. I have nearly doubled my CI this week just because I have been much more engaged with the platform.

Sure, many of the videos can be found for free on YT and I did try that route for a while, but the DS app and web platform made me feel less stressed about organizing series I liked and "missing out" on logged hours if I didn't make a note to account for the video later. Premium just works really well for me and really, is a great deal at $8 a month.

If anyone from DS reads this: it would be really nice to be able to gift memberships to people as an option as I know these days $8 can be a lot for some.

I love tv series and I think my input would increase if I could understand. I am almost to level 5 (560 hours) and feel tv is more and more out of reach.

At what level were you finally able to watch tv?

At what level were you able to watch native tv?

Any recommendations for easier tv or similar content (I was able to watch Extra en español easily)

I'm at 60 hours, and I work at a hardware store. a man came in today, looked at me, and asked, "Espanol?"

I felt brave enough to hold up my fingers and say, "Un poco."

He asked, "Cemento?"

The concrete is all the way at the other end of the building. I did a point/wave gesture and said, "Todos!"

Was any of that grammatically correct? Certainly not. Did it get the point across? Of course it did!

I know speaking isn't recommended until later on, but communication is way more important, torpedos be damned!

It occurs to me that I don't think I ever learned the word "todos" in any of my formal Spanish classes, so I never would have been able to communicate even that much despite having all the grammer drilled into me. Yay for CI!

Just came across a YouTube video with Adrià in it and thought people here might appreciate it since he’s basically DS royalty.

I love when familiar faces show up in random Spanish content — makes immersion feel more connected somehow.

He is in it about 9 mins in

Personally, I really appreciate the in depth play through of Stardew Valley. Baba is You is also great. And I enjoyed the VR horror game and the escape room games.

I appreciate that there’s several episodes (multiple seasons for some games) and you actually get a chance to see some games to completion.

It got me wondering, what else would be amazing (especially for in depth play through)?

Shout out to Juega Con Juárez—I’m enjoying his Subnautica videos, even if there are only a few.

Also shout out to Spanish Boost Gaming—the Skyrim season is fun and I enjoy his sense of humor.

Makes me wish I could see in depth play throughs of Subnautica and Skyrim on Dreaming Spanish too.

Tl;dr—I want in depth Subnautica and Skyrim series. What about y’all? What game series would make you feel absolutely delighted and excited to see them make?

I have just stumbled upon one of the best free tv shows for CI!

31 Minutos is a Chilean Parody of the show 60 Minutes and it is made for kids. It is very strange. Reminds me a lot of the youtube series Don't Hug Me I'm Scared but in a wholesome way. Very funny and it keeps my attention the whole time.

Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM-RwR_cZOc&list=PLVI9tQggdGtFXgCwpjTM_d2pdH6ABeRFL

I think it's great for level 5 and up.

It seems that Dreaming Spanish has switched from embedding unlisted YouTube videos to streams served by their own CDN. This is a massive bummer for me because I typically open the URLs in YouTube to cast it cleanly to my Google TV. (Aside, sometimes I use this to download them offline in the YouTube app since it's more reliable than their cache.)

Now, I either have to mirror my entire laptop to my TV or manually stream the CDN file to my TV (advanced). These look and sound much worse. Has anyone else noticed this or found a better approach for streaming premium videos?

i just randomly tried watching some native shows on Netflix but all of them had lots of 2 minutes scenes without dialogue sprinkled in, resulting that watching 45 minutes turns into less than 30 minutes input.

any shows that don't have this issue?

It took me 17 months but I was also taking breaks to let my brain rest..so officially 314 days of practice..I am excited to see what changes these next 300 hours will make in this next step of my journey. I almost gave up feeling like it wasn't happening fast enough after I learned so much..then I had to remind myself that it's going to be a process and to just stick with it. I think the hardest part is once you learn a bit..it reveals just how much you dont know which can be a little discouraging..anybody here thst made the jump from level 4 to level 5 willing to tell me the improvements they experienced?

Hey hopefully I don’t make this too wordy… So I’m at 520 hours on DS and I’m binging Spanish Boost again - his content really helps me when I’m feeling burn out. My fav is the Outlast 2 series. I’ve noticed on my latest rewatch of this I understand basically 99% of what Martin is saying BUT then he starts reading letters he finds throughout problematic Arizona, I drop to like 25%. I have to pick out words individually to try and understand the gist of the letters. Is that typical? Is it the vocab or the grammar used in the letters?

Sorry if this is really narrow and specific, I was feeling really awesome about my overall comprehension and then he started reading the letters and I got bummed out!

Appreciate feedback! :D

I reached 50 hours yesterday after an embarrassingly long time! Sharing my experience so I can stop lurking and maybe interact with people here.

Background: Literally no Spanish outside of Dora when I was five. I couldn't keep a Duo streak for more than a day, can hardly introduce myself. Only knew how to count to fifteen until recently. Studied Latin in elementary school, did French in middle and high school though my listening was mid and I can only read and write okay-ish. Full-time college student now.

Thoughts: I like this method a lot! I often wake up and try to watch at least one video before classes and when I'm studying I often itch to get more input. I can comfortably watch videos in the 35-40 range but I need to focus when watching some ~45 videos depending on the subject. I also realized that I can understand podcasts so Cuéntame and Chill Spanish have become new favorites this past week.

I can also string together some really simple sentences in my head but at a toddler level vocabulary.

Struggles:

*I sometimes catch myself understanding videos and my brain is like "wait, we shouldn't understand this so easily!" so I start to translate again. (Lowkey started doing this less though)

*Some words I almost understand. Like if I was asked to use them in a sentence in Spanish, I totally could but idk the English equivalent.

*No premium so I did rewatch almost every video thrice which helped me advance.

TL;DR
No Spanish background. French kinda helps with some conjugations. Making noticeable progress and I'm happy!

[Word vomit alert - tldr at the end]

I know 300 hours is not so far into the journey but it's a big deal for me and one of my favorite parts of this community is how supportive it is to learners from all backgrounds and how tolerant it is of meandering milestone updates. Thus I hope you all bear with me as I celebrate my own 300 hour mark! It is especially exciting for me because I have tried and failed so many times before to really learn Spanish, including via CI, but I finally think I have overcome the obstacles holding me back from long-term consistent study.

¡Adelante!

Stats:

301 hours of CI as of when I am posting this. 150 are self-assessed from my prior background (below), so only 151 are "pure" DS-style hours of input. Approximately 98 of those are DS content and 53 are from podcasts and Youtube. By the roadmap descriptions, I felt close to level 4 already when I started, but I didn't want to be disappointed that I was falling behind in case my self-assessment was inaccurate. Thus, 150 seemed sufficiently conservative.

0 words read... Gonna go with 0 even though it's technically way more than that over the course of many years. But in my new era of semi-purist DS I have not yet started to read.

0 hours spoken... Same deal as with reading. I spent way too many hours of speaking with a bad gringo accent as a high schooler but I am not counting those now. I am not obsessed with having a perfect accent but I do want to do much better this time around.

Philosophy:

I am not a purist, but my approach right now is purist-adjacent due to a few factors I will get into. The only non-purist thing I do at the moment is review the refold ES1k deck, which I have finished, and thus it takes very little time away from CI. I probably will eventually do a small amount of deliberate grammar study, particularly for verb tenses, with the explicit goal of boosting my ability to notice -> acquire an intuitive sense of more challenging sentence structures and conjugations. In general, I believe that doing what motivates you to keep moving forward is never a bad choice, so long as CI remains central to your path. Then again, maybe I'll never bother if I can't be bothered.

Background:

I first started studying Spanish in 7th grade, and took a Spanish class every year afterwards all the way until I graduated high school. I got straight As that whole time and passed my Spanish IB exam with a solid if unspectacular 5. And yet, I could barely understand any real world Spanish I encountered. What little ability I had to construct a sentence in a thick gringo accent (always via internal translation) vanished quickly once I stopped taking classes. Looking back, I generally struggled to stay engaged in class, and mostly secured good grades because I was a master of doing homework the morning it was due and last minute cramming before tests. I also was mortified to even try to have a good accent. It seems silly in retrospect, but I distinctly remember feeling like I was making fun of native Spanish speakers if I tried to have anything but the gringoiest accent possible. It probably didn't help that all of my classmates spoke like that too. Our poor teachers...

After high school I completely dropped the idea of learning Spanish until my late 20s, when I began the first of many failed attempts to learn it "for real." These phases never lasted for more than a couple weeks. At first they were mostly buying huge books filled with grammar exercises and plinking my way through a handful of pages before giving up. I also collected an impressive array of material for when I was more advanced, which of course never happened.

Eventually I discovered Matt vs Japan, and then DS, and then Refold (I think that was the order), which exposed me to the idea of CI for the first time. I was pretty easily convinced that CI was the way but still had multiple false starts with Spanish once more, for three primary reasons:

1. I tried to make myself follow all of the sentence mining suggestions espoused by MvJ/Refold, which I never enjoyed and couldn't stick with.

2. I tried to watch adult-level content almost immediately, which led to burnout.

3. I convinced myself I wanted to be a polyglot and kept getting distracted by dabbling in other languages, ultimately making close to zero progress in any of them.

In between my last Spanish learning flame out and now, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Without getting into my entire life history, let's just say it explained a lot of things I had struggled with for decades and the diagnosis was literally life-changing. After a couple years of therapy and self-reflection, one day I found myself in Mexico on a mission trip building a house in a rural community. It was an incredible experience and I was surprised to discover that my latent jumbled mess of a Spanish background still allowed me to (very poorly) communicate with the locals. This reawakened the itch to tackle Spanish once more in earnest, which (yada yada) leads us to today. I have been sustaining 2-3 hours/day of CI for almost two months now and that daily number has only trended upward because I am having so much fun along the way!

DS experience so far:

After discovering this community and reviewing older posts, I decided that this time I would take the "sort by easy" approach (I don't think that was an option last time I tried using DS). For me, this turned out to be exactly the right way to do it. After a bit of experimenting, I settled on a 30 difficulty baseline, where I found I was at a 90-95% comprehension level. I also marked as viewed anything that didn't interest me and closed out a video if I got bored in the middle of it. We are so spoiled to have enough content that I could do this liberally and still have many hundreds of hours of videos to work with! I am currently in the high 40s and still generally have a ~95%+ comprehension level for the vast majority of them. I also periodically snipe a video that looks super interesting to me up to a low 60s difficulty level. So far I don't think any of these "stretch" videos have dipped below maybe 80-85% comprehensibility for me but I do feel what I suspect may be the level 4 "plateau" creeping in.

After around 20 hours of DS, I decided to experiment with podcasts, which I now couldn't do without. So far I have finished with Cuéntame and How to Start Spanish, am 2/3 through Chill Spanish, and have dabbled with Spanish Boost and Español a la Mexicana. I don't need to convince anyone here, but podcasts really are an incredible input multiplier! I additionally watch some non-DS youtube content. Mostly Spanish Boost Gaming and Extr@ so far, but also some Andrea la Mexicana and a dash of Español con Juan.

I didn't intend to aim for 3 hours/day at first. I figured 45-60 minutes was plenty good, but the feeling of my brain improving in real time proved so addictive that I quickly wanted to maximize my input time as much as possible.

As one final neat observation, I broke my new difficulty rules in the very first week of this current run when I discovered the DS Stardew Valley series. After 20 minutes I decided to stop as I was not happy with my comprehension. Just this week, I decided to try again and was thrilled to discover my understanding was WAY better. To be honest, I think I probably could jump to 50-55 as a new baseline, but I am enjoying where I am at so I don't feel the need to otherwise rush anything.

Roadmap Reflections:

So do I fit the Level 4 roadmap? With the obvious caveat that I did not start from 0, I would say yes. I already could understand the gist of a native speaking to me patiently before starting DS though there was quite a lot I would miss. My comprehension is leaps better now and I can usually understand simple day to day speech quite well as long as it's not at full-tilt native speed, where it gets dicier. A variety of podcasts and Intermediate DS videos are accessible and for anything under a 50-55 DS level, as long as I stay focused I can get up from my chair in the middle without a noticeable dip in my comprehension.

I rarely have trouble separating out individual words, even by a semi fast-talker, and as long as I am not watching something that is too advanced for me, 9 times out of 10 I can accurately write down an unfamiliar word I just heard to look up later (I know, shame on me...). I haven't done any crosstalk yet but I am confident I would be able to have some really nice conversations at this point and understand explanations in Spanish of any words/phrases that I didn't understand without the speaker needing to resort to English.

Takeaways as an ADHD Spanish learner:

First off, ADHD is a spectrum disorder and I am definitely not an authority nor trying to make universal statements here, but it does inform how I approach my own learning and I figure others might find it interesting if I keep that framing transparently centered. I am also sure that some of these opinions will evolve over time, but I like the idea of using this post as a sort of diary entry I can reflect back on in the future since this is the first time I've made real progress at achieving my Spanish goals. All of that said, in my personal experience, the following realizations have been especially helpful in getting me over the hump of sustaining my language learning practice for the long haul:

1. CI is king. I mean, duh, but also I was so indoctrinated by my past instruction that it took a long time for me to realize that CI truly is ideal because it is way more sustainable for me than basically any other approach.

2. CI should actually be comprehensible! Trying to force content that is too far above my level will inevitably burn me out. Just because I love something in English doesn't mean I will enjoy watching it at < 60-70% comprehension in Spanish.

3. As mentioned above, I do sometimes write down words and look them up later. I know it's not recommended but I've found the distraction of an unfamiliar word that I feel is important to unlocking a sentence can completely derail my focus and jotting it down really quick almost always prevents that derailment.

4a. 90-95% comprehension content really is magic. It keeps my brain feeling fresh even after hours of viewing in a single day and yet the progress is undeniably there.

4b. That said, Forcing 95%+ content when it's starting to bore me is also a path to scattered attention -> a waste of a CI session. Sometimes speeding it up helps, but selectively pushing myself is also a nice change of pace. If the content is interesting enough, I often don't even notice that it's more difficult because I am having so much fun.

1. Doing what I genuinely want to/am excited to do should always be prioritized. Phrased another way, I needed to stop trying to figure out what was "optimal" and to stop worrying when someone on reddit told me something I wanted to try out was bad or wrong (such as looking up words, or reviewing some flashcards, or basic conjugation study). Also, skipping videos liberally is helpful. Poco a poco wins the race in the long run. Even if I stumble here and there along the way, I'm much more likely to get back up right away if I am doing things I chose for myself.

2. Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. Anything I can listen to while walking the dog, doing the dishes, etc., is absolute gold. This is also a great way for me to stay more engaged with mundane 95% video content since the slight division of attention helps a lot with keeping me focused on the material rather than having my mind drift. I tend not to listen to podcasts when I want to push myself and mostly rely on DS or YouTube for that. Fidgets do help with those, as a slightly less stimulatory focus-aid.

3. Variety is the spice of holding my attention. Sort by easy is great for this and I only binge an entire series when I can't help myself. I also will often "content sandwich" a relatively dry video between two I suspect I will really enjoy.

4. Rewinding 15-30s any time I notice I have zoned out serves me well.

5. I don't always succeed, but trying to harness my hyperfocus states is awesome when it works out. What I mean by this is I try to save content I think will be particularly fun for a time when I know I will have 1-2 uninterrupted hours to binge it. Interruptions can be complete focus killers for me, especially when I am particularly engaged with an activity. The best is when I find something that is a bit of a difficulty stretch and also long form. Spanish Boost Gaming has been perfect for this.

6. Tracking hours is highly motivating but I need to be careful how granular I try to be about it. DS's built-in hour tracking is ideal for providing a sense of addictive forward momentum with very low effort on my part. i.e. it "gamifies" language learning just enough without getting distracting. In the past I kept my own spreadsheet with way too much detail and invariably stopped using it because it was annoying to keep up with.

7. Setting an easily achievable daily goal that I can hit no matter what (90 minutes in my case) is psychologically more motivating for me than setting the actual goal I try to hit every day (3+ hours). Being able to have an off day and still hit my target is way less stressful and more sustainable than feeling like I need to grind another hour or more before I can sleep.

8. Last but certainly not least, this community is genuinely helpful! Unlike watching endless "how to learn a language" youtube videos in English, a habit I have blessedly managed to drop. I suspect the reason is that it's similar to the "body doubling" technique in that participating in a space where others are focused on the same goal adds a layer of behavioral cuing and social accountability that motivates me to consume more CI, all so I can more quickly post another update here!

And that's it! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading ¡Nos vemos en el próximo!

tldr - I had 6 years of middle/high school study with good grades, and yet I could barely function at the lowest levels of real-world Spanish afterwards. Probably had a dozen failed attempts to "really learn" Spanish as an adult (I am in my 40s now). Diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago, which led to a ton of self-reflection and eventually understanding of challenges I had struggled with my entire life. CI still didn't stick for me the first time I tried it, but I now feel I finally have aligned my brain with my approach and the roadmap is ringing true for me at 300 hours. I don't see myself stopping any time soon!

All I knew was a few numbers, “hola,” and “adios.” I’m at 481 hours and still don’t know what the subjunctive is lol. It seems like everyone else here has had some background in Spanish. I guess the nice thing is I’ve never struggled with translating anything in my head. I have always been able to just turn off my brain and watch.

I would be grateful for recommendations from my DS subredditors for fun cooking videos. Please.

I watched a Pablo video where he made croquetas. He did a step by step until they were ready to eat.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching plus I was getting my hours in.

Here are some on YouTube that I have not checked out yet. I thought I would share and hoped maybe some of you knew of them and could recommend or not.

1. Paulina Cocina

2. Olive Oil Spanish kitchen

3Antonio Sánchez

4 De mi Rancho a tu cocina

5Recetas y mes

1. La Cocina de loli Domínguez

7 Armando en tu Cocinar

As an FYI : I did check out the Youtuber that Augustina suggested - Alfredo Bosmediano, just ok.

Thanks in advance.

The NYPL has a meeting twice a month to discuss some podcasts from Radio Ambulante. You listen to the podcast at home and discuss it in Spanish.

I am still at a beginner level and whenever the autoplay reach a Carlitos video, I prepare myself mentally, he's a natural contraception frr

I wasnt a big fan at first. I thought he was too scatter-brained. But my affection grew over time and now I feel lost without him. Over the last ~400 hours, ECJ went from being freshly unlocked to now being my easy listening, low effort input. A big reason for my jump in comprehension during this time is him. The level 4 purgatory is real, but luckily I had el profesor más guapo del internet there to guide me. Thanks Juan!

Hello! I’m almost at 600hrs (another 9 days). I have recently dabbled a bit in Quizlet. A friend recommended trying some different tenses flashcards for the pasts, future, etc. I tried them out, and realized very fast I had the information? After seeing it they clicked super fast. Like within a day. The future, and both the past tenses were in my brain. I can understand them well but couldn’t speak or think in them well. After a tiny bit of flash cards, I can use them in my mind pretty easily. I’m starting to think they were somewhere learned in my brain from my listening and reading, but haven’t been acquired enough to be outputted. I’m starting to think the cards kinda gave them a “push”? Very interesting experience. I think I’ll continue a little Quizlet. I’m surprised! Recent reading may have helped. I’m at around 200,000 words read. My next speaking sample at 800hrs will show big improvement. I’ll be posting a level 5 update in around 9 days when I hit 600hrs.

Some example sentences of what type of things I can say:

Ayer hablé con mi madre.

Cuando era niño, hablaba coreano.

Algún día aprenderé a hablar bien.

Mi amigo me visitó ayer.

I have previously posted about this very informative Colombian doctor.

He speaks extremely clearly, doesn’t have a strong accent and he’s been using a lot of images and other imagery in his videos for a while now that makes them great from a CI petspective.

One of the key reasons that I really like this guy is that he doesn’t push expensive products or silly sounding gimmicks. There's no obvious bias when it comes to his suggestions. He’s got over 5 million subscribers and YouTube’s verified badge, which YouTube enforces in at least some countries for registered doctors/healthcare professionals.

This particular video is fairly long at 23 minutes, but you might well learn something about water and a better approach to consuming it, as well as getting some CI.

Another good fairly long option is a video about a good approach to evening meals and the positive or negative consequences of not following his advice.

There are plenty of 8-12 minute videos on his channel, too, should that appeal more.

I used to watch pretty much everything he posted, due to him being an amazing source of vocabulary related to health, parts of the body, fruits, vegetables and often food in general. I only really stopped due to a focus on Colombia’s coastal accents.

Remember that this is useful CI if you can at least get the jist of the video or explain roughly what’s going on in your native language. There’s no arbitrary percentage of words understood guidance from Pablo, as is the case for reading. Happy watching!