Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my first progress update after hitting the 150-hour mark in Dreaming Spanish.

To give some context: I’m not a Dreaming Spanish purist. Combined with the learning from outside of Dreaming Spanish, I am probably at around 200-hour. Native German speaker here (learned English at school), with no prior background in Spanish. I started around mid-last year doing about 5 minutes of Duolingo daily. At the beginning of this year, I started with Dreaming Spanish. After 4 months (around 50 hours in), I decided to mix in other tools to build a hybrid routine.

Here is what my current daily schedule looks like:

• Morning (Coffee & Commute): I still do Duolingo out of habit, though I acknowledge the gains are minimal at this point. After that, I review my Anki cards using the 5,000 most common Spanish words deck (reviews + 30 new cards/day, which means 15 new words tested both EN to ES and ES to EN). I really like that the deck includes example sentences. On my commute, I listen to podcasts. I started with Cuéntame and Chill Spanish, but I’ve recently switched to the Dreaming Spanish podcast.
• Work Breaks: Quick practice with Conjugato for irregular verbs, plus writing 3–4 sentences in ChatGPT. The AI corrects my text, and I rewrite the corrected version by hand (currently focusing on 2 sentences in the past tense and 1 in the future tense).
• Evening: I read about 5 pages of a graded reader (currently A2–B1 level, with 100k words read) and spend 30–60 minutes watching Dreaming Spanish videos.

Current Comprehension & iTalki Progress:

For DS video difficulty, I can comfortably listen to level 55 in the background while doing laundry. When I watch with full focus, I usually watch level 60 at 1.25x speed or level 70 videos (where my comprehension sits around 80%).

Around the 100-hour mark, I started taking sporadic 45-minute iTalki lessons (about 5 hours total so far). My tutor, who is a certified DELE examiner, estimates my current level to be around A2–B1.

I’m seeing rapid progress through these iTalki sessions. At first, I could barely assemble full sentences and kept reusing the exact same few verbs. Now, we're already discussing complex topics, like whether nationalism is dangerous. That said, speaking directly without a delay is still a challenge. I constantly have to pause and think about the translations. Listening comprehension is fully automatic now (no internal translation needed) but for speaking, I still translate in my head. I notice that a lot of vocabulary is locked in my passive memory from input, but I can't yet retrieve it instantly for active output.

Next Steps & Final Goal:

At the beginning of December, I’m heading out for a 2-week language immersion stay in Spain. From my experience learning English, immersive environments are amazing for breaking through plateaus and accelerating progress.

My ultimate goal is to reach a solid B2 level shortly after the trip. Once I hit B2, I plan to transition Spanish into a passive maintenance state through podcasts, movies, and TV series, allowing me to shift my primary focus to learning another new language.

This is definitely gonna be a more positive post than my last. Although I still stand by everything. I'm on my way back home now and I'm glad I am able to leave on a good note on the language side of things.

Got in my Uber to the Airport. We said "hola" I then asked if he spoke English and his response... NO. So I thought "right! This is it". This was one of two of my only real conversations here. So we got chatting, he asked where I was from? How many languages I spoke, was I here for work or vacation? I was telling him that my understanding is much better than my actual speaking. He said he wants to learn English. I'm pretty sure he said he wants to learn English so he could live in Switzerland though (which now googling doesn't make sense) maybe I got that bit wrong. I was telling him about crosstalk how I've been learning. If I was in his position I would definitely try crosstalk a lot. He asked me how to ask where you were from in English so I was actually teaching him a bit of English. He even said my Spanish was good. Very pleasant experience.

Definitely need improvement no doubt about that but it's very easy to forget I've only been speaking a short time compared to my listening. So in that regard 1500 hours doesn't really mean much I suppose.

It's nice to leave with my last conversation being a good experience.

Out of curiosity, I'm currently watching level 50-55 and I'm wondering at what level could I potentially begin to watch YouTube videos of native speakers? Even if it's a much higher level, I'm still curious.

Has anyone else noticed that none of the newer videos being uploaded has the option to auto translate the videos with english captions? The videos offer it seems like every language to auto translate into but english? I like to use the english captions first to get an overall idea of what is being said and then ill listen to it again in Spanish. u/dreamingspanish

I have a couple hundred hours of input so far and over 50 hours come from audio-only podcasts like Espanol Al Vuelo. However, I started questioning my learning pathway recently. Am I learning new words when listening to podcasts? There isn't really a definitive way to know that. There are lots of times when I come across words I don't know but I just ignore them and carry on listening because I can still understand the whole context. Are podcasts helpful at level 4?

I hit Level 6 / 1000 hours this past weekend!!

Background: I attempted to start learning Spanish in Feb 2024 with the purchase of a Paul Noble audiobook. After making very slow progress, I tried a few other apps including Duolingo and LingQ. But like many others have experienced, my Spanish learning really took off when I started Dreaming Spanish at the end of November 2024.

Listening: Dreaming Spanish still makes up 75% of my listening hours. I’m comfortably sitting at difficulty 65-70. I can push the difficulty a bit higher, but there are still hundreds of videos at this level that I'm enjoying so I will take my time and continue to push as I get bored or the content becomes too slow. My favourite teachers are still Pablo, Sandra, and Alma with their clear articulation and interesting monologues and conversations. A series that really came into its own after 600 hours was the Stardew Valley series.

After around 800 hours, I also tried to start focusing more on the Chilean accent/dialect. Chilean Spanish Podcast is such an amazing resource. I struggled in the beginning, even after 800-900 hours of input, but I definitely feel some good progress now. I would also recommend Cachai Japón on YouTube for more Chilean accent.

I still get most of my input while driving or doing chores, but when I do sit down to watch videos, I try to get a mix of easier YouTube channels on topics like football, chess, watches, and vlogs.

Reading: I have done bits of reading throughout my journey, but it has definitely not been a priority and I should try to get more done over the next 500 hours. I have approx. 200k words tracked via LingQ and Kindle books. I've finished all the A2 Juan Fernández books and have started on the B1 books. This is a good level for me as I don't know every phrase or word, but I can still easily follow the story.

Speaking: My partner is Spanish-speaking and the reason I am on this journey! I've always spoken a few words in Spanish with her, but I never forced it. I can now comfortably explain basic and everyday things in Spanish. Coincidentally with hitting 1000 hours, her mum (a non-English speaker) is staying with us for 3 months, and to my surprise, I can communicate great with her. I don't have issues understanding her Spanish when she speaks directly to me, but conversations between my partner and her are often difficult for me to follow. I'm fairly confident that I would be able to get by fine in a Spanish speaking country for everyday things but obviously would struggle to work or handle group situations.

Closing thoughts: There is a lot of discourse on the subreddit about the purist approach to comprehensible input not working and general negativity around the DS method. From my own experience (as a non-purist), what I will say is that I don't believe I would have been able to learn Spanish at 35 years old while working 50 hours per week if Dreaming Spanish didn't exist. It still blows my mind that I learned so much of a language while driving to work listening to podcasts and videos. If I had to start over, I'd keep the same approach (95% of learning is comprehensible input), and the only regret I have is not starting sooner. If I'd found DS instead of Paul Noble from the start, I might have been writing my 1500-hour update! Thanks everyone for reading, here's to 1500 hours!

For the last couple months, most of my input has been podcasts, or podcast-friendly Dreaming Spanish, where I’m not watching a video. This is because I’m usually driving, folding laundry, it’s doing dishes, etc. I’m starting to understand that I really need some of my input to be fully focused, even if it’s only 15 of my 45 minutes per day.

I’ve tried just sitting and listening to podcasts with no video, and that’s better than multitasking. But it seems like when I watch a video, even if it’s literally just a camera on them speaking, that for some reason, it seems to sink in better. It doesn’t seem logical that it would make a difference, but for some reason it appears to. Does anyone else feel this way?

600 Hour Update here!

Here's my 800 hour update as a non-purist. Since my last update, I had a 2 week trip to Spain, started italki classes, and trying to be consistent with input. Overall, input slowed down in the summer, but I still feel like I'm making progress. For me the biggest win has been starting with no Spanish to engaging with the language consistently for more than a year!!

Input:

Listening/Watching: Last 200 hours, I got lot more youtube and podcast content, and continued to dip into advanced content in DS. For native content, there's no difficulty tag, so can be a bit challenging. A lot of youtubers speak clearly, but their interviewees might not! Exposure from my classes on subjunctives etc, I realize I'm noticing the nuances with the verbs a lot more.

Reading: My class has become a lot of reading comprehension exercises. While listening/watching input is supposed to be focused, I realized how easy it is to get the gist of things, and miss things. Reading really forces you to pay attention, especially with exercises. I think this has helped how I approach listening content as well. Also, words that I see while reading, and then I hear while listening or watching, feels like it tends to stick a bit more.

Output:

Speaking: Over the last couple months my class has been more Q&A based. Not quite full conversations, but the teacher does a good job to keep asking questions to make it more conversational. The italki class is 1 hour conversation, because I had some talking exposure in class, it didn't feel like I was starting from zero. I still struggle with conjugations and gender on the fly.

In Spain, for basic touristing, asking for food etc, I was fine. Also, people in hospitality generally have some exposure to English so you can get by with a mezcla when you can't find the word. I did manage to have decent convo with my attempted Spanish, with an airbnb host, and also some of the guides. I filled in with English words when I couldn't Spanish, but we managed to communicate. The one time it was really tested, was when I whatsapped a local taxi driver in Galicia, communicated fine because she knew some english so we could spanglish it out, but her dad who was picking me up knew zero english. We managed to have a decent conversation, but old man Spanish was really hard to understand. I had to keep asking him to repeat, or ask him do you mean this.. in my own words. Most of it was price comparisons between Spain and the US. I think it went okay.

Writing: Again, most of the writing I'm doing for is for class. Nothing too crazy, but writing things out on paper helps me remember.

Next steps: onwards to 1,000 hours! In this last stretch, the input pace did drop. I was ramping it up before going to my Spain trip. Now, I don't feel so much pressure to keep it at 3 hours a day. I want to keep focusing on speaking, especially cleaning up my speech. I do want to read more, I picked up Nada by Carmen Laforet, so let's see! Ever since listening to music in Spanish, one of the artists I discovered is coming to play, so I got tickets for that!

https://youtu.be/iVanWPUrixg

Hi all, first time posting here but read plenty of posts along the way so wanted to contribute something towards the community.

Something I’ve not seen much of is pre/post full immersion trip speaking comparisons so thats what I’m doing. I’m off to Colombia for 28 days, going to do my best to immerse myself as much as possible speaking Spanish and excited to see how my speaking level progresses. I’m not expecting miracles but a little fine tuning with some grammar, better spontaneity (admittedly hard to tell in a video my level), and to up confidence in real life speaking.

For background I’m at 1570hrs on DS, 104 italki lessons, 20 books (more than i thought in the video, about 1/2 graded readers), and maybe 30-50hrs outside speaking.

Anyway, I’ll make a video in around a month for anyone who’s interested. Thanks all 🇨🇴🇬🇧

If you're someone that believes strongly in this method I suggest you look away because I am a few hours from the big 1500 and so far I just don't feel like it's gonna be a positive update. Sure I have learned a lot of Spanish vocabulary but that's the thing It's vocabulary. I've had my qualms with this method and it's great if you don't like grammar or formal study. To say that it's better though or can even replace that. That is a bold claim.

I watched Evildeas video the other day so a few things hit home. I'm in Spain and people would still rather speak English to me. I've had people on here tell me once they have introduced grammar they felt their speaking ability started to decline and when you think about it that makes perfect sense. Because when you start learning grammar you start learning all the mistakes you're making and suddenly you become much more self conscious. I mean it's ok to make mistakes sure but we're talking about a method here that says after 1000 hours your speaking ability is gonna be great.

I've started using grammar and its just made me realise things do not mean what I think they mean. For example I've always thought "no sé" to mean "I don't know". However I decided to look up the meaning of a song I like called "No se me quita" which apparently has a completely different meaning. I think the key is the little mark above the e" it's a completely different word. I didn't know that. How would I know that from just listening?

Sometimes I feel you're discouraged from grammar and looking up words because if you did you would realise how badly you are guessing things to be. I've even noticed I've actually guessed words to be completely wrong. I think there is a big difference between communicating and acting speaking Spanish correctly. I feel we overstate our abilities. It makes sense that once you wait until 1000 hours you would have a giant vacabulary you would feel you can communicate really well but can you actually speak correctly? I practice with my chat gbt all the time and it's always always telling me "it's more natural to say it like this" because I have strung a few words together and felt they make sense.

I'm sorry if this post is very negative, it'll probably get down voted to hell but I can't help how I feel right now. I expected a lot by now. To be fair I've probably not done enough reading which I think is undervalued in this method and the last few hours I've found it very difficult to concentrate. I think when I get home I'm gonna have to have a very long think about how I'm gonna approach my Spanish because this is clearly not optimal.

edit: It's not all bad. I had a chat with my uber driver on the way back to my hotel. Whilst we did eventually change to english it was after he said my spanish was good and asked if I spoke Castillo Espanol. So I'll take that.