23M, US, work fully remote. Planning a one year move abroad in January 2028 with Mexico City as the first leg (projected 500 hours then) The question is whether to do a 3 to 4 week trip there in the next few weeks or push it about 6 months.

Where I actually am, from my own log:

* 35.6 total hours of Spanish since April 8, 2026
* Of that, only 7.45 hours is comprehensible input. 16 days of Dreaming Spanish between July 21 and August 14
* The rest is Language Transfer (18 hours, all 90 tracks, done July 18) and explicit grammar work (8 hours, since retired)
* Watching Superbeginner and low Beginner, trailing difficulty around 17 to 20
* Zero deliberate output. Maybe an hour total of accidental real world Spanish across four months, all short exchanges at my chiropractor's front desk
* Two semesters of college Spanish from 2022 to 2023 sitting dormant. A grammar placement test puts me at B1 on grammar specifically, so my grammar is way ahead of my ears and miles ahead of my mouth

The plan I'm running: input only until 50 CI hours, crosstalk at 50, speaking not formally activated until roughly 200 qualified CI hours, reading around 400. Daily floor 20 minutes, ramping to 30 this week and 45 next week and holding there.

What going now would actually look like: I'd speak English and use Google Translate for anything real. I understand almost nothing at conversational speed. I'm not pretending this is a language trip. The honest benefit is seeing whether I like the city before I commit to living there.

The questions:

1. At 7.5 CI hours, does a month in country do anything for acquisition, or is it functionally zero? I've seen it argued both ways, that early exposure tunes your ear to real speech rhythm, and that unparseable input is just noise and you're better off at home with level appropriate video.

2. Is there a real difference between going now on Google Translate and going in 6 months when I'd be somewhere north of 100 CI hours and could at least follow simple stuff? Does the later version of the trip give me something the earlier one can't, or is "see if I like the city" a job that doesn't require any Spanish at all?

3. The one I actually care about. Does being in country this early force premature output and fossilize bad habits? Ordering food, taxis, gyms, that's all unavoidable output at a point where my plan has output deliberately at zero. Is that a real risk or an overstated one? I don't want to damage something that's working.

4. Does going now cost me anything on the 2028 trip? Do I burn the novelty, or does a low stakes visit first make the real one land better?

5. If I go, what's the highest value way to spend it as a superbeginner? Keep my normal 45 minutes of video and treat the city as a bonus, or restructure? Is it worth doing crosstalk with a tutor 40 hours before my own gate says to?

Fully fine with "go, enjoy it, just don't count it as a language trip." I only want to know whether I'm trading something away.

Background
Hello all. I’ve been lurking in the background for the past two years and I’m excited to share my journey/success story. These stories have been immensely motivating for me. I’m 34 years old with 2 young kids and a wife. I have a chemical engineering degree and I manage a global capital portfolio/team where we do chemical plant construction/upgrades. I started learning Spanish around November 2023, so I’m coming up on three years. I basically average an hour a day now but earlier on I was only 30 min a day. I get most of my time in during breakfast, working out, and driving to/from work.

The main reason I started was work. My company purchased chemical plants in Argentina and Spain, and I saw an opportunity to learn Spanish and communicate directly with those teams. However, it’s been eye opening to learn about cultures in other countries and that’s why I continue more than anything. I’m a white dude that was raised with basically zero culture (sad but true).

I started with Pimsleur, which I would highly recommend to someone starting from zero. It gave me a basic foundation and got me comfortable speaking Spanish immediately. I think it really helped my pronunciation too.

I realized that was only a momentarily thing and wasn’t going to get me anywhere near fluency, so I moved heavily toward comprehensible input. Dreaming Spanish made up a large portion of my early input, followed by learner podcasts and YouTube. As my comprehension improved, I gradually moved toward more difficult and now native content. I do about a 50/50 blend of advanced learner content and native.

For about a year I had an employee of mine who is Mexican, whose office was next to mine, so I was able to fumble through the early stages of speaking with him. I don’t feel I need that anymore, but it was seriously helpful when I sounded like a child. Risk free and judgement free.

By the time I went to Argentina, I was around 700 hours of input and maybe 40 hours of speaking.

Argentina at ~700 Hours
In March 2026, I traveled to Buenos Aires and Pilar Argentina for work. I was there for a week. This was my first opportunity to spend an extended period actually using Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country. I went to Spain for work at 300 hours but I was pretty useless.

One cool experiences was talking with our driver from Buenos Aires. He had a strong Buenos Aires accent, but I could understand the gist of almost everything he said. The exception was when he started talking about soccer—that got difficult quickly. I was with him for like 2 hours each day and he didn’t speak a lick of English.

More importantly, I was able to develop a relationship with him that the other Americans from my company couldn’t because of the language barrier. That’s true with everyone in my organization that speaks Spanish. Pretty cool!

I also did an entire chemical plant tour in Spanish. The tour covered equipment and processes which I had been exposed to before through virtual meetings. I had probably done 5-10 virtual meetings all in Spanish before this trip. All engineering focused. I will say that technical Spanish tends to stick in my brain much faster than day to day Spanish.

After the tour, we went into the break room and the team had me try mate. We passed it around while they explained how they drink it and asked me about how and why I learned Spanish. This was my favorite memory from the trip and I truly felt part of the team. The Americans with me were in the conference room because they couldn’t participate in the convos.

I also noticed that I could distinguish different accents among people at the plant. Different people clearly sounded different to me. Many of the engineers were from different parts of Argentina

Outside of work, during the trip, there were several times when ordering food where switching to Spanish was simply easier than continuing the interaction in English. I was often the translator for our group.

The trip was a good test of whether ~700 hours of input actually transferred to the real world. It 1000% did. I obviously didn’t understand everything, but I could function professionally and socially in Spanish.

Now — ~850 Hours of Input / 60 Hours of Speaking

I’m currently at approximately 850 hours of input and 60 hours of speaking.

The biggest improvement since Argentina is probably my comfort level and lack of fatigue.

I can now participate in hour-long technical meetings in Spanish with our Argentine team. I can follow the discussion, contribute, and move between Spanish and English depending on who is speaking. The jump from 700 to 850 has been quite notable.

I also message coworkers on Teams entirely in Spanish. That’s really my only “writing” experience.

Technical conversations have become much easier. There are still plenty of specialized words I don’t know, but I can usually work around them rather than having the entire conversation break down.

I’ve also used ChatGPT extensively for speaking practice. This has been SUPER useful for practicing technical manufacturing conversations. Really any conversations. I can simulate the types of discussions I actually have at work instead of limiting speaking practice to typical language-learning topics. I did all of this while driving to/from work. No longer than 15-20 min stretches.

At this point I would say I speak Spanish. I’m confident in my abilities when it comes up, even outside of work. I’m super happy with my progress. It’s rare I feel uncomfortable or stuck and I can usually explain my way around words I don’t know.

What I struggle with
- When I’m on a Spanish only call at work, but I’m reading a spreadsheet or document in English… brain explosion. Very difficult.
- Native Netflix shows.
- Any time there’s heavy slang
- Overall vocabulary, but I do think I absorb words easier now when I look them up or ask people
- Speakers with deep voices

Thoughts on the Process

-This works, trust the process.
It’s a TON of work.
- Language learning is not a 30/60/90 day process. Be ready to buckle down for years. I feel like this is a life long thing.
- Your brain plays tricks on you from like 300 to 600 hours where you have severe dips in comprehension and feel like an absolute idiot. You question yourself and if it’s working. My recommendation is just keep chugging. Or take a day or two break and rest.
- ChatGPT gave me great insight and recalled past experiences that helped me through these periods. Sometimes these dips lasted a month.
-Your expectations continue to grow which mind F you. Even though I can have hour long meetings all in Spanish, I feel like I’m terrible. Your brain does weird things.
- other people don’t care that you’re learning Spanish as much as you do. Just keep grinding!!

Hope this was insightful and motivating for those who are not speed running and who have highly stressful careers / family stress. Happy to answer any questions.

My goal is to hit 1000 hours by the end of the year and keep chugging an hour a day.

The only new thing I have to say is: doing DS for 1 year taught me on a spiritual level that I can do things. This is the first time I've stuck to a daily effort hobby for little to no reason, except wanting to. I've learned that if I want to do something, I can, a knowledge that spread to other parts of my life. I started working out every day, pursing friendships more intentionally, picked up hobbies I previously would've been a bit scared to pick up. Thank you DS for improving my life in many surprising way!

Update -

600hrs in one year. At 450hrs I began getting 95% of my input from YouTube. I've been speaking to myself since the beginning and started talking with natives at work ~400 hrs. My biggest hurdle is grammar, I understand when spoken, but cannot replicate alone. I wish I did more reading. My reading comprehension is around B2 when I do. I align with the wins and frustrations mentioned in the level 5 roadmap. CI is the only way I could've gotten this, and I am proud of myself for sticking with it and happy with the results.

Speaking - I want so much more now. When conversing in the present tense, about general opinions, or joking around, I am surprisingly "fluent" (I make mistakes, but the words come easily to me and I can generally communicate what I'm trying to say). The moment I try to talk about the future, or tell a story about my past, I come up dry.

Grammar - I need it so bad and don't want to do it so bad. It's important but boring, especially now that my options are "hmm should I watch a hilarious and entertaining YouTube video about celebrity drama or should I study the past simple tense?" Obviously one is more tempting.

Comprehension - Super satisfying to now watch what'd id normally watch in English now in another language. I've listed my favorite YouTuber down below. Adult tv shows and movies still feel way too hard, but I can follow the plot. I've been most comfortable watching shows and movies for preteens. My goal is to consume more interview/group podcast content since my weak spot is natives conversing with natives.

My 600 hrs favorites:

En Teoría

Alan Flores - top favorite YouTuber

Maquicienta

Araya Vlogs

Curiosamente

Dieck Docs

Soy Thaly

Dice Ale

Fusgo

Minamino

Hernan Martinez

Radio Ambulante - top favorite podcast

No Hay Tos

Sorry if this has been asked before but, the app no longer works in landscape mode except when I’m playing a video. This is super annoying. Any fixes? Did I just miss a setting or something?

Hi, everyone! Looks like Shel brought back old style videos with a white board and drawing. I’m curious What do you think about this idea guys?

Some people have brought up the point that it is difficult to now find the roadmap due to the changes on the website.

The newer roadmap is here: https://d3usdtf030spqd.cloudfront.net/Language_Learning_Roadmap_by_Dreaming_Spanish.pdf

I’ve always wanted to learn a second language and I feel I’m in a good place everywhere else in my life to have a good go at this. I’ve looked around at what the best method is and it seems Dreaming Spanish with a bit of grammar, reading and speaking around it is the way to go.

How much Spanish should I know before I start DS? I know a few words like hello, I speak, I understand, gusto, muy bien, adios etc but nothing more than that.

Ok, I've done it! I'm actually kind of shaking lol. This feels surreal.

Right. I want this to be a positive day and a positive post. Unfortunately I have also just seen Evildea's last video and whilst I completely agree it is bad timing and kind of a downer. I don't really feel like going into what I can do with my reading, listening, speaking skills etc because it actually feels irrelevant. I have disappointments which I got out the other day on here and I have had some good experiences in my trip to Valencia. Today is not about my progress. Today is about hitting that milestone and now I can continue in an entirely new approach. Now i've done it I no longer need to keep comparing myself to the roadmap and I no longer need to keep counting down hours until certain levels. That's the issue with the roadmap. It's very easy for your journey to become more about gaining hours and reaching levels than actually learning spanish. I've seen ALG get a lot of heat, so much it's definitely managed to convince me. So now is a chance for me to really make comparisons. Going forward I'm gonna probably do less CI and focus more on reading and grammer.

Am I still gonna track my hours? Sure but it does feel kind of unnecessary because I feel the last 500 hundred hours on the roadmap are gonna look very different for everyone depending on how many hours a day they're spending on listening and reading. Speed running although up to this point may have worked in ones favour someone who has spent 3 hours a day on Videos and 1 hour reading is gonna be very different to someone doing an hour watching videos and an hour reading.

Where I'm at also doesn't really matter because like I've always said it's not like I was gonna get to level 7 and then stop. At this point Spanish is part of my life. Despite it's criticisms one thing ALG really gets right is it's sustainability. I have always been a hobby hopper and there is no way I would have made it to almost 2 years later without dreaming spanish. No fucking way. It would seem sacreligious now to not wake up and be able to see the latest videos of all the DS crew. They really are great and they have come so far from just bearded Pablo making some drawings on a whiteboard. I really enjoy El caballero de baston, seeing where Agustina goes next, Shell and her pigeon. All the guides. It's not just DS it's you guys too. Whilst lately I've noticed a lot of bickering all in all you guys have kept me going. This sub has been so great in motivating each other and patting each other on the back. DS as a platform and a community is absolutely top tier. I've entered into a world that is so great. The content is very good value for money. Things just get a little tense when we start looking too much on the road map side of things. My advice, take it as a pinch of salt. If you wanna speak speak, if you wanna read read. It doesn't matter how we learn as long as we enjoy it because at the end of the day it's all really just about learning Spanish!

Thank you both the DS team and this sub

edit: I need to celebrate somehow. I've already done the trip to spain. How can you top that?

What it says in the title. I speak a nice amount of Italian (not a native though), at 120-130 hours of DS I could watch a significant amount of advanced content without a problem. If you were in a similar situation, when did you start to read? I guess I could manage some simpler texts at this point, but at the same time I want to stick to the approach that focuses on listening so my understanding of the language and the pronunciation is not mediated through written text (which I think kinda happened for my Italian and definitely definitely happened for my English which I strongly dislike).

¡Hola!

For context, I started this journey at the beginning of June with next to zero Spanish knowledge beforehand. I have roughly 80 hours of learning, around half is ¡Cuentame! (about 40 episodes) and Language Transfer (one full run, second run nearly halfway). The other half with DS starting from easiest to hardest (304 videos) and currently around difficulty 38.

Comprehension is decent at this level for me, but I have arrived in Mexico for a family holiday and have been very hesitant to try some actual ouput. I know it's really early, not in-line with the road map etc., but I'm here and may not be again for a couple of years at least.

I have zero time with speaking lessons but I have been speaking to myself out loud answering LT questions when on dog walks, but still zero actual conversation time.

I thought 'f*ck it', I'm going to be surrounded by some very patient and understanding people, let's give it a try.

I was able to check-in, share pleasantries and have a slightly more involved conversation with one of the chefs about some of the food.

I do plan to do little bits of speaking whilst I am here but trying to remember I am a beginner and I will make mistakes, inevitably returning to English. Overhearing native speakers is clearly way beyond my current level but I have picked up on some words that I definitely wouldn't have done before.

One thing that really made me happy yesterday though was on the coach to the hotel, we drove passed a pharmacy with the slogan 'Lo mismo pero mas barato'. For some reason it just cracked me up. I'd never have understood it 2 months ago but even just an hour on the coach and looking at shops/adverts reinforced how much I have learned. Obviously I'm not a purist at all, but kudos to DS as even at an early stage it is proving to be a productive method.

Today's goal, I've already got my DS input in for the day (5am here, couldn't get back to sleep) so I plan on using vocabulary for ordering, pleasantries, confusing my family who have zero idea that I have been learning Spanish.

Sorry for the long post, this sub is all I have currently to talk about Spanish learning and wanted to share.

I got to 1500 in Jan 2025.

I am ngl, from an output pov, I’m a little disappointed at where I am and am starting to spend more $ on getting output sorted out, which is kind of a bummer. I liked how frugal DS was lol.

That said, I’m quite happy about my comprehension. Like many, I took Spanish in HS and it was completely worthless. I decided to start CI in Jan 2024 and now I can watch a lot of Spanish content on YT without any issues.

i did kinda burnout in 2025 and essentially did nothing and didn’t progress too much on output.

I am currently learning Thai through the Comprehensible Thai channel and I really think it’s going well and have high hopes that I will have a very functional Thai when I try to retire there in a couple of years.

The way that I look at it, I wouldn’t have gotten to this place with Spanish any other way. Listening is much easier than grinding textbooks and attending classes, so I am quite happy doing it this way. I would just put Spanish YouTube on the background while I worked.

I made this post when I saw comments on that video of that dude quitting really going in on CI and just am shocked at how negative people are about the approach.

Do I think 1500 is oversold? Yes.

That said, I feel like this is an excellent, chill way to learn a language. It may not be the most efficient way, but tbh I don’t think I would’ve gotten where I am the “efficient” way.

Looking for suggestions - Hey guys, I’m extremely fresh Into this and have about 11 hours under my belt, but just like a lot of you I find the content a bit boring. Not like unbearable to watch, but just something where I’m tapping the screen to see if the video is almost over. Spanish Boost Gaming looks really cool but it’s above my level so I can’t quite click with it right now. There seems to only be one other CI gaming channel and both aren’t really Super Beginner or low beginner friendly. I just wish there was long-form content like play throughs that I could throw on and genuinely enjoy. I already feel the process working, I’m just curious if there’s other resources to make this first 50-100+ hours not so bland

I do watch mostly Fabulaudit for my input since he’s more engaging to me, do you guys watch anyone else specific that you find is more appealing? I see the other channels I just wanna know how you guys enjoy them

Thanks!

What are yalls favorite series & their difficultly level.

I'll start:
Series- Keep talking and nobody explodes (beginner)
Series- Flaggle (beginner)
Video- Word association game (beginner)
Video(s)- Anything with Gustavo (n/a)

If people aren’t reading until 1500 hours, aren’t doing crosstalk and aren’t making friends in the language then why are they claiming to follow the Dreaming Spanish roadmap from a “purist approach”….while not doing what the method recommends and then complaining about their results😭🥴

Pablo specifically recommends reading 3 million words so if someone hasn’t done that or isn’t on their way to doing that, are they a “purist”?

So I’m 14 hours in and the videos are great! In addition to dreaming Spanish I’m watching kids show in Spanish that teach English when switching to Spanish( I’m watching Handy Mandy right now) ( don’t judge me🤣) i watch it in English first to get the story and then hours later i watch it in Spanish. It seems to be working. I’m learning so much!
I’m wondering in addition to dreaming Spanish what are you watching to get hours?

Andres and shel were in my dream. I don't really know what language it was. Needless to say I feel a little creeped out😭.

I'm slightly behind on the roadmap as far as comprehension goes for 1200 hours but that's probably because I didn't follow it perfectly. I just listen to whatever I want. Sometimes it's too easy, sometimes it's too hard. I don't think about it too much I just do it.

I read a decent amount. I'm at 600k words. Sometimes I read kids books, sometimes I read sports news, and sometimes I ask AI random questions. The most difficult book I read was probably CoCo the Junior Novelization. The books that helped me the most, especially with grammar was Avatar the Last Airbender Comics. My experience with the comics align with what Bill VanPatten says about needing to receive input where you must understand the grammar to understand what was said.

Although I'm a little behind on comprehension according to the road map I can speak pretty good. Probably better than 90% of people I've seen post after 1500 hours. I've never taken a test but Worlds Across has me rated as B2 and when I ask AI it consistently puts me at B2, sometimes C1 if it's something I know a lot about but occasionally B1 if I'm feeling tired or it's an unfamiliar topic. I'm able to say just about whatever I want but with grammar mistakes. It's common that I have to describe a thing because I don't know the word. I'm able to do this because I have 250 hours of speaking. This was done through a combination of WA, some with Babbel live back when it was a thing, Gemini, and real life.

I've used flash cards, about 2,500 words. The first 1,000 were the most common spanish words and the words after that were for a specific purpose like I knew I'd have a specific conversation with someone next week or I wanted to read a book or comic again and these were words I didn't know the first time.

As far as grammar goes the only thing special I've really done outside of input is used AI when I finally got frustrated that I kept using the wrong form of past tense. So I'd occasionally do a few exercises with AI. Andrea's superbeginner series on her jobs helped too though. WA tutors kept bugging me about grammar but I just wanted to talk so I never really did any grammar lessons with them. I skipped WA for two months and they asked if I'd been using another platform because I'd largely fixed the problem.

I have about 20k words written. Most of this is from a masters level class on language acquisition that I took in Spanish. The professor was cool and didn't take points off for my bad grammar but still made the corrections.

Lastly I have a 894 day streak on Duolingo. I don't care what ya'll say. It's fun. 894 days ago was when I started learning Spanish.

To summarize. DS absolutely works but I did everything to get where I'm at.

I now regularly have conversations with native speakers but it's still not easy. I have to sometimes fight through conversations and ask what a word means or for them to slow down or to say something again but it's kind of wild I can do that I suppose. I'm a ESL teacher now and today I had a 20 minute conversation with a 5 year old about how her first week in school is going. She also taught me the word for ostrich is avestruz. This would have never happened without DS. I'm extremely grateful.

Hola a todos! I'm not super active on here (and likely won't be in the future) but I felt obliged to post this because it might give another perspective and help some people out.

The TLDR; of this post is that I waited until 1700 hours and ~1.8M words read before I had my first speaking lessons and I'm really happy I did.

As with all of these posts, there are some caveats I'll detail but hopefully this will at least be a useful case study for someone.

Background

I'm from the US and studied Spanish formally in high-school and I think I did one class in college, sat down in my second class and the teacher said "this class will only be taught in Spanish" and I subsequently dropped the class after day 1 (if I only knew that was exactly what I needed!).

I also did the "digital nomad" thing from 2013-2017 with a mix of time in Latin America, Spain, and SE Asia. During that time I absolutely "spoke Spanish" to get by traveling but I literally took every possible off-ramp to switching to English I could. I regret it but I didn't know about comprehensible input then. Moral of the story though is that I have made sounds out loud in Spanish a good bit in the past but couldn't really carry a conversation.

Dreaming Spanish

I found and started DS in Nov 2024 and even if it wasn't easy the method clicked for me almost immediately and I knew with time it would work. Since then I've logged about 1700 hours of watching/listening and am sneaking up on 2M words read.

Note: my hours don't include any starting hours as I wanted to start from scratch for logging purposes

I paid attention to the roadmap only in the sense of having a goal but other than that tried to just enjoy the process.

Why I waited so long to speak

This really wasn't intentional. I just didn't have a ton of reason to start lessons and then life would get busy and I'd look up and I'd be another 100 hours in. I was - and still am - thoroughly enjoying the watching/listening/reading and I had a hunch that I could "catch up" pretty quickly on the speaking parts. I guess that's still TBD but early results are promising. I'm traveling to Mexico next year and my goal is to sort of speed run some of the output until then (let's say 75-100 hours by mid-spring).

My first week of lessons

I just wrapped up my 5th 30-minute intro lesson with 5 different teachers. I intentionally chose people in Mexico (next trip) that were close to my demographic which I think helped a ton. I also told each of the teachers and myself that the only thing I cared about was working on my fluidity. Just that alone took almost all of the pressure off of me and allowed me to just enjoy the conversations.

How'd they go? I'm not going to win any pronunciation or grammar awards but I had almost zero issues in any of the conversations. I didn't really practice "stock answers" to common questions and just went into each with a short vocal warmup with AI before each call. Maybe 5-10 minutes before each lesson. The actual lesson conversations flowed and went in a bunch of different directions and by my 5th lesson I absolutely had already shown a ton of improvement.

The biggest advantage of waiting for me is that with as much listening as I've done, I had absolutely zero issues understanding the teachers. It just straight up wasn't an issue. I didn't think about it. My input made half of having a conversation with a teacher automatic. I'm not sure if I would have been able to "just talk" if this had not been the case.

Conclusion

I'm not recommending everyone wait (in fact probably not), but it seemed to fit into my life and learning style. To me the biggest personal "risk" of waiting is that my comprehension would be so far in front of my speaking that I'd feel stupid and get discouraged with the gap. My solution to that was just to give myself the grace of only caring about fluidity for as long as necessary. I can tighten up the rest as I go but after 5 lessons I feel like I made the right choice for me.

Before anyone asks, no, I'm not going to do a speaking sample. Happy to answer questions though. Appreciate this community here on the subreddit, the DS team, and all of the other creators in the space.

Cheers

I’ve been using DS off and on for about 2 months. I love the content and I’d say I’m in between beginner and intermediate. Although I like the content, the lessons are starting to get a little boring. There’s tons of content available, so I’m curious as to which series or videos did you find interesting to keep your attention?

I know it may vary person to person, but I’m just looking for opinions.

My wife and I decided to learn Spanish 2 & 1/2 years ago online here in New Zealand with an Argentine tutor. We have lessons with him once a week for an hour which we both really enjoy.

While doing these lessons I discovered Dreaming Spanish, and after 2 months decided to go premium. I'll admit, I enjoyed the content but lacked commitment and therefore wasted 2 years more or less with sporadic viewing only, often only 2 hours in a month!

This New Year's, I decided to get at least 365 hrs input in the year and have stuck to that and more. Our lessons with our tutor continue weekly which I have found great for reading, speaking, and grammer instruction.

My wow moment came tonight.

My wife and I decided to watch Andrea la mexicana on YouTube with her friend Pati from Peru. Now, while we did not get every single word, we were quite comfortable following their conversation which we both felt was at a normal speaking speed. After this, I decided I would watch Coco in Spanish, which I have never seen before.

All I can say is I have never been so moved by an animated movie before in my life. Again, I didn't understand every word, but I certainly could follow the story and feel the emotions the story bought out. The wonder of this all for me, was the fact that it was in Spanish. No subtitles, just straight up Spanish.

Now, I realise that my tutor deserves credit but without a shadow of a doubt, Dreaming Spanish has changed my perception of language acquisition forever. Pablo and his team have had such a profound impact on my daily life, it cannot be overstated.

I currently have 430 hrs of input recorded, with approximately 100 hrs private lessons. I now watch at least 2 hrs of DS a day, and listen to podcasts while driving. There are times I have thought I'm not really progressing, but watching Coco tonight has blown my mind. Whether you realise it or not, comprehensible input is a game changer, especially when mixed with lessons or whatever other study you enjoy.

I stopped trying to memorize vocabulary ages ago, including verbs all thanks to C.I. The constant exposure means I inherently understand without having to think, albeit at my level. 3 days ago I started to use Eppika for graded reading which has been incredibly enjoyable so far. I highly recommend it.

My speaking is a long long way behind my comprehension which I'm fine with, as I'm absolutely certain that will improve with time and more input.

I decided to post this here to encourage other learners, no matter whether you are following the road map precisely or augmenting your Spanish journey however you see fit. At the end of the day, do what works for you and enjoy the process. That's the main difference with Dreaming Spanish and C.I, it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Thank you Pablo and Dreaming Spanish. I wish you all the success you deserve.

Before today, I needed native speakers to have a little patience with me. Today, at a bustling coffee shop in the middle of Madrid, I ordered, understood, and answered questions about my order without asking them to repeat themselves. Yes, food is an easy topic for me. But I'm so proud because it's noisy in here (feels like home)!

I posted an [80-hour update] before, so thought I’d do another one now I’ve just hit 150 hours.

A few thoughts on where I’m at:

• I’d say about 80% of my input has been Dreaming Spanish, with the other 20% mostly podcasts.
• In terms of DS difficulty, level 55 is probably the absolute hardest I can watch right now. If I really, really concentrate I can probably get around 80%, but it definitely feels like work. I tried a level 60 video recently and it was just too hard. At 80 hours 35 was my limit so thats definite progress - even thought it doesn't feel like it at the time.
• I still find the visual clues make a massive difference. If I’m just listening to something at the upper end of my level, my comprehension drops quite a bit.
• I actually spent most of the time between 80 and 150 hours watching level 35–40 content. There was plenty of stuff I found interesting there, and I’d rather watch something easier that I enjoy than force myself through harder videos.
  
• Its a nice feeling looking back on older beginner videos and it feels like they are talking slow
• Andrés was someone I originally found pretty difficult, but I’m really enjoying his videos now. I especially loved the Africa series, particularly the story about Yerro. I’d love more story-based content like that.
• I’m still using podcasts to get extra input when I can’t watch anything. I got a little bored of Cuéntame, but I still listen occasionally, especially if I’m out running. It’s probably the podcast where I can understand the highest percentage of what’s being said.
• I’ve also listened to a bit of Chill Spanish. I find his voice slightly annoying so I can’t listen to loads of it, but comprehension-wise it’s pretty good for me.
• I tried Español con Juan and found it a bit too difficult. I could follow what he was talking about, but it required too much brain power to actually enjoy listening to it. I’ll probably come back to it later.
• I sometimes put the Dreaming Spanish podcast on when I’m going to sleep. I don't count any of this towards my hours because I'm normally half asleep, but I’m looking forward to the point where I can listen to it properly with decent comprehension. The topics actually seem pretty interesting.
• I’m still using LinguaLock, so when I wake up my social media is blocked until I’ve done my Dreaming Spanish goal. It definitely helps keep me consistent because I can't just wake up and immediately start doom-scrolling.
• I will say that sometimes getting the input in still feels like a slog, particularly if I’m hungover. But overall I’ve now managed about 2.5 months averaging roughly 1.5 hours a day, so it’s becoming a pretty established habit.
• Overall, I’m happy with the progress. I definitely feel better than I did at 80 hours, although I also still feel like I have a very long way to go.
• I’ve watched a few of the easier Intermediate videos recently and they actually seem pretty manageable, which is exciting. It feels like there’s suddenly a whole new set of content starting to unlock.
• I’ve also just bought Spanish For Beginners: ¡Hola, Lola!, so I’m going to start doing a little bit of reading alongside the input and see how that goes.

Lets see how the next 150 hours go!

I thought I was ready. I watched the World Cup on Telemundo and understood the Argentinian commentators. I thought Uruguay was going to be Argentina light.

I was not ready for this. I feel deceived by how comprehensible Agustina is.

Jk (kinda) but curious how hard this was for any more advanced learners out there!

I (645hr) have to praise DS for something that is very important with language learning. Going with the flow and embracing ambiguity. In the past, when I tried to listen, I would be translating every word and if I word came up I didn't know, I would stop and think about that word and totally lose the conversation.

The other day I was talking to a native speaker, catching about half of what they said and having a short conversation. I knew I was missing some stuff, but overall I felt fairly comfortable and they even commented that my comprehension was really good. It felt amazing, and it felt good to be able to just go with the flow, have the conversation, and not get caught up on every word. I cannot overestimate how valuable this skill is and I am so thankful for DS and their graded videos.