Відео

You have helped me refine my mixed goals for learning Spanish to fluency. Currently, they are 3,000 hours of listening Comprehensible Input, all of Duolingo Spanish and English, and 12 million words of Comprehensible Input reading. I am currently at 893 hours listening, 90 percent done with Duolingo Spanish and 80 percent with English from Spanish, and I have read about 800,000 words. Near the end, I hope to spend a month in a course in Spain to round things up and get some grammar background.

amazing progress! thank you for the video, is very nice to listen to someone who has really studied and doesn’t talk madeup nonsense.

Felicidades!

Great job! That’s a huge accomplishment. Keep at it, you’ll get where you want to be I’m sure.

Dave, I just signed up for dreaming spanish and had two quick questions. (sorry if you have answered these before) [1] Do you watch videos with the subtitles on or off? [2] Have you done anything in addition to dreaming spanish to supplement your spanish learning over the course of 1500 hours?

Thanks for sharing your experience and your tips. Best wishes 🤩🤩

Gracias por compartir tu experiencia. Puede ayudar a muchos más a comenzar la aventura de aprender el idioma y de mejorar lo aprendido. Sigue adelante!

How to get this programme, gracias

I'm studing hebrew reading English and listening hebrew. Este método me ayuda mucho. Leo la biblia y escucho el lenguaje que deseo aprender. Funciona bien!

I find it fascinating that you’ve invested 3 years in the “slow and steady” method that is Dreaming Spanish, and now you’re finding value in the “quick and dirty” process taught by Tony Marsh. Personally I think Dreaming Spanish is snake oil. It’s a cut above “learn while you sleep” which is clearly bullshit. I did DS for a month, the paid version, and I can tell you what’s wrong with it: No testing. You don’t truly learn something unless you’re forced to recall it via testing. The more testing, the more recalling, the more real learning happens. Stick with Tony Marsh. His method is all about asking questions and making yourself think of responses. This is how we communicate. It’s why immersion works. It’s why flash cards work. Question. Answer. Test, test, test. And definitely keep talking to natives. You’ll be fluent before you know it.

Lo primordial es practicar y perfeccionar constantemente. Cada uno mejora a su paso.

That’s incredible ! 🎉 congratulations. I’m at 1050 hours now and have cut back to 90 min / day.

Comprehensible input is a bit of a nonsensical term. It’s not only just a more complex sounding term for oral and written comprehension. But it’s missing production and it doesn’t help much at all with that. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. You can’t learn without grammar, speaking with natives, and writing. The glut of polyglots is a well-documented scam.

Thanks for the video, when you are listening to easy audio, try speeding it up! This has helped me get better at understanding faster speakers. Will you upload some of your crosstalk? I am interested to see how your speaking is ? Do you ever practice writing? Thanks again, congrats on 1500 hoursn

Thanks for the report, and well done! When you watch your content do you stop and look up words and read all the subtitles, or are you just kicking it and watching with a more "passive" approach? I'm talking about the comprehensible input time itself.

Congratulations on your progress! 🥳

CI is great but to get good at speaking you’ve got to speak and speak

Can you effectively roll your r’s? I cannot 😅 and it’s put me off from getting back into the language…

Hi. Firstly, i would like to congratulate you on your journey in spanish thus far. I have a few questions... Did u ever write any spanish in a note book outside of CI videos with dreaming spanish (or anything else) and do u think we shouldn't look at grammar or do any writing till a certain amount of time from just focusing only on CI? I began my spanish learning journey last year March trying to learn with grammar and videos on youtube etc until i came across DS on youtube around Nov 2024... i have been watching it since but i also tend to stop the videos on occasions to write down the odd word or two that sounds new to me or i didn't understand and look it up. I know Pablo (from DS) says to not do that but i was doing that alot in the first month.. i still do it now and again and find it helpful... I am 3 month's in and have almost racked up 25 hours as the first month on DS i only was watching a couple vids a day compared to spending an hour and half a day since Jan 2025 begun.

Tony Marsh has a very interesting approach to language learning.

Keep it up! I got a long way to go before 1500 hrs. These videos really help motivate me, thanks.

Subscribed.

Keep up the good work my friend!

UA-cam me recomendó tu vídeo, me encanta!!!!! Sigue así Dave ✨✨✨

Try to keep in mind that apps, companies, and influencers tend to overpromise results and over-estimate their own abilities. Think about it- how many UA-camrs who claim to speak x, y, and z languages could do an unscripted 10 minute video in the languages they claim to be fluent in? As someone who was monolingual and has learned another language to a moderate/high level of proficiency (very hesitant to use fluency), I can assure you that anyone who claims they’re B1/B2 after 3-6 months is full of shit. Also, it should be noted that attaining a B1 certificate only requires getting something like 60% in 2 out of 4 categories (reading, writing, speaking, listening). You’re doing great. Keep pushing forward and you’ll get there. I’m sure that your Spanish ability is great!

4:07 between 40000 to 50000 hours would be more realistic. Add roughly 1000 hours for every year of age beyond the age of 12.

1:34 40000 to 50000 hours would be more realistic. Add roughly 1000 hours for every year of age beyond 12 years old.

Congratulations, dude. Don't lose the motivation to learn; that's the main key. especially if you feel like you are having a hard time understanding Spanish from certain people or country. spanish from Spain can be a bit different from Mexican or any other Hispanic country.

You are correct sir . I'm at over 1300 hours of almost exclusively Dreaming Spanish and I'm no where near being fluent . Probably barely intermediate . It still is for me the best way , but Pablo's road map is way way off . A friend of mine also uses Dreaming Spanish and is over 1500 hours and is not even close to fluent . Intermediate at best .

Felicidades con tu viaje de aprendiendo español.

Necesitas hablar un poquito en espanol para darnos una idea de tu nivel de espanol.

The words popping into your head thing is exactly how it happens, and it's a sign that you're learning "right." I find they just come to me as I'm talking; when I need the word it just appears (for the most part), like magic. I was talking the other day and I wanted to say 'celery', and it suddenly just came to me out of nowhere. I don't ever recall seeing that word, much less learning it, but I guess I read or heard it somewhere and it got into my subconscious; I'd certainly never used it before. This happens quite often but that one really took me aback because usually, I have a feeling of having encountered the word before. Good work on your consistency. 👍

You should look up and app called Spanishdict you can look and save any words, instead of writing them down. The app will test you on them if you want it to.

Congrats! I also recently hit 1500 hours and totally agree that the DS roadmap is overly optimistic. If you haven't tried it yet, Radio Ambulante is a great podcast for testing/pushing yourself (accents are from all over the place). They have transcripts available online, and there is also an app called Jiveworld that provides a great entry to some of the content (deep dives on expressions, vocabulary, etc.). From time to time, I like to read a transcript, then listen to that episode, and repeat as necessary. Those transcripts are also a great place to mine vocabulary. Good luck with your speaking practice!

Great update! It's very inspiring to see you improve in Spanish at your age!

Aprender el idioma no es nunca lineal. Yo tengo una experiencia similar. Este será mi tercer año aprendiendo ruso y francés. Si echo la vista dos años atrás, puedo ver un progreso enorme en ambos idiomas (de los que empecé desde cero). Sin embargo, aún estoy lejos de poder hablar ninguno de los idiomas. Yo también me centro únicamente en entender el idioma hablado, por lo que el resto de áreas están muy por debajo de mi nivel de compresión oral, aunque, sorprendentemente para mí, no tan bajas como esperaría. Puedo leer tanto ruso como francés a nivel principiante alto-intermedio. Aunque lo que peor llevo es hablar cualquiera de los idiomas, pero eso no me preocupa porque sé que incluso sin hablar el idioma, esa parte también se trabaja. Mucho ánimo, estoy convencido de que lograrás tu objetivo de aprender español. PD: Hace unos días me preguntaba por ti y tu progreso, cuando yo estuve analizando el mío mentalmente me viniste a la mente. Así que ha sido una grata sorpresa ver que estás contento con el progreso y que tú método elegido te está dando resultados donde otros fallaron.

Hello. Well done. I learned (acquired) French using CI. Later, as I was trying to acquire Spanish, I found Dreaming Spanish on UA-cam and I have used their videos as part of my Spanish journey. I think the roadmap's 1500 hours is an underestimate (at least, for first time adult acquirers, see below*). I also think speaking is, or should be, above and beyond this i.e. additional time, either in parallel as you progress, and / or after you have made some significant CI progress. For my part, I found that I needed around 500 hours of conversation (French) following on from about 2-3 years of CI (UA-cam, Netflix etc.) to be able to converse freely... fluently, if you prefer. I'm now doing the same thing with my Spanish, which is progressing* at about 1.5 - 2x the rate that my French did. Well done. Keep going 👍

Ah so you are not doing pure CI. I think thats very sensible. One might say you could just disregard the concept of CI altogether and just work with input and a dictionary, notepad. And use a little grammar reference. Have you tried shadowing, chorusing, mirroring? That took my speaking to a whole new level in weeks.

Congratulations!!! Great job!!! That's a huge milestone! I'm coming up on 900 hours and I definitely feel like I'm behind the roadmap, but I think that's my fault for using subtitles more than I should have earlier on. I couldn't stand the whole "ambiguity" thing! I'm learning to now. Better late than never. Oh, and thanks for the tip about the UA-cam speed update. I can't believe I didn't notice. I just thought hmmmm...looks different and off I went. 😂 Looking forward to your next update!

I am so impressed by how constant you have been, well done for reaching 1500. I would love to hear a speaking sample.

Well done. Great update as always, honest, succinct and with advice. I continue with my journey and have recently reached 600 hours, I did this in 6 months but as I said in a previous reply, I live in Spain( 3 years next month and have been learning for 2 1/2 years, all at home) and I do 3 hours every day. My biggest problem was understanding/ comprehending nearly anything that was said to me by locals. The DS and other comprehensible input has helped me significantly with this; I have to agree with you about the roadmap, I’m meant to be able to understand a native speaker speaking normal to me, sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t and they have to adapt their speaking for me. I realise that the roadmap is just a guide and everyone is different, but with CI I have improved my comprehension massively. One question to you and to anyone else reading this, when do you stop translating in your head? I still do this lots and I can’t seem to stop, I watch all levels of videos to try and help with this. In fact sometimes I think, have I translated that or did I just understand. Perhaps I’m sweating too much about this as they would say in the States.. I’d welcome any advice about this. Once again, well done, a massive achievement to comprehend TV shows etc.

Kudos to you! Keep it up! It's great how you are sticking to your method. I like the idea of comprehensible input but for me it's just one method of many that I am applying for my own language journey. But as you say in your video you have other methods as well that you are applying at the same time. Many greetings from Switzerland, Daniel.

Are you understanding 80% to 90% on regular UA-cam videos or are they non Dreaming Spanish videos but still geared toward beginning language learners? You sir are making a great story.

I agree, the Dreaming Spanish roadmap is grossly over exaggerated.

¿Hay algún acento que te parezca más fácil o más difícil?

You might want to check out the TPRS method. Their "circling" drill is very similar to Tony Marsh's Language Matrix.

I bet at this point if you put in an hour a day (or most days) in conversation practice (not crosstalk) on italki, you'd be killing it inside of a couple hundred hours.

Nice. I always regret not learning German from my Dad when I had the chance.

Are you still learning Spanish? Just curious

Great review! Subscribed