Learning Spanish - 1,300 hours with Comprehensible Input

Name: Learning Spanish - 1,300 hours with Comprehensible Input
Uploaded: 2024-09-12T10:42:00.040Z
Duration: 4 min 59 s
Channel: The secret to Learning Spanish Well
Description: I started acquiring Spanish in January 2022 using a method called Comprehensible Input. The idea is that you listen and watch simple videos in Spanish. The videos should be basic enough so that you understand most of what is happening even though you don't understand the words. Over time, the brain makes sense of the words and grammar. I plan to make a video every 100 hours to show my progress.

The secret to Learning Spanish Well

20 followers

2 Video Views·Sep 12, 2024

I started acquiring Spanish in January 2022 using a method called Comprehensible Input. The idea is that you listen and watch simple videos in Spanish. The videos should be basic enough so that you understand most of what is happening even though you don't understand the words. Over time, the brain makes sense of the words and grammar. I plan to make a video every 100 hours to show my progress.

Hola, me llamo Dave. Welcome to my series of videos where I track my progress learning Spanish using comprehensible input. As of last week I've reached 1,300 hours of comprehensible input. I continue to see slow progress with my Spanish. As you know, tracking progress with comprehensible input is very subjective. I have not been making my goal of two hours a day of comprehensible input this summer. I've averaged somewhere closer to one hour and 20 minutes each day, so I need to up my game a bit. I've noticed that the translating words in my head when I watch videos is pretty much gone now. I hear the words in Spanish and I understand what the word means internally without having to translate into English. I still continue to have thoughts in Spanish when I wake up in the morning. It seems at that point of the day maybe I'm still half asleep, but the Spanish words come clearer or easier to me and I can formulate basic sentences. I'm starting to be able to follow faster Spanish speaking. For example, Andrea La Mexicana has her own channel outside of Dreaming Spanish where she speaks, I assume at full speed, and I found those videos hard to understand in the past, but I've seen improvement with my understanding of them as I continue. I'm still figuring out the verb pasar when I hear it in videos. It's becoming clearer to me the more I hear it. The verb hacer I have down pretty well now when I hear it in different situations. I can definitely understand the specific meaning in each of those situations, so I take this as being progress as well. Like I said, I recognize most words when I hear them, but recalling them when I want to speak, I still find difficult. So as Pablo says, I need more input. As far as reading goes, I'm still doing about 90% of the comprehensible input by watching videos or listening to podcasts, and about 10% actually reading Spanish material. Juan Fernandez's book that I'm currently reading is Año Nuevo Vida Nueva, and I'm almost finished with this book. I believe this is the third book in his series. I actually like the two first books better. One of the characters in this book is from Argentina, so there are a number of Argentinian words in this book as well. As far as YouTube channels I've been watching and that I can recommend, the first is Spanish Hacks. There are a lot of videos on this channel where Juan interviews a person who has learned Spanish as their second language, and they're now fluent. He basically interviews them in Spanish, and they tell how they learned, and where they're living, things like that. I find these very interesting. He also has subtitles both in Spanish and English. Another YouTube channel is called Spanish Con Daniela. I found this recently, and this woman speaks Spanish very slowly, very, very clearly, and she has interesting topics that she talks about. So, I'm a big fan of her channel now as well. Well, that's about it for this update. I'll see you again when I reach 1,400 hours. Hasta luego!