My daily goal for my first year was 30 mins/day and for my second year was 1hr/day. While I don't have a separate goal for weekends, I try to get in an extra couple of hours. My two-year anniversary was this week and I'm just under 700hrs of input. Given my current pace, I'll hit 1000 hrs by the end of the year, which is really exciting!!
Hey, how much would improvement would you say you've had between 100 hours of input and the nearly 700 you have now? I've currently just recently closed in on 50 hours of input and am wondering how much you begin to understand near that amount of input.
@@Rpgist359 Oof that’s a complex question, because one of the hardest aspects of ALG is the nonlinear nature of acquisition and the constant feeling of plateau. Now, the plateau is a myth (Pablo has a video about it!) but because you’re learning a little of everything at once, it’s a constant cycle of feeling like you’re not making any progress and then something will click and it will be very satisfying. So you need to be committed to the long haul and trust that you are actually making progress. (Which you are!). You also have to relax into the uncertainty of only understanding the idea and not every word. I really struggled with that, and I would say last Fall (~500hrs) was when I really started to feel like I didn’t have to work as hard and could begin to have fun exploring content based on the topic and not whether it was accessible to me. That was a very nice feeling. Even today I feel like there’s a lot I don’t understand but zoomed out I’ve made incredible progress. When I started my 2nd year (~160hrs) I began watching Peppa Pig and when I started my 3rd year (642hrs) I was watching RU-vid for native speakers. Some people still talk too fast for me, but I’m generally back to watching the type of videos I was watching in English, now in Spanish. I hope this answers your question; keep at it! 💪(TL;DR the levels on the dashboard are pretty consistent with my experience.)
Suggestion for video: How to use tandem to find crosstalk partners. Finding a lot of people difficult to sort through, e.g., agree to crosstalk but then proceed to only use their target language, lots of back and forth and then never agree to a time to meet, people who don’t seem to be actually interested in language. Ends up being a huge time investment to even find anyone.
Soy de taiwán. He estado viendo tus videos para aprender español un año. De pequeño también veía el canal de 阿神 y me gustaba muchísimo🤩🤩 ¡Gracias por tus contenidos y que tengas buena suerte de aprender chino!
Qué bueno es tu nivel de español, yo también soy aprendiz pero seguro que aprender español es mucho más difícil para vos que para un angloparlante como yo
@@The1970Jman I'm improving massively, thanks. I use a mixture of podcasts, RU-vid videos, series, Skyping with natives etc to get the input in. I do not study in any formal sense. I can watch the news etc and understand the vast majority of it, I can maintain conversations with natives. Next week I go to Spain to meet a native woman and spend a few days together. As February draws to a close, it's the 25th today and at the time of writing I'm on 27 hours for the month. Make comprehensible input part of your life and it becomes easy. You learn without even trying. Good luck.
Love your videos, Pablo. Keen for more language learning videos: -How was it to learn Italian given your Spanish -Update on Thai? Also hoping there will be more European Spanish teachers to come!
I’ve tried to learn Spanish many times since in school 16 years ago and always failed. I would either just get bored or frustrated with traditional learning, or I would hyper focus on Spanish to the exclusion of all my others interests and burn myself out and then drop Spanish completely for another interest. This time has been different. I started 158 days ago with an under commit and over deliver mindset. I’ve committed to 1 hour per day for 1500 days. But if I feel like doing more, I do. So far I have had many days where I have done my one hour and then went on to play video games, read books, watch English YT, etc… but I’ve also had a lot of days where I felt like doing more and went with it. I’ve done 260 hours in 158 days. I only missed hitting my 1 hour goal once in that time and it was because I was driving for 21 hours in a 31 hour period and I was still at the Super Beginner phase and not comfortable with any audio only input and was also with other people who aren’t learning Spanish. I still managed to get in 20 minutes that day though. My plan is to continue like this for the foreseeable future. I expect my time will increase as more types of content open up to me as CI and as I can transition some of my other hobbies (books/video games) into, or at least partially into, Spanish. But if not, if I just stick with 1 hour a day and do other things with the rest of my free time, I’m happy with that too.
Pablo, during the past year I have been trying to listen to between 1 and 2 hours a day most days, except when I am out of town. I have kept at it very well, I think, almost never missing a day if I am in town, but some days I only get 20 min or so, due to the things of life (medical appointments, surgeries, tests, etc). I now have more than 300 hours. My goal it to pick up the pace a little to keep closer to 2 hours than to 1, but we will see.
160h starting in Oct. I try to do 30 mins per day. I am not learning as quickly as it seemed I was at the beginning, but I'm trying to be patient and trust the process. It is nice to be able to watch intermediate videos and understand 95%.
Thank you Pablo you're putting huge effort into those videos I wonder why you're not publishing videos of yours as you used to do the latest videos are videos of other teachers who I respect and enjoy watching but I think Pablo's videos are special please don't make us wait a lot between videos .
Hola Pablo! Soy de Australia y yo he empezado aprender español el año pasado. Es el primer idioma que yo aprendo (otra que Ingles, por supuesto). Acabo de encontrar tu canal hoy y me encanta! Yo entiendo mas o menos 80% de dices y tus videos son interesante tambien asi no me siento que estoy estudiando. Estoy emocionado de mirar tus otros videos! (Lo siento que mi español no es bueno) Gracias!
I do one hour a week of Spanish online with someone who uses TPRS. I have no trouble understanding the teacher but I wonder how much that has to do with the fact that I speak French pretty well. There’s a lot of overlap. I started daily listening at just 1/2 hour a day but I’m beginning to think this is not enough. After several months I don’t feel I’ve gone very far. If it really is a numbers game (the more hours the better) then I need to up my input to at least an hour. I admire your commitment Pablo getting 2 hours a day input in Chinese.
Love your videos Pablo and your adventures in learning Chinese is one of my favorite DS subjects. I think with this method even Carlitos can -learn- acquire a new language...and maybe that will be one of his crazy stories 🤔
My year-long goals are to be able to understand 95% of Club de Cuervos and to actually be able to independently interact with my girlfriend's family when we go back to Mexico during the holidays. My daily goal has been to get at least 2 hours of comprehensible input per day. I've been at it for 45 days now I'm comfortably at an intermediate level (level 4 for Dreaming Spanish, 3B for Refold) and now live with my girlfriend's family. Constant crosstalk sessions are now in reach so I know that my goal will be achieved by New Years :)!
Thanks for sharing your process! Dreaming Spanish has made comprehensible input super easy for me. So much so that I'm spoilt and find it a little hard to learn other languages. For the past 2 months, I was doing 4 hours/day, which turns out was too much to sustain so I am doing 2 hours/day. I am at 205 or so hours, and expect to go to 600 or so by June this year
I learned a lot from Chinese Peppa Pig! 🤣If you haven't found it already, you might also like 'ALG Mandarin on Magic Ship,' they sometimes have a word of English here or there, but otherwise are strongly ALG-based.
"Chinese with Ben" is great as well. And also "Mandarin Corner". I can also recommend "SyS Mandarin". There a quite a few channels for advanced learners such as "Dashu Mandarin" but you are probably not quite there yet.
Hola,Pablo! Te recomiendo mucho estos dos canales para aprender chino que son muy geniales a mi parecer-Mandarin Corner y Shuoshuo Chinese.Saludos desde Dalian.
intente a aprender chino el año pasado y lo abandone despues un mes lol, espero que vas a tener mas suerte que yo, pablo ! edit: vas a tener en vez de "tenere"
Gracias por mostrar tus métodos con chines! He aprendido mucho español con este y clases en línea por casi tres años . Quiero saber, ¿hay algunos planes para empezar “dreaming in French”? Después español (quizás en un año), quiero aprender francés y no hay mucho vídeos de RU-vid dedicado a especialmente input comprensible
Quiero escuchar un hora de Español cada dia, empezando hoy :) Porque mi novia es Española y quiero hablar con su famila y sus amigos contando historias y bromas cuando vamos a visitar por la prosima navidad:)
¡Gracias! My goal for 2023 was to listen to two hours of Spanish everyday, but I usually don’t reach my goal. I study and work full-time, and I find that one hour daily is more realistic. I usually surpass one hour everyday (mostly thanks to listening to Spanish podcasts while sitting in traffic or commuting). Once I graduate and have a better work schedule, I hope to listen to a lot more Spanish! I’m surprised you can fit two hours of listening and two hours of crosstalk into one day, if I understood correctly
Los canales que recomendió: Comprehensible Chinese Speak Your Chinese Simply Chinese (aún no tiene muchos vídeos) Acquire Mandarin Unconventional Chinese with Keren (tiene vlogs con guías turísticos) Eazy Mandarin with Li Can (se requiere un nivel más alto que los demás)
Pablo, que dedicado y constante eres, hombre! Estoy impresionada. Pues, yo tb he escuchado un sinfín de horas de español, pero no tengo un método para contar las horas, así que es un misterio. 😅pero con las horas y horas que ya he conseguido, ahora ya tengo mi examen de profesoras de español aprobado y enseño clases básicas para adolescentes en el instituto de mi pueblo. Es súper divertido y no importa mucho tener el nivel c2 o algo así siempre y cuando tenga (subjuntivo , no?) un nivel más alto que ellos, eh?! 😅
Well, I'd say that if you aren't confident in the language and occasionally makes mistakes, it's probably not the optimal input for the kids. But if you still continue learning you'll be fine.
Good topic. I would like to see more of these types of videos. I would like to see more Spanish teachers from Spain ,which is the variety of Spanish i'm acquiring.Seems like Latin American Spanish is dominant in the DS team.I cancelled my membership due to this reason when I watched all the videos of Iberian Spanish. I hope you can recruit some more speakers from Spain.
hey Pablo, could we get another update on your progress with Chinese?? A year and a half has passed since this video and I'd love to hear about the progress you've made!! thanks!!
Gracias por las recomendaciones de canales de RU-vid para los que también aprendemos chino, aunque solo había uno al que aún no me había suscrito 😅 Estoy de acuerdo en que hay demasiados canales de "input comprensible" que tienen subtítulos de inglés que no se pueden quitar.
Pablo: has anyone come up with a CROSSTALK app yet? All of the ones I check are Language exchanges which sucks. Everyone wants to practice a language that they are learning , unlike us who just want to listen and watch. Drats.
I feel very motivated right now! At the start of the year I had set a goal of 65 minutes a day. However, I know that I have the time to do 2 hours a day so that might become my new goal. Also, I want to learn more languages after Spanish using comprehensible input but I was wondering if it was possible without a resource like Dreaming Spanish. So, weirdly enough, this video was quite reassuring.
Hola,Pablo! Te recomiendo mucho estos canales que a mi parecer son excelentes para aprender y mejorar chino-ChinesePod,Shuoshuo Chinese,Mandarin Corner y 每日中文课.Saludos desde Dalian.
Yo sigo escuchando una hora cada dia ( la mayoria es Dreamingspanish, a veces podcasts, Pepa pig, o algunos audiolibros en volocitad baja, que leia antes en otros idiomas). Ademas, leo mas o menos 20 paginas en espanol cada dia. Y practico en Duolingo cada dia ( se, que no lo recomenades)
13:00 - I love linguistic videos for learning, especially when entering into intermediate, but, yeah, I've noticed they're hard to find without those 3 criteria (comprehensible, no English, no embedded subtitles). I'd also add, "Not AI generated!". Español Si is probably the closest I've seen for this criteria in Spanish, as it has a skit, then teaches the language in the target language. I think German has a few intermediate ones, but I'd really like to find some for Polish, my next language, and even that has very few super-beginner type videos (just MrRealPolish from 13 years ago).
Hola Pablo! Me encantan tus videos. Una pregunta... Cuanto tiempo vas a esperar antes de empezar a hablar en chino? Tienes algún destino o nivel que quieres lograr primero?
Yo también estudio chino. Pero soy demasiedo pobre para utilizar los programas de videoconferencia. Gracias por las sugerencias de canales de youtube. Estoy siempre buscando vídeos a mi nivel. Mi favorito es "Hello Chinese!" pero uso también de otros. He visto muchas telenovelas chinas (con subtítulos en inglés y chino). De esta manera estoy estudiando ambos al mismo tiempo: chino escrito y chino hablado.
How does CI work when you are learning an entirely different alphabet? English to Spanish uses the same, but English to Mandarin would be something else entirely. How do I approach this?
Pablo, I feel like when there doesn't exist a "Dreaming Spanish" for a given language, there's got to be a handful of faithful searchbar items we can use on youtube to get some basic comprehensible input. How to videos, vlogs, "my morning routine," "things I carry every day." Do you have any other suggestions? Anyone is welcome to respond, also.
Do you have any tips on how to find people on tandem who specifically want to do crosstalk? I tried the search function and only found one person who had it in their profile. Or how do you explain the concept to people when you are both beginners?
Most people don't know what crosstalk is, so you have to explain it. After explaining a bit the concept, the best is to start yourself demonstrating it by talking for example about your family.
@Pablo. Queria preguntarte algo. Primero, me encanta Dreaming Spanish , el método, su equipo, todo. Me ha ayudado tantísimo con el aprendizaje de espanol. Aun así, la mayoría de tus maestras son mujeres. Entonces, mi pregunta es, siendo un hombre, pasando tanto tiempo escuchando espanol de mujeres, se puede afectar mi intonacion? Espero que esto tiene sentido, no quiero ofender a nadie
2h of crosstalk means sitting down and doing crosstalk with somebody for 2h. Even though you will be receiving input only around half the time, I've found it to be that much more effective.
RU-vid Premium (used to be RU-vid Red) is great, been paying for it since 2015 I think. There's plenty of ways to get complimentary RU-vid Premium, like when you buy a new Samsung Phone or if you are on Google Fi (in the US) as your phone carrier on the Unlimited Plus plan (you also get free Google One storage.) I watch so much youtube (endless hours a day) that Premium is just worth it for me.
