Conversation with Joe Sema about his Spanish Language Journey. / @realjoesema Time stamps 0:00 Motivation and Strategy 3:25 The First 300 hours 12:45 Understanding Native Content 25:58 Managing Burnout 34:46 Future Plans
Solid. I enjoyed the deep dive on the details of motivation, progress, and chill. The progress comes. Its funny. Most of us are conditioned in our educational journey to work hard studying things. We struggle, we fight boredom, we keep studying. It is how we were trained for years. When we get to CI, we question, "what's the trick". Or, "this can't work, because I am not working hard enough." But, it does work. And yes, there is no line in the sand at 1500 hours. We don't stop and declare victory. We just realize that there is an infinite amount of things to learn. So, the answer is always the same, more input. Keep growing.
So true is that. So many think that we have to consciously learn a language by books etc. Because that happens in the schools so many think that's the way to go and won't have anything to do with the input method.
Im 400 hours in now and man its a grind. Watching vids rated by difficulty and im around 53, comprehension is below50%, its demoralising at times but we'll keep grinding
If you feel your comprehension is below 50%, listen at a lower level for a while then move back up. It should be comprehensible input where you should understand more than 50%. What is your level Timothy? What level do you listen to?
@@Davey441 level 4 with exactly 418 hours. I reckon I'm struggling to make the jump from A2 to B1 so I started reading/listening to graded readers now on LingQ as I'm not a DS purist.
My unsolicited opinion: if it feels like a grind, you're doing something wrong. The point of CI is to find content that you enjoy so that it doesn't feel like a chore.
@@timothymurray1236 Normally going from A1 to A2 happens in a shorter time but there is a longer jump from A2 to B1. Just keep putting the listening hours in and you will progress. It doesn't happen as fast as we would like, we just need to keep with it. The key is to listen to audio and understand the majority of it, when we get to the point and think ''Wow, I understand so much', and more or less everything, then it's time to move up a level. How many hours do you listen to each day?
The thing I'm contemplating now is: when to switch over to more difficult videos. If I watch a video and I'm understanding 98-99% of what's being said, would you guys recommend watching harder videos? Am I slowing down my progress this way by watching videos that are too easy for me?
Personally, I believe as long as you're enjoying what you're watching/listening/reading it won't matter. If the topic intrigues you, go for it. It's always debatable if It'd be efficient or not but again I strongly believe It all comes down to your level of interest with the content.
If you understand 98-99% it's time to move up a level. I'd say for someone that understood that much, and stayed with that level, they would be putting their progress on hold. Challenge yourself and listen to a higher level. Just keep pushing.
It seems success with Dreaming Spanish is measured in hundreds and thousands of hours you watch their videos. It's not supposed to actually make you speak Spanish. All these wild "success stories" are told in English. 2000 hours of learning with traditional methods are enough to make you proficient in Spanish if that is your goal.
Why is it almost all the videos about dreaming Spanish are conducted in English? If the method works, after 2,000 fricking hours!?!! SPEAK IN SPANISH MAYBE?! Or can you?!
@@Dan.50 I would guess they speak English because understanding a language isn’t the same thing as speaking it. I want to speak it, not talk about speaking it. If DS can teach them to speak Spanish, they should fricking show us! IMO Dreaming Spanish is Pipe Dreaming. It lets people think they’re doing something challenging by doing something easy. You can’t learn how to make movies by watching movies. You learn how to make them by making them. Ergo, you can’t learn how to speak a language just by listening to it. Input is half the equation. You need output to complete the process. You have to do the hard work of forming your own thoughts and sounding out the words and determining if you can be understood. GIGO is the Occam’s razor here.
@@CassTysonI honestly think its a bit of a scam. When you realise that dreaming spanish is a paid service, it makes sense that the founder would purposefully do/suggest things that are going to slow down a students progress. Keep that money coming in for as long as possible!
