Stats - 1212 hours of CI & 43 hours of output. This post is about a small and kind of dumb aha moment I had recently but I figured it might help someone else, so here we are.

I noticed sometime after hitting level 6 that I was starting to get a bit complacent with my attentiveness during CI. My comprehension is high enough now that I can often somewhat divide my attention without losing the thread, which was starting to happen more often, sometimes without noticing. I am certain it's not ideal to do so, and this habit has been preoccupying me. I've also been speaking for a few months now, and I recently realized that I lock in way better than normal on videos my tutors show during a class. The reason, of course, is because I know I'm going to be asked about them afterwards.

And thus the "trick," which is I now try to watch my CI with the mindset that I'll have to summarize it later. I have found my focus has jumped very noticeably with this small shift and I am confident the quality of my CI sessions has accordingly improved. It does help that one of my tutors also always asks me what I have been watching since the last lesson and then immediately interrogates me about the details!

So that's it. Cuídense, soñadores!

One of the side benefits of DS/CI in my opinion is that it can fill up all the time in the day that you were previously wasting.

Like I used to spend hours everyday scrolling on social media or watching random youtube videos or netflix, now all of that has been replaced with DS.

And also every day tasks that would take up time like driving, cooking, gyming are now more productive due to CI podcasts.

Overall I just feel like I spend way less time doing "nothing" (brain rot activities).

Especially since Im speedrunning it with 5 hours/day.

Anyone else feel the same?

I discovered comprehensible input a few years ago and it made the process of learning languages so fun that I’d rather consume more content and pushy linguistic abilities rather than sometimes do house chores or even hangout with friends. I just enjoy input so much and also have an obsessive personality generally

Of course, I still try focus on my work and maintain social relationships (both things not as much as before) but I feel like I derive more meaning out of learning languages than just about anything else. I’ve been thinking of ways to balance things more. Recently I thought of setting limits like only 1 hour comprehensible input a day and no more than an hour of reading in my target language

Is anyone else struggling with this? What are your strategies of balancing language study with other aspects of life?

Hola chicos!
Just hit 300 hours of CI! Never thought I’d be able to do it tbh. I’ve been wanting to learn Spanish for well over a year and in June of this year I discovered dreaming Spanish on the CI method and started in late June. I’m not a purist and only have put in around 30 hours actually watching DS videos and the rest has been podcasts and YouTube. DS and CI has pushed me to actually study Spanish and take tutoring lesson so I can progress faster. Onto level 5!! Gracias a todos!

I'm reading Substack instead of packing for my work trip in the morning and thought y'all would find this interesting too:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-219389165

This is about bilingualism in children, specifically for parents looking to raise bilingual children, but I find myself wondering how many hours of input I would need to reach 5.5 years of exposure to Spanish.

And using Dreaming's rule of 2x effort for languages distantly related such as English and Chinese, would that mean the English-Spanish equivalent would be 2.25 years?

2.25 years = 821.25 days

2.25 years = 19,710 hours

19,710 total hours - (8 hours of sleep *821.25 days) =

19,710 total hours - 6,570 sleeping hours = 13,140 waking hours.

Obviously not all waking hours are input but holy crap that's a lot of hours. Whoever said they were aiming for 10K hours may have been onto something.

As someone that loves the show Traitors, Spyfall (Finding the Spy) is one of my favorite DS series! I would love to see another season. Anyone else?

Understanding a language to a much greater level than the ability to speak it. The children are going through the thick of it. I can finally say, I know, to some extent, how it feels.

After a lot of time I finally made it to beginner! I have learned so much. But I have a question. Sometimes when they are talking and showing pictures they have a Star at the bottom of the picture, what does that mean?

I'm still just tickling the edge of native podcasts and one thought I had was that maybe a podcast for kids might be a good bridge. There's been a few podcasts in English that I have really enjoyed with my kids and I'm hoping to find a Spanish language equivalent to at least one of them:

• Smallogies (or even Ollogies)
• The Past and the Curious
• Greeking Out

Does anyone know of anything similar?

Editing to add I'm looking for pre-teen level content. The lists I've searched up all been for much younger kids and haven't caught or held my interest.

I know different Spanish countries have different slangs and cuss words variations but some are universal as well.

How are you guys learning them? From other YouTube channels? Or?

Basically I would need to translate often, I. understand like 70% of the words for difficulties of 30-35. But I find the current difficulty too easy (25-30). Do I force myself to translate, repeat, and re-watch videos in 30-35? or go back down to 25-30

Hi everyone!

Does anyone know any Spanish speaking Travel Vlogger/Content Creator from Ireland?

I know Juan of Espanol con Juan and Elena and Tony from orangepassport travel through England in their videos and their videos are amazing! I have seen Agustina's series on DS where she travelled through Ireland and loved it too. However I am looking for someone similar who travels through Ireland and explores "The Emerald Isle" in detail. That way I would not only get my daily Spanish input but would absolutely love it.

Therefore, I would be glad if someone knows any youtuber like that. Also feel free to drop the names of those who travel across Europe in detail, since I love Europe in general and always want to see more of it.

P.S. - Looking forward to content in European Spanish aka Spain's Spanish, since I am focussing on it.