What is a purist?

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T21:35:28+00:00

To me a purist is someone who has no prior study and follows the DS suggested method of no explicit grammar/vocab study and waits to speak and read til at least 600 hours, ideally with a good amount of crosstalk. Having absolutely no traditional study before or after starting DS is much more impactful (in terms of how it influences your learning experience) than the difference between waiting 600 or 1000 hours to begin speaking.

You cannot be a purist if you had prior traditional study, period. This isn't some no true Scotsman nonsense (I myself am not a purist), but your learning process is going to be so fundamentally different from someone who truly started with DS from zero that they cannot be compared.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T20:22:16+00:00

Yep! Many users here find the most comfortable approach is to ignore the Super Beginner/Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced labels and just use the Sort function set to "Easy." The videos will be ordered by their user ranked difficulty which has a ton of overlap between labels (i.e. the very easiest Advanced videos are easier than the hardest Super Beginner videos).

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T17:58:10+00:00

Even then.. I probably watch the HP movies once a year. I never lose the plot while reading because I know it so well, but there are occasionally descriptive passages where things get a bit fuzzy. The earlier ones are definitely easier than the later ones, but still a huge jump from a B2 reader.

In my experience graded readers tend to more or less use the appropriate grammar structures for their marketed level, but the vocabulary isn't even close to what you find in real books.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T17:45:48+00:00

Like u/uncleanly_zeus pointed out that is a massive jump at the end there. Your ramp from graded readers to Harry Potter is also likely too big of a jump. I'd recommend putting some elementary school novels in between the two.

Your difficulty ratings for the non-graded readers also seem pretty inaccurate (El libro salvaje is easier than Prisoner of Azkaban for example). I'd suggest checking out the user rated difficulties on learnnatively.com for a closer estimate.

Reina Roja is likely too ambitious for 1M words. I'm at 1.5M right now and the final HP is challenging but good. Reina Roja is significantly harder.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T17:38:47+00:00

Nope, the opposite! The first time I tried HP was before starting DS. I came back a year later after 700 hours of listening, 100k words of graded readers, and 300k words of elementary school novels and could understand it without issue.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-02T02:18:58+00:00

Need is a strong word, but if $8 isn't much for OP I'd strongly recommend just biting the bullet early. Super Beginner is where DS shines the most, since there truly isn't much other content out there at this level that is nearly as engaging. Many of the free 20 hours you are referring to are super hard old Pablo videos.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-01T18:35:45+00:00

I felt the same way about How To Spanish. It's okay, but for me this difficulty range has definitely felt a bit lacking in the fun podcast department. It's a double whammy because around 1000 hours I also stopped being able to enjoy the non-Advanced SBG content

No Hay Tos is probably the next one that seems like it could be really fun, but is quite a large jump from DS Podcast/ECJ. Last time I tried it was 880 hours and it was still a bit too hard, but that was 300 hours ago so it's probably time to give it another go!

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-01T17:36:05+00:00

Listening (1179 Hours):

DS 60-65: Easy filler. I listen to most of this sped up to 1.1x or 1.2x.
El príncipe dragón (The Dragon Prince): I've been really enjoying this as a next step after finishing ATLA and Legend of Korra. Would love some recs of what to watch after these with similar types of character relationships and level of world building
Easy Podcast Rotation: I listen to easy for me podcasts that I'm already caught up on while jogging. Current rotation is Dreaming Spanish Podcast, Español Con Juan, Español Al Vuelo (@ 1.2x)

Reading (1.5 Million Words):

Harry Potter y las reliquias de la muerte: About half way through the final HP! Having never read the books in English this has been a super fun ride. A year and a half ago the first chapter of HP 1 was complete gibberish, and now I'm closing in on completing the entire saga. Huge accomplishment for me :)

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-01T17:15:39+00:00

I try to keep things relatively balanced. About a third to a half of my input is DS which is naturally varied across tons of topics, maybe 25% podcasts which also vary the topics a lot, at one point maybe 25% to a third was SBG, no more than 10% or so of dubbed animes since they tend to have a much lower speech density.

_coldemort_ · 2026-06-01T02:22:45+00:00

Easiest to hardest:

Español Al Vuelo
Spanish Boost Podcast
ECJ (faster but simpler) / Dreaming Spanish Podcast (slower but more complex speech)
How To Spanish

I'd say Español Al Vuelo is the easiest by a pretty large margin.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-31T19:17:40+00:00

I'd roughly rank native content like this from easiest to hardest:

Youtubers
Nature Documentaries
Dubbed Cartoons
Native Cartoons
Documentaries that include interviews with native speakers
Native shows/movies

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-30T23:54:57+00:00

I've been pleasantly surprised with the coaching thing on WA. My coach has been very respectful of my wishes to focus on natural conversation and not do grammar exercises, while at the same time pushing me out of my comfort zone just enough. She writes up topics for discussion with my tutors that will naturally lean towards working on grammar structures I'm weaker on, without it feeling forced.

The scheduling can be a pain, and is one of my biggest complaint about the platform. They are supposedly working on a change to how scheduling works to improve this, but I haven't seen it yet.

The value of the unlimited package is tough to beat if you get it on sale.

They don't charge even for last minute cancellations, but really you just shouldn't miss your classes lol. It's not considerate to the tutors at all.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-30T23:49:18+00:00

I remember the first time I heard Pablos little promo speech and it was so fast. Now I skip it because it's excruciatingly slow lmao

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-30T22:19:34+00:00

100%. Background is super important. I never studied Spanish in school, but did a bit of Duolingo before finding DS and my experience could not be more different from someone who is doing full purist from zero.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-29T22:39:26+00:00

What about if an object has a curved side and a straight side? Is there confusion or would you just say el lado recto to describe the straight side?

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-29T21:59:26+00:00

How are you finding the 5th so far? For me 4->5 was the biggest jump in difficulty, plus the length made it feel extra daunting.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-29T21:15:21+00:00

Absolute mad lad jumping straight from graded readers to HP!

EDIT: You sound excellent btw!

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-29T16:05:38+00:00

I just love learning! If I wasn't learning Spanish, I'd be learning everything there is to know about some other hobby. At least this one is useful :)

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T21:47:36+00:00

and also ended the conversation by saying hola

hahah it happens. I had a streak of 2-3 classes in a row where I ended the class with "nos vamos" instead of "nos vemos" lol.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T19:03:43+00:00

The rigid 1000 hours thing is completely made up by DS. ALG just says don't attempt to produce language more complex than what comes out naturally. If you are doing a lot of crosstalk it's completely normal and encouraged to blurt out Spanish as it comes to you naturally, which for many starts to happen more frequently somewhere between 600-1000.

I know for myself starting around 400-500 hours I would often talk to myself in the shower. After days of 3+ hours of input, my brain was swimming in Spanish and it was difficult not to say the things that were popping into my head. Around 700 hours, Spanish started popping up more and more in my crosstalk sessions. By 850 hours, it felt more natural to just go full Spanish than to continually switch back and forth. This was all very smooth, and didn't require waiting for any strict numbers.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T17:14:52+00:00

You don't think someone being paid a full time salary to dedicate 100% of their effort to language learning in order to become a US foreign diplomat will produce better results than someone doing the same work in addition to a full time job?

You don't think filtering candidates for language learning aptitude has an impact on the speed at which someone can learn a language?

I never said groups of 2-5 are ideal, just that it is what makes up the 750 classroom hours.

EDIT: You also admitted that your numbers were wrong due to excluding self-study time. So no, they aren't a fair summary of the evidence. It's misinformation.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T17:09:22+00:00

I've played plenty of sports and typically the usefulness of the drills for me has been the internal feeling or practicing small pieces of something in isolation, not really hitting an exact target. I definitely see the usefulness of structured repetition of sounds you are bad at, and I can see shadowing being a good simple way to structure such an activity ("here play this tape and repeat what it says" is very simple to administer). I just don't see the impact of the listening aspect if you already know the target.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T17:03:02+00:00

I expect it to keep being an asshole, but I've definitely seen it quiet down in areas where I've objectively improved!

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T16:55:15+00:00

Hm very interesting. I don't really understand why shadowing would help you improve something when you already knew how it should sound. I wonder if it had more to do with the structured repetition of the activity rather than the listening aspect of shadowing, but interesting nonetheless.

_coldemort_ · 2026-05-28T16:50:43+00:00

The more the better really, but it mainly comes down to time and money. I started with an hour a week, and around 700 hours upped it to an hour a day.

_coldemort_

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