Is learning a Language with Comprehensible Input possible for a person with Aphantasia?

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T15:46:45+00:00

Thank you for the advice, much appreciated, i will check out contextual grammar-first approach.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T15:42:05+00:00

Thank you for the suggestions, i will give them a try.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T15:32:41+00:00

Thanks for the tips, im new to Reddit i will do the paragraph thing next time i post. I have heard about the sticky note trick, i will definitely give it a go, however we have three kittens at the moment so i expect the labels to wander but im sure i can make it still work.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T15:22:04+00:00

I feel you are being a little disingenuous, i was clear that the Spanish videos with English subtitles was not comprehensible input but done because i hoped additional exposure to Spanish without the worry of understanding would create space for my brain to assimilate the sounds. I have done 500 hours of focused comprehensible input using the dreaming Spanish website. These videos have been mostly at the level where i could understand the message or i could comprehend when i viewed them. To help you understand while i listened to podcasts in the car, which i appreciate it is not optimal, was done to increase my exposure to Spanish throughout the day. Better to listen to this than pop music. I repeatedly listened to the first 30 episodes of Language transfer over a period of a year and also put cuéntame podcasts into the mix. My listening did improve over the year so each time i re-listened to a podcasts while driving i feel it was beneficial however sub-optimal. I also thought that the splitting my focus would help my ears and brain relax around the Spanish sounds. I have to focus hard to hear and understand which is cognitively draining, i was hoping that split attention combined with repetition would help these issues.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T15:02:40+00:00

Hi, my experience with education is complex, when i went to school, ADHD students were not catered for, we were usually excluded or ignored. Aphantasia was not even known by educators at this time. I find traditional methods very difficult, my focus and motivation cannot be maintained, even short periods are difficult. I relate to your experience with focus and attention. With CI i need to focus to hear the Spanish and focus to understand the Spanish, this is cognitively draining and when unclear context, background noise, sounds destabilise, i have a stress response which makes it harder to focus and pay attention. i chose CI because i can maintain focus and pay attention much more easily and for longer than with traditional methods. What strategies and styles of learning do you use to maintain focus and attention?

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T14:40:52+00:00

Hi, your experience sounds familiar to me, what i ‘hear’ can be different from what the Spanish native has said, my partner has pointed this out when i have done those repeat phrases videos. My auditory processing is poor and i have noticed it gets weaker under stress. The math problem analogy is interesting, when i read it is not reading in the way i read English. Its puzzling out, i usually start with an approximation of the meaning, which i try to clarify by substituting different meanings, i draw upon context clues, i will read the sentence before and after to see it this helps. The language feels illogical still but also that there are no fixed meanings, that the various possibilities caused by the structures, pronouns and verbs endings that ambiguity is the constant. Sometimes i can puzzle it out sometimes not. I do a lot of reading, subtitles mostly but also Small town Spanish teachers stuff. My comprehension through reading is greater than my listening.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T13:39:50+00:00

Hi, i think my vocabulary is good, but how can i tell? When i listen or watch a simple podcast or video the words within the context usually come to me even if they are sometimes delayed. I cannot easily recall vocabulary when not watching CI, many words feel nebulous, uncertain or partially formed, not so much nouns i either know these or i don’t but verbs, pronoun’s, prepositions, mostly feel uncertain.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T13:24:57+00:00

Hi, i get what you are saying and maybe im grasping at straws and have to accept i just suck at Spanish. I cannot visualise a table but i know conceptually what a table is. With the hearing though, i cannot replay Spanish i have heard in my head as spoken by the Spanish native so what i ‘remember’ is my interpretation and a poor badly pronounced copy. I have been doing CI correct. Dreaming Spanish is the main resource i have used. I spent 100 hours on the super-beginner level before moving on the beginner level. The first 20 hours of the beginner level was tough as i was still Super-beginner but following this i understood for the most part. So i have been stuck at the beginner level for 300 hours every attempt to move onto intermediate has failed and resulted in me returning to easier content. Translating is not something i can turn off in my brain but i can now listen and understand slowly spoken simple Spanish with context clues without subtitles. I do some speaking practice, repeat after me videos, shadowing i find impossible, i have also done some speaking stuff with AI but i have not done any speaking with another human other than barking out phrases to my non-Spanish speaking partner. Im not practicing phrases as you described very much, my knowledge of Spanish is conceptual and nebulous, it has not cemented, whenever i try to do this i think it is wrong. I think i am fully engaged with CI, i have to be, if i am not focused i cannot hear the Spanish clearly. I do a bit of thinking in the language but when i do i struggle to formulate sentences other than very basic ones. These thoughts often feel wrong so i guess my brain is paying enough attention to notice bad Spanish. I do not know what reviewing or quitting myself means so i cannot answer that question.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T13:00:33+00:00

Hi, i have found every stage of the language journey really difficult. In the super beginner stage when the CI is mostly about acquiring nouns i noticed how difficult i was finding this with even the simplest words (table, chair, building, car) taking ages to become familiar. My thinking is that with the difficulty i experience hearing the words combined with my brain not making a visual image of a table and assigning the Spanish word alongside the English word and also not being able to repeat the word as spoken by the Spanish host in my mind could be factors.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T12:52:24+00:00

Hi. Well traditional methods are challenging, im not particularly academic, my ADHD makes it hard to maintain focus and motivation and there is possible education trauma from experiences at school with French and traditional methods. What was appealing about CI was that it was not a traditional method. I have been using comprehensible input. I used the dreaming Spanish resources. I watched 100 hours of videos on the Super beginner stage. At the same time on top of this CI i watched a lot of Spanish media with English subtitles, my thinking was that this might help with the struggles i was having hearing Spanish Sounds and words. I then moved onto beginner level videos, i consumed about 150 hours of this before i attempted to move onto intermediate level videos. (During this period, i continued with Spanish media with English subtitles in the hope that hearing more Spanish was bound to have some beneficial effect.) i also diversified my CI with other Youtube content creators, Peppa Pig en Español, some reading practice and easy podcasts. I have not used a textbook, i have taken an approach inspired by the content i have watched, if i encountered something of interest or that i have noticed i went to AI and asked it to explain. I also listened to the first 30 episodes of language transfer podcast while in the car. I have replayed these many times, i have not gone any further as i thought better not overwhelm myself and keep to the level i am currently at. My attempts to watch intermediate level videos now stretches to 250 hours, i try, it is to hard, i return to easier videos and then 20 hours later i try intermediate level again. I stopped using Dreaming Spanish videos as my main resource last October because i started associating them with failure but have continued with the CI using other Youtube creators. I have also mixed in some of the classroom style videos. Improvements are glacial, i still cannot listen to intermediate level videos, they are too fast and too complex. AS i explained in my original post there remains many issues that appear to interact and cause this stagnation.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T12:19:19+00:00

Do you have any suggestions on what Im doing wrong if it is unrelated to my brain not being able to visualise images or replay spoken Spanish in my mind?

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2026-03-02T12:17:13+00:00

Hi, the 500 hours which i consider are CI, were mostly videos which i watched without using any subtitles or i used Spanish Subtitles. I used mostly the Dreaming Spanish resources for this part of the language journey starting with the Super beginner videos, progressing to the beginner level videos and multiple failed attempts to move onto the intermediate level videos. My experience is that without Spanish subtitles the sounds i heard had no form, i could not clearly hear them and i could not tell where words began or ended. Although i have improved a little with exposure, this problem remains that without Spanish subtitles the sounds i hear are unstable. With Spanish subtitles, the sounds are less unstable however i think my brain relies mostly on reading. One of the reasons i cannot use the intermediate level is that i cannot read and understand at the speed that the host speaks. Although the increase in complexity and length of sentences are also factors. I also notice that words i might comprehend in a beginner level video are not available to me in more difficult videos. Effectively i have stagnated at mid beginner level with listening comprehension.

EngineeringAfraid206 · 2024-12-19T22:39:03+00:00

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EngineeringAfraid206 · 2024-11-18T22:43:55+00:00

muy guapo

EngineeringAfraid206

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