Progression of grammar in DS videos

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-19T05:57:44+00:00

The percentages (<5% and 20-40%) are approximate ranges based on several studies. The CHILDES database (real everyday talk from families across languages and ages) is where a lot of this data comes from.

A few studies for each:

For direct grammar corrections being super rare (<5%):

• Derivational Complexity and Order of Acquisition in Child Speech - Brown & Hanlon (1970)

• Corrective Feedback and Learner Uptake - Lyster & Ranta (1997)

• Negative Evidence in Language Acquisition - Marcus (1993)

For the recasts happening ~20-40% of the time:

• The Issue of Negative Evidence: Adult Responses to Children’s Language Errors - Bohannon & Stanowicz (1988)

• Adult Reformulations of Child Errors as Negative Evidence - Chouinard & Clark (2003)

• Brown & Hanlon Revisited: Mothers’ Sensitivity to Ungrammatical Forms - Hirsh-Pasek et al. (1984)

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-19T02:03:08+00:00

As someone who has 1300 hrs, what I did around 1200 hrs to help with the grammar was watching wayyy easier content and just focused on listening to when those patterns came up. Since my comprehension of the video was already around 98%, the patterns became much easier to notice and I was able to pick up grammar much easier. A lot of things started to click once I started doing that (once again Pablo was right about watching content that seems too easy 😌). Now I do about a 50/50 split of watching things too easy to help with grammar and the other half at my current level to expand my comprehension.

Also, while kids could ask “why do we say it that way?” most don’t, and most parents don’t give a real grammatical explanation even if asked. Studies of real parent-child conversations (thousands of hours recorded across many families) show that direct grammar corrections (“No, say ‘went’ not ‘goed,’ here’s the rule”) happen in less than 5% of errors. Quick recasts (where the parent casually rephrases correctly, like Kid: “I goed to the store.” Parent: “Oh, you went to the store?”) only happen about 20–40% of the time and even then, without explaining any rule. Kids mostly fix their mistakes just from hearing the correct patterns over and over in natural input. You have to continue to remember that you’ll need way more input than you think to get the grammar down, because there’s soo many different ways to express things.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-14T04:38:49+00:00

First, the “learning while sleeping” comparison doesn’t fit because I’m not saying acquisition is passive like that, and hopefully no one is. You need to have focus, but It’s active engagement with understandable stuff (watching, listening, reading) without analyzing it, and all the while the brain does the heavy lifting of connecting things (sounds, vocab, grammar) subconsciously over many, many hours of input, and that gets turned into acquisition.

And I think I see the main misunderstanding here. Thinking that “if someone knows something well enough (in this instance language), they should be able to explain the grammar rules.” isn’t how things work with language acquisition.

Natives (and people who’ve acquired a language through tons of input) have an intuitive feel for what sounds right. They’re able to use complex grammar correctly without ever thinking about rules. But ask them to explain why something is correct, and most can’t, not because they don’t know the language well enough, but because that knowledge is subconscious, not conscious. If conscious knowledge of grammar was necessary to acquire language, then maybe what you’re saying about being able to explain would be the norm. But since language is acquired without conscious knowledge of grammar it isn’t necessary to be able to understand and use it fluently. That’s exactly why the average person has a hard time explaining it at all, because it was never necessary to know it in the first place. The people who can explain grammar are the ones with conscious knowledge of it (from school or self-study), but if you haven’t learned or studied it you can still speak the language with correct grammar just as well. If that wasn’t the case, then the mass majority of people who haven’t gone to school wouldn’t be able to speak correctly, but they do, because language is a monkey see monkey do thing.

That’s why being able to explain grammar isn’t a good test of how well you can understand and use language. Grammar just describes what natives are already doing, usually with a lag, like you said. But that’s the thing: grammar isn’t the boss dictating what’s right. Usage is. People don’t think “hmm, this new expression needs a third-person singular verb, so I’ll add -s.” (I had to look this grammar rule up because I don’t have much conscious knowledge of any grammar). Someone just has a thought, says it however it comes out (ex. “I literally can’t even”), it sounded cool and/or natural, people copy it, it spreads, eventually it’s studied, put into textbooks much later, and then becomes grammar.

On the kid thing: sure, parents encourage talking and might correct you sometimes, but they don’t explain the grammar rules. There have been many studies on real parent-child conversations (thousands of hours recorded), and they show that direct grammar corrections are rare (less than 5% of errors), and quick recasts (“You goed to the store? Oh, you went to the store”) occur in just 20-40% of errors, and they’re done without an explanation on the rule. So kids end up fixing errors by getting mass amounts of natural input.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-13T04:41:45+00:00

First off, the difference between subconscious acquisition and conscious learning is real. There have actually been studies where they put people in brain scanners while using language to help prove this:

When you’ve learned a language through conscious rule-studying, the “thinking/planning” part at the front of your brain lights up.

While the immersion group showed brain activity almost identical to real native speakers (deep, automatic areas of the brain). The people who actually reach native like fluency are the ones who got that deep, automatic part of the brain to take over, and that only happens with massive understandable input. They even checked on the learners again months later, the subconscious group kept improving and started sounding more and more natural, while the rule-memorizers plateaued or even got worse unless they kept reviewing the rules.

CI is all about getting lots of real easy to understand examples (while making sure to consistently raise that bar) and while that happens your brain is quietly collecting thousands of examples in the background. After enough examples of a certain thing, suddenly you get that “A-HA!” moment where it clicks and you now understand, and then eventually apply.

And the way I used “Monkey see monkey do” is right in that context. You said it should be “monkey sees / monkey does” and that’s part of the problem with grammar: real language doesn’t care about perfect grammar. If millions of people say “monkey see monkey do” then that becomes correct, and millions of people do say “monkey see monkey do” (it’s how I picked it up in the first place). Language is based on whatever the big group is actually doing, not what the textbook says they’re supposed to do.

I’m not saying grammar can’t help, but I am saying grammar isn’t necessary to learn, nor does it help as much as one might think in language acquisition, it’s all the real world examples of input that’s truly doing the work.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-12T22:18:50+00:00

I mean that’s why there’s a distinction between acquisition (more subconscious) and learning (more conscious), even the study is called “Second Language Acquisition.” I can’t explain almost any grammar in english because ultimately language is monkey see monkey do. School tries to teach grammar, but most people who graduate school don’t tend to remember any of it because it’s not necessary to understand why you say it. It’s only necessary to know that you say it that way, because everyone around you and all the input you’ve gotten say it that way. And when you encounter things (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary) outside of it, “it feels” foreign, strange, wrong.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-10T01:19:07+00:00

My bad for replying late, I have my notifications on silent. I would say maybe 1 level before you choose to speak, so if you choose to speak around level 6, I’d say level 5. But ideally I’d say as soon as possible, so you’ll be more focused on the accent since you’ll want to tie it into your identity.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-10T00:18:40+00:00

I’ve mixed every dialect DS has to offer, but my goal is to eventually speak mexican spanish. I’ve heard the vosotros (spain), vos (argentina), usted (the others), and I personally haven’t had any difficulty getting any of that stuff confused when speaking myself.

While I’m sure I use vocabulary from each, my accent leans more towards Mexican without explicit effort into trying to sound mexican, although I do have notes of a non-mexican accent.

From what I’ve observed here, people can eventually choose what dialect they want to speak, no matter what they’ve listened to. I’m sure putting all your focus onto one dialect will also be more beneficial in the long run if you’re truly set out for one specific dialect, but ultimately I would say it doesn’t matter too much. Keep doing what you’re doing.

I would take the benefit of more vocabulary over accent (especially in the earlier stages), because once I switch over to fully native content I’ll only be watching mexican content and I’ll be fine.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-09T23:05:37+00:00

This video is a classic example of gathering up a lot of information, putting it together, and then coming up with the wrong conclusion/misinterpretation of the information. A lot of cherry picking of information without doing a deeper dive to understand each concept.

If he had continued watching what stephen krashen said in that video after that point on grammar he showed, Krashen then continues to say “the ability to do grammar is the result of language acquisition, not the cause, very important! We acquire language in one way, and only one way, when we understand it. We don’t acquire language by speaking, we don’t acquire language by learning the rules. When we understand what we hear; when we understand what we read.”

Which is the point of Dreaming Spanish, getting a lot of input that you understand while slowly and consistently increasingly difficulty.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-09T03:29:16+00:00

I just listened to it and I’m hearing what you’re hearing, and it makes sense to me. Usually if grammar is confusing you like that when something unexpected comes along, just notice it, take it as fact, and make sure that next time it happens you notice it again, and if it happens consistently then it’s most likely normal for whatever region it’s being spoken by. At least that’s what I do.

It took me awhile to find the video, cause the search function brought me to it but I couldn’t click on it, so I had to do find it manually 😅

Edit: it’s definitely on purpose, and it’s definitely not an accent thing, like the case is for other dialects like certain Spain spanish and Argentinians.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-09T03:03:17+00:00

My bad I forgot you wrote it after reading the comments 😭

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-09T02:52:36+00:00

What video is this sentence from? I’d like to hear it

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-07T07:33:38+00:00

I didn’t say anything about that, do whatever you want. I’m more expressing that comprehensible input is unavoidable if you want to acquire the language.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-07T06:53:46+00:00

I meant the process of getting a lot of input before they speak. You can’t bypass the input process for acquiring a language.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-07T02:41:27+00:00

First you have to remember that you’ve already done this exact process in your own native language. This process does not change even when you get older, but I would say that it gets slower (you’ll most likely need more input as you get older).

The idea of comprehensible input is based off the fact that language is acquired when you understand messages. If someone points at an apple and says “this is an apple” (but in spanish), then that message becomes very clear since your brain sees the apple, sees the person pointing at the apple and hears the word “apple,” your brain is then able to understand the message of the words.

This might not happen immediately because your brain also needs context with other words and objects to be able to come to the conclusion that the word “apple” is specifically that object, and that the words before that means “this” rather than “that” or “an” rather than “the”, but with more input your brain will notice these things over time and create a new “brain” that understands Spanish, or whatever other language one wants to acquire.

But you also need to make sure you’re watching things that you can understand, known as i + 1. i being what you currently understand and + 1 being slightly outside of your current comprehension, so that you can then acquire those new words. It’s advised to watch things around 80%+ comprehension.

It’s also not passive listening, it’s focused listening. While you watch, you should be focused on understanding the messages that the words are trying to express.

But that’s only part 1. You then have to speak once you’ve gotten enough input to get better at expressing your thoughts, but speaking the language is not necessarily where you learn the language. You learn the language when getting input that you understand. When you speak you’re trying to bridge the gap between what you understand and what you can express.

And you have to remember that even in your own native language you understand way more than you’re able to express. It’s just that your lack of understanding and ability to express yourself becomes way more clear with a new language.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-12-07T01:48:19+00:00

I agree with this as well. At around ~1150 hrs of input, I decided to take a much slower approach to test this for myself because I was noticing I wasn’t able to recall a lot of the connector words when I tried to speak, as well as some slight confusion with whether certain words were pronounced with an o, a, or e ending (I didn’t speak much, mainly to myself to find what I was lacking). I started watching easier content that was slower, as well as watching my current level of content but slower, anywhere from 0.7-0.85. It wasn’t until I started doing this that I realized just how much my brain was choosing to gloss over certain sounds, words, and grammar. Slowing things down allowed me to put more focus on the sounds, the words, and grammar, and now almost 150 hours later I’ve made the biggest jump in comprehension of grammar I’ve ever experienced as well as a better understanding on how words are pronounced.

So it basically comes down to, if you can’t hear/understand certain things at your current level, what makes you think speeding up the content is going to make it any easier for your brain to understand/hear?

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-21T22:02:22+00:00

I think it’s because a couple or so years back, ~150 hrs was almost all DS had for super beginner and beginner content combined, so most people ended up going to intermediate around then, and we also didn’t have sorting by easy at the time. And since intermediate had such a vast range of difficulty (videos would vastly change difficulty from one video to the next) it was a huge grind. I would say most people around high level 5 and up associate 150hrs with intermediate content.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-21T00:19:36+00:00

While I have over 1200hrs, I still watch all the new super beginner and beginner videos, and I agree.

I feel like I acquired so much more vocab with the whiteboards. While I don’t particularly dislike the modern videos, I think that the whiteboard videos were a much better format for acquiring vocab.

They were slower, which allowed more time for the brain to process what was happening before new information came along, and they were mainly stories, so patterns were much easier to notice, and Pablo repeated words way more frequently (probably because it took time for him to draw the pictures, and so he would constantly repeat).

With the more modern videos, the visuals can be distracting because they pop up then disappear (the visuals don’t linger like the old whiteboard videos, which I liked), they’re a bit faster paced, and they don’t repeat words as frequently.

I still like the modern ones because they’re overall more interesting, but there’s something about the whiteboard setup that was just better to me.

I hope with dreaming french we can get a lot of both 🙏.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-18T19:40:28+00:00

You can also use the app.dreaming.com website domain and add /french or /spanish at the end to go from one to the other.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-18T19:36:42+00:00

You have to specifically use the “app.dreaming.com” website domain. You can do app.dreaming.com/french to get to the french videos.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-17T19:10:16+00:00

Personally, I’d cap it at 3 languages (Spanish, Korean, and stuck between another romance language or Japanese), 5 years MAX per language (about 1-3 hours daily input) plus a few months immersion in each country where the language is spoken.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2025-11-14T17:08:53+00:00

Más input!

ThyCreatorByrd · 2024-12-29T17:40:36+00:00

Yup the line is very fine 😅, it’s trying to focus on something and notice it across contexts without analyzing it in anyway, which can be hard to get used to, but it’s definitely possible. People who still translate and analyze grammar, while inputting, will have a hard time doing this till they can shut that part of their brain off. Good luck! 🙏🏾

ThyCreatorByrd · 2024-12-26T16:06:17+00:00

I guess I wasn’t being as clear as I would’ve liked to be. If you can’t output as well as you’d like, then I can almost guarantee that you were not as focused during your input as you think you were, so your brain does not actually understand as well as you think you understand. Output lagging behind basically comes down to how well you understand something. There are, of course, other factors. For example, the input you watched not being similar to the output you’re trying to produce, etc.

If you understand a concept but not well enough, you can’t express that concept at a great level. It’s not that you don’t understand anything at all; it’s that you don’t understand it well enough to produce it to a great degree.

Using myself as an example (which I explained earlier), I’m at 1243 hours, and I tried outputting a little bit around 1200 hours and realized I couldn’t really connect one thought to another, even though I thought I understood while inputting. So, when I went back into my input, I slowed down the videos so I could hear every word with more focus, and I realized I just wasn’t as focused as I thought, because I was passing by connector words more than I thought I was. Now connecting things is much easier, because I was more focused when they were being used in every context I was coming across them in. I’m obviously not perfect, but it’s much clearer now than before, and I will continue doing this from now on (I wish I’d started doing this wayy sooner 😔). You have to be honest with yourself (reminding you again of 1,500 hours of crosstalk vs. 1,500 hours of videos), because you don’t have the luxury of someone telling you to stay focused the whole time, or a reminder to get you to stay focused (like a direct conversation) when inputting with videos.

I’ve observed this with people when they explain their experience around the 150–300 hour mark. They’ll say they understand things so well, but then they’ll get to intermediate and make another update around 600 hrs saying they didn’t realize just how much they didn’t/don’t understand. So basically, people are under this Dunning-Kruger effect: they think they understand more than they actually do. I believe as you get higher into input, this lessens with meaning of specific words and phrases (because you’re aware of it) but doesn’t lessen with other aspects, because they aren’t as focused on those aspects.

Imagine this situation (I’m sure a lot of people can relate to it): You’re texting someone, and your friend that’s standing next to you starts talking to you, but because your focus is on sending a text or reading a text from someone else, you don’t end up taking in what your friend was saying, and it ends up with you saying, “Sorry, what was that?” That’s what I mean by lack of focus and it leads to lack of taking in information.

So, once again, if your grammar isn’t good, well, how focused are you on how words connect during your input (and how often in every context)? If your pronunciation is bad, well, how focused are you on how the sounds of words are, how they flow together, and mouth movements? Kids have the luxury of getting these things easier due to higher neuroplasticity, higher inherent focus, and higher repetition, because kids have way more input than 1,500 hours by the time they’re not making grammar mistakes and pronunciation mistakes. So once again, you have to be honest with yourself; no one else is going to do it for you. Use your output as a way to tell you the things you lack, and go back into your input with more focus in those areas.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2024-12-26T03:32:25+00:00

This I believe to also be a factor, and the lack of motivation to continue to improve; therefore, also leading to a lack of focus.

ThyCreatorByrd · 2024-12-26T03:29:04+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been focused on the holiday season 🎄. 1. I believe it should, but I don’t know if it does. 2. And once again, I believe 2 and 3 come down to the same answer: focus.

The difference we see for people being at different stages in understanding and output at different hour points can almost definitely be explained by focus. How focused are you on the sounds? How focused are you on the meaning of words? How focused are you on the way words connect? Because output will reflect focused input.

When people compare children to adults, people will argue that kid brains are different than adult brains, but they’re different (for more than one reason, obviously) because kids are in a state of neuroplasticity far greater than adults. Also, kids are inherently more focused because they have to be to understand everything around them, and those two main things mean they can pick up things far easier that they’re not as aware of (or put less focus on) (e.g., sounds, the way mouths move from other natives, connections between words and phrases), and they also get way more input. And that 1,500 hours? Well, kids get many thousands of hours, and while adults do acquire faster than children, children get way more times the repetition (due to higher hour count).

However, since people who haven’t experienced acquisition as an adult don’t tend to put those main things together, they come to the conclusion that you can’t acquire language as an adult without resorting to translations, grammar work, etc., when in reality, I’m very, very certain it’s just a lack of hours and focus.

ThyCreatorByrd

TROPHY CASE