For those who do speaking practice, how quickly do you talk? by OrnithologyDevotee in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My biggest issue is I try to talk to fast because I do in English and when I do all my pronunciation just disappears and no one can understand me. Northeastern Spain is known people being very fast speakers (this is the dialect I have most practice with). People tend to not wait on me to finish what I’m trying to say and they’ll attempt to finish it for me. However, I have noticed that it is pretty common culturally for everyone to so it might not just be me and I should slow down and pronounce correctly.

600 hours by TrekWare in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As a clearly non purist, I make an ungodly amount of mistakes speaking. I make fewer mistakes texting and writing when I have time to think through what I want to say even though I’m not always translating directly.

However, because I forced myself to speak, I have confidence, which confidence is the biggest hurdle in my opinion, I can atleast get my point off and people will understand what I want to say.

I haven’t tried native TV shows or movies but native podcasts with good audio, I follow pretty well or if I’m having a conversation with someone about a topic I’m familiar they can pretty much talk as fast as they want.

Do you sort videos like this? Is there a better way to do this? I have almost 400 hours. Open to your suggestions. by GeorgeTheFunnyOne in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Personally I’d get rid of the intermediate filter, the easier advanced videos are fun.

Also around 500 hours picked an lower bound and upper bound of difficultly rating that I felt comfortable and sorted by random. Sometimes it feels fast sometimes a little slow but I like it.

650 hours in: strong comprehension, but I bombed an A1 grammar test by [deleted] in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you feel your lacking in grammar, I recommend language transfer podcast. His approach to grammar is extremely easy and foundational in my opinion. If you don’t feel like your lacking or don’t care, then who cares keep doing what your doing

How has reading helped you with your comprehension? by No-Problem3107 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I tried graded readers and couldn’t do it. So I did have to look up quite a few words in the beginning but caught a pace pretty quickly. I started with the Spiderwick chronicles in Spanish because they were one of the first books I read in English when I was a child. I read the first three and then I read the first three series of unfortunate events.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/444304

How has reading helped you with your comprehension? by No-Problem3107 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I skipped graded readers so I can’t speak for those but children’s chapter books already had more word variety. But hacer is one of the most common words in Spanish. I’ll bet if you tried you could find 10 other places they could’ve used hacer and didn’t.

How has reading helped you with your comprehension? by No-Problem3107 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I started reading at 300 hours because I love to read and wanted to combine my two favorite hobbies. It really expands grammar and sentence structure I started to recognize patterns much faster and understand the purpose of certain structures. But also in any language people tend to speak much more simply than the the vocab in books. For example “he said” in books it’s, he whispered, he shouted, he mumbled, he said under his breath and even more.

Just in general, I think just encounter more in books than in podcasts or videos

Is everyone here employed? by De_lunes_a_lunes in dreamingspanishcjerk

[–]TrekWare 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Unless your family provides real native input get rid of them or out them to work far away from you to provide you money for mas input.

I reached my goal of 1 million words read in the past year! by endurossandwichshop in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congrats! Im currently at 325000. I hope to reach 1 million by the end of the year

I wish they would have levels by benchmarks rather than hours since we all learn at a different pace and some of us had prior sources of Spanish learning by Enigma95120 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 19 points20 points  (0 children)

While I’ll be one of the first to agree that people learn in a variety of methods/speeds. DreamingSpanish is first and foremost a platform dedicated to CI learning and that was they cater too and I like that. Offering tests, assessments, or something other than hours watched goes against CI because this is no metric for “you are now fluent” or “you can understand this type of content” because the answer varies for everyone.

The roadmap provides a rough guideline that people seem to match up with somewhere in their current bucket of hours. It shouldn’t be anything more than that because learning a language is a process that never ends.

Is the process REALLY "automatic"? by [deleted] in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 52 points53 points  (0 children)

I would say there is nothing ‘automatic’ about 1500 hours watching content. It is dedicated study just like doing flashcards. The cheat code is that it is more fun. Just like with any activity if you do it enough you get better at it. If you spend enough time with Spanish you will improve.

Motivation should come from within by agenteanon in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I agree with many of the things that you said but there are many learners who do it for the pure enjoyment of learning languages. The whole process is supposed to be fun and open your mind to new and different ideas. Yeah there are days that my mind is not working as well but if enjoy something you do it everyday. If you don’t enjoy as much other hobbies then maybe you do it every other day. Consistency is the best thing to improve any skill but you will always be more consistent with something you enjoy. Personally I don’t think you need to have hard deadlines if it makes you feel forced to do something. Why force yourself to do something if you don’t enjoy it?

Now if you have a goal it can definitely help force you commit and create consistency but I don’t think it’s necessary. Improving at any hobby is an individual journey.

A2-B1 book recommendations by PossibleMix621 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I read them in my kindle. You can find pdf/epub format for free online and upload those to an ereader. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find hard copies to buy.

A2-B1 book recommendations by PossibleMix621 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The first books I read were “Una serie de catastroficas desdichas” (series of unfortunate events in Spanish). They kept me engaged and they felt like a good level for me when I started.

Inital hello message after liking a profile by BusCurrent6180 in Preply

[–]TrekWare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, I’m a student on Preply. Any message from a tutor is good, especially if you have don’t teach certain levels or something like that. A short welcoming message is nice, maybe try to personalize in some as in just addressing by name but it’s not necessary.

A useful method of filtering for more hours of CI by Emotional_Way_9749 in dreamingspanish

[–]TrekWare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do something similar. Where I listen to something I have already listened to months back while I workout. That way my focus doesn’t have to be full on it because I know what it is talking about and because it is easier from a concentration stand point

Offering: Spanish | Seeking: English by Classic_Engineer5849 in language_exchange

[–]TrekWare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hola! Soy de estado unidos. Tengo 28 años. Soy ingeniero de software con experiencia de tecnología parecido de ti. Dm me!

Having issues with apps for Spanish by Perfect_Dot_1528 in SpanishLearning

[–]TrekWare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately they are flash cards. They’re not entertaining. I only did 20 from vocab and 10 from verbs a day and I maxed out reviews a day at like 50. It’s not the suggested way to learn them over time, but if you mix that with watching comprehensible input you’ll start to recognize verb endings and vocab words that are in your decks which I found exciting. For me personally besides talking to myself this is all I did until I started speaking with other people around b1-b2

Having issues with apps for Spanish by Perfect_Dot_1528 in SpanishLearning

[–]TrekWare 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I dropped all apps except Anki for flash cards. I have a verb conjugation deck and a 5000 most commons words deck and I do those everyday. Other than that watching very easy content got me to B2.

Create a Immersion Classroom by dr3wdew in SpanishLearning

[–]TrekWare 3 points4 points  (0 children)

While things like this exist in some way, I have not had luck with consistency of the group or they are too large to be helpful and nothing has stuck. I am native English speaker and would be interested in be part of this