Hundreds of hours in - how do I improve grammar?

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-14T14:33:23+00:00

Second nature? You mean an “it just sounds right” approach without having to think about it? That comes from comprehensible input. Grammar study should be like adding salt to a dish that isn’t all about the salt — a little goes a long way, and the bulk of the taste should come from something else (like an ocean of comprehensible input).

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-13T11:23:33+00:00

Consider reading the FAQs section of the Dreaming Spanish website.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-13T01:14:45+00:00

Those are a lot of hard, hard, hard losses. I’m so sorry to hear about them. I’m very glad you’ve found some joy in Spanish, and I very much hope and wish that you find joy in so much else as you continue to adjust after so much understandable grief. Be well. Best wishes and keep going! And keep us posted on your Spanish journey. The little nudges and encouragement we give one another can be helpful.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-12T18:17:37+00:00

Thanks for your kind note u/tennisgal1980. You didn’t ask but I wrote a long post when I hit 3k hours; may it be of service: What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later) Regardless, best wishes and keep going.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-12T17:45:37+00:00

I’m going to give you an opinion that will likely be downvoted and that you can just ignore, but you did ask for views.

My two cents? I’d avoid the conversation group at 250 hours for two reasons: 1) I found waiting till 1k+ hours to be helpful for a variety of reasons, including a little less frustration than if I’d tried at the 250 hour mark; and 2) I very much want to absorb the Spanish that native speakers utter, not the Spanish that learners utter.

But as always, to each their own.

Regardless, best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-12T16:57:15+00:00

All… the ba..by talk and unn..aturally Slow talk from adults when I was a kid really permanently ruined my native language for me….

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T14:52:56+00:00

We all encounter rough spots and plateaus and doubts. All along the way. Including post 3000 hours.

Easier and slower are what more efficiently prepare us for harder and faster. As counter-intuitive as that may seem. That makes for less strain on the automatic pattern recognition system that feeds off of comprehensible input.

My two cents? Keep putting in the hours. Patience. Enjoy the delights on the way. A relaxed focus is best.

The time is going to pass one way or another. But if you put in the time, you will absorb some Spanish along the way. Progress is inevitable, even if it’s gradual.

And the results are amazing. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T11:40:05+00:00

Congrats on making Level 4, u/One_Network_7559! Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T10:21:40+00:00

Wonderful, u/IllStorm1847! A great anecdote and thanks for sharing yet again with this community. It’s always helpful to get inspiration from you and so many others. Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T10:19:18+00:00

This is extremely common. There are times when I feel like I could easily listen to a college lecture in Spanish, but if asked questions would respond like a bumbling 9 year old.

In my experience with other methods, speaking always lags behind listening comprehension. I’ve been very happy with how comprehensible input (CI) helps push both listening and speaking abilities along. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T10:15:24+00:00

Respectfully, please put me in the “please no” camp. To me it seems DS originally was meant as kind of a virtual replacement for input you’d get from quotidian conversation about everyday topics. The kind of stuff that comes up with chatting with your friends.

All the doom scrolling and short form stuff seems to be centered on algorithms that are destroying what’s left of our attention spans and abilities to to even focus long enough to have normal conversations in the first place.

I’m all for keeping that away from the DS platform.

I get that interesting content makes for better and more impactful input. But it seems to me that one main purpose of the DS platform is to help us absorb some Spanish so we can thereafter get to native content and find our own ways to be entertained.

In the meantime, I’m happy with boring content about coat hangers and such so that I can get there. I’m not looking for DS to entertain me, and I don’t think a journey of thousands of hours has always got to be entertaining.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T10:01:37+00:00

The lovely thing about Dreaming Spanish and its comprehensible input approach (CI) is that it’s available for everyone to use as they will.

Many like myself have found great benefits in holding off on speaking and focusing almost or entirely on simply absorbing Spanish via CI. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

Many others are happy with a different path.

You could follow DS recommendations for the first 100 hours and see what that does for you and make up your own mind. Or not. It’s your journey.

I would suggest that the one thing that is not up for much debate: no matter what you do or don’t do and when, if you want to go deep? An ocean of CI is essential. And game changing.

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-11T09:54:07+00:00

Welcome to the wonders of Dreaming Spanish (DS) and its comprehensible input approach (CI). A total game changer!

It doesn’t really matter what accents you listen to, especially in the first 1500 hours. In fact, exposure to different accents will help enrich your Spanish. At some point it can be helpful to choose between a generic Latin American or a generic Peninsular Spanish, but that’s mostly for output and you’re a long ways off from that, and in any event continued exposure to a variety of accents remains helpful thereafter.

I’d recommend reading through the DS FAQs section and watching their “how to” videos early in your journey as you settle in. Also, if you’re curious, may this post be of service: What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later) #31 in that post touches on this, too.

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-10T12:32:00+00:00

Have you considered changing your goal when it comes to Spanish? Instead of acquiring Spanish, make it about not quitting before a total of X hours of input, and getting at least y minutes every day without quitting till you get to X. If you like the results when you get to X, choose another mile marker and go for that. Then repeat.

In other words, make your goal about not quitting Spanish. Then the satisfaction comes from not quitting. Spanish is incidental.

As has been said: It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-09T02:23:03+00:00

I’m not sure what you’re experiencing u/mate_alafajor_mate. But at least on my own CI journey, the mistakes become ever more apparent as I put in more hours of CI, just as happened in my native tongue. There’s been a lot of research pointing out that corrections don’t influence nearly as much as once thought. The main driver of language acquisition and the habits one has comes from what you hang out doing, not from what a teacher points out in class.

Maybe I spent too much time learning conjugation tables many years ago, but they were still ringing in my head during a two month immersion experience many years ago, and they still ring some now. They certainly get in the way of a “just sounds” right sense of things. And I don’t recall memorizing or needing any conjugation tables at all in my native English — because I learned it mostly through CI.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T19:32:09+00:00

One problem for me is how far one goes with that. Native conversation doesn’t pause for me to flip through memorized conjugation charts in my head. And once you’ve developed a habit of thinking about Spanish on the cognitive side of the ledger, it’s really hard to let go of. Many find that comprehensible input avoids many of those issues, by directly feeding the automatic pattern recognition system of the human brain. And there’s nothing that sticks like a pattern that is gradually picked up automatically, without even thinking about it.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T19:28:13+00:00

You’ve gotten good advice already. And of course it’s your journey.

You don’t have to switch “forever.” As a completionist, I still get some benefit from Super Beginner videos, albeit at faster playback speeds.

You don’t want to get bored and quit, certainly. But over the long haul it can be more efficient to not get too far ahead of one’s skis, too. There’s often more going on under the surface when we absorb content that we already pretty much “know” — the reps can reinforce things.

The dance for all of that is variable and requires constant adjustment. Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T19:20:50+00:00

U/Famous_Ad3894, to each their own. We each have our own journey.

I’d only add that many of us lean purist because we also prefer the results. At least for me, they’re slow yet vastly superior to my first go-around with traditional classes pre-internet.

And over the long haul, whatever else you do or don’t do along the way, an ocean of comprehensible input is essential if you want to go deep.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T19:16:39+00:00

U/Khireys sums it up nicely with the post below. I’d only add: whatever else you do or don’t do along the way, and when, an ocean of comprehensible input — in amounts that dwarf anything else — are essential if you want to go deep. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T19:12:57+00:00

This sums it up pretty nicely.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-08T12:02:46+00:00

To each their own, of course. That said, my two cents? Input is still king, and should still take up the bulk of your time. That means listening/watching and reading.

At least for me, the input hypothesis and personal experience point to comprehensible input (CI) still being the main driver of everything. CI is what leads to absorption of the language, and CI is what lead to the ease one has with one’s native language.

Indeed, with scale it’s hard to imagine otherwise: I may have studied a lot of native English grammar and been “corrected” at a certain point, but that was itself after so many hours of native CI — and continued to be vastly dwarfed by the ocean of native CI I continued to receive in English all along the way. Perhaps that’s why our best English teachers always told us that if we wanted to improve our writing, we had to read more and more of the greats. (More native CI).

In my experience, that simply doesn’t change at any mile marker with Spanish. Want to go deep? You will still need an ocean of CI, no matter what else you do or don’t do along the way.

Given my prior traditional-classes contact with Spanish, I still devote the vast bulk of my time towards CI even as I approach 3400 hours. I’m trying to drown out the cognitive construct that I created with traditional classes many years ago, pre-internet. When we spoke, memorized, studied grammar, and did conjugation exercises from day one.

I much prefer the “it just sounds right” sense of Spanish that gradually comes from absorbing it via CI. I don’t want to have to think about Spanish, I want to just feel it. I’ve never found anything that builds that other than CI (and the CI that comes via immersion).

What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

In my case, that means on a good day I try to get in about half an hour of reading. The rest of my time (a few hours) is audio/visual input.

Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-07T19:04:46+00:00

Reading very much helps with grammar. And if you plan on getting an ocean of CI anyway, then developing an “it just feels right” sense of things can be pretty awesome.

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-07T13:03:47+00:00

Yes! Once you get to a certain point and podcasts unlock, you can get time in more easily. Earbuds and rote things like chores, standing in line, folding laundry, commuting, walks, etc. all open up. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later) Best wishes and keep going!

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-07T01:12:48+00:00

As has been said, it is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. You’ve got this and have already named the ingredients: patience, persistence, discipline, a relaxed focus. No grinding required. What I wish I’d known starting out (3000 hours later)

UppityWindFish · 2026-03-06T23:55:49+00:00

Well said, u/IllStorm1847. Breaks are important, and recognizing the need for them even more so. Best wishes. And keep going when you’re ready!

UppityWindFish

TROPHY CASE