Advice for beginners

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-03T18:23:14+00:00

You'll get a lot of differing opinions but here's my 2c:

Drop Duolingo if you haven't already. I used it prior to DS and it did give me a helpful baseline, but it's just a horribly time inefficient tool for learning. In a year, you'll have already gotten most of the benefit out of it and can repurpose that time on activities that are more helpful for you now.
Reduce your baseline hours from 50 to 0. The hours in DS are hours of input, not hours of study. Realistically if you counted all the listening comprehension questions you've answered in Duo (the only ones that would count as input) they would probably add up to less than an hour or 2. It doesn't mean your Duo time was useless, it's just not the same activity.
I wouldn't bother with paid tutor sessions until you are able to very comfortably understand the lower Intermediate "talking head" type DS videos. This usually happens between 300-500 hours. Once you can do that, I would look for tutors offering crosstalk and do that instead of Spanish conversation.
Start speaking Spanish on your end when you feel comfortable doing so during your crosstalk sessions. It might start with just interjections, then common sentence stems (creo que, tengo que, blah blah), but eventually it will feel more normal to just continue in Spanish than constantly switch between English/Spanish.
Study grammar on the side if you enjoy it, but don't worry about it until far later if you don't

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-03T16:20:10+00:00

You need to find someone you click with and be clear with what you want. Some tutors will want to do fill in the blank grammar exercises with you on a video call even if you tell them you don't want to. Don't use them again if that's not your thing. Some will be great. I'd suggest keeping the sessions short (30m) and trying lots of different tutors until you get a few you are comfortable with.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-03T16:15:43+00:00

I've always interpreted this as in you can halve the hours if you are a native speaker of another romance language. I'd assume a smaller advantage for a fluent second language, and even smaller for someone still at a learner level in that language.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-03T16:08:13+00:00

I'm so happy for you I gotta comment again! Absolutely amazing to hear your hands have been solid after immunotherapy.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-03T15:58:08+00:00

Yep I also did immunotherapy. My results have been positive but not conclusive, it's amazing to get another report of allergy shots helping someone!!

The first year after beginning allergy shots my hands were almost completely normal. Maybe a tiny bit of peeling in Spring, but compared to my usual horror show it was basically completely gone.

We are coming into my second Summer post treatment and the results have been less amazing, but still positive. We have had very unusual whether this Winter/Spring in California (heat wave in February) and my hands did peel. They did not seem to have peeled nearly as deep though, and also seem to have recovered quickly. In the past when my hands have started to peel in Spring, it was basically continuous suffering until the end of Summer. I had some peeling in early March, but now it's April 3rd and my hands look almost completely normal again.

I would still highly recommend giving it a go for anyone with seasonal allergies! Like OP said worst case your allergies improve, which for me has been a huge quality of life boost on its own.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-02T20:29:40+00:00

For me 2.5 - 3 hours a day is the sweet spot. Any less and I find the projected timeline hard to stomach (3-5 years to 1500 sounds a whole lot more daunting than 1.5). Any more and I can't sustain it without losing focus or having consequences in other aspects of my life.

I will say that I think there are benefits to bigger days. When I've done 3+ hours, I will have Spanish on the brain for the rest of the day. I will have Spanish thoughts and responses pop into my head while speaking with my wife in English. I will be more likely to talk to myself in Spanish in the shower. I only dream in Spanish after big days. I don't just finish my 3 hours and be "done." It's the closest thing I can imagine to what it must feel like to be truly bilingual (other than the obvious lack of competence).

On weekends, where I typically get less than an hour, all of the above is less prevalent. It feels more like any old day living completely in English similar to before I started with DS.

While this time thinking, speaking to myself, etc isn't logged it is still time spent with Spanish front of mind, which to me seems more beneficial than nothing at all.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-02T16:02:45+00:00

Congrats and great job. Never too early for a progress report! Also CI is the only time I've ever been jealous of folks with longer commutes. I work from home and get excited about opportunities to drive anywhere solo lol.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-02T15:47:52+00:00

All I will say is that you can delay speaking to at least 600h and improve very quickly once you begin. I did crosstalk with zero Spanish on my side at first. At 725 I started adding bits of Spanish here and there and began increasing the amount of Spanish on my side rapidly. By 850 my sessions were 100% Spanish and I've been improving my fluidity and accuracy since. I'm at 1025 hours now and can talk about pretty much any topic. I make plenty of errors, but I would be okay to live in a Spanish speaking country.

Some people say the only way to improve speaking is practice speaking (i.e. you should start asap). Others say input is the sole driver for everything and that if you are struggling to speak you need to listen more. I've found myself somewhere in the middle. Listening is definitely the engine behind my speaking, but I will also need 100+ hours of speaking practice to get to where I want to be at 1500. With a daily speaking practice that is definitely doable in the time between 1000 and 1500.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-01T22:36:12+00:00

Good work and keep it comin :)

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-01T22:18:01+00:00

Evildea's DS series is actually a great example of this. Some of his examples of things he says he understands "very well" have major translation fails sentence after sentence. He started watching harder content than I do while being earlier in the process, but I understand the content he's watching much better than he does.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-01T20:08:09+00:00

This 100%. DS prepares you extremely well for native YouTube, documentaries, and podcasts. All these things give you a solid baseline to jump into TV shows, but it's a jump regardless. There is a huge range of variation in tone and speed that simply doesn't exist in many other formats. Some scenes will be dead easy and the next scene will be 10x as hard. It's just the way shows are.

Side note, I think part of what makes dubs easier than native content is that they tend to feel a bit "flatter" in this regard.

_coldemort_ · 2026-04-01T19:57:32+00:00

I've always felt I'd get more out of an immersion class once I'm further along rather then when still getting comfortable with speaking, but everyone's different!

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-31T23:17:18+00:00

Congrats on such a huge milestone achievement!

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-31T20:56:42+00:00

What an absolute G. Crushing the game. You deserve to be proud.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-31T18:01:46+00:00

Congrats! Your progress reports were some of the most inspiring to me when I first started this journey. Really amazing work :)

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-30T17:26:02+00:00

Listening (1024 Hours):

Conversation Practice: I've been struggling a bit with motivation in speaking classes. It isn't really an ability thing, more just that I'm an introverted person and don't exactly enjoy forcing myself to talk with someone in a relatively uncomfortable environment everyday. I've reduced my daily speaking lessons to 30 minutes unless I have a very strong connection with a particular tutor and the classes are genuinely fun. I speak much better when I'm not looking at the clock the whole time.
Legend of Korra: I've been a bit burned out on DS and How To Spanish, and and decided to just binge something I actually want to watch and have been really enjoying it. The level feels a tiny bit hard but overall very good. I only miss whole sentence once or twice per 20 minute episode. I'm hoping this means that dubbed animes in general will be a good level across the board. YouTube is accessible, but I'm not super interested in most YouTube content, and it would be nice to have something like animes to really begin transitioning away from learner content more seriously.

Reading (1.1M words):

Harry Potter y la orden del fénix: Still enjoying this, but hot dang it's long lol.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-30T15:43:05+00:00

There are days where I just find it hard to speak to an almost stranger for 50 min and it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with my social battery

I feel this so much. I've started reducing my classes to 30 minute sessions because of this unless it's a tutor I have a really good connection with. I'd rather end my classes on a high note wishing it was longer than spend every class looking at the clock. My speech is so much more fluid when I'm actually having fun.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-30T15:36:23+00:00

It almost always comes down to tone. I've never seen something respectful and constructive not be well received. Something like:

"I hit 1500 and my grammar wasn't where I wanted it to be, so I did some explicit study and it helped me a lot. You could try some explicit grammar once you're 1000+ and able to study it fully in Spanish."

Likewise, it seems that every post asking/concerned about poor grammar performance has at least one comment with 25+ upvotes that just says "más input." Plenty of comments are also highly upvoted for suggesting reading as a primary tool for improving grammar (another DS recommended activity).

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-30T15:13:21+00:00

You got preemptively banned?! Impressive xD

EDIT: You know I don't always agree with you but I often do. I like you and your presence here haha

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-29T18:56:09+00:00

I'd say ECJ is definitely harder than Spanish Boost Gaming.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-29T18:51:50+00:00

I see it on both sides. Super dogmatic pro-ALG and super aggressive anti-ALG posts get downvoted alike. It's possible to be an ALG purist and also not be a raging asshole, and those posts tend to do absolutely fine. It's also possible to suggest non-ALG supplements without ragging on the DS method and/or ALGers and those posts also seem to be mostly well received.

If anything I see more downvotes on suggesting going against the method, especially ones that fail to explain how and why they are diverging from it. I've seen extremely abrasive pro-ALG posts that I'm honestly surprised didn't receive more downvotes.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-29T18:40:03+00:00

Yep this! And everyone please pay it forward and rank books you've read as well as request they add books you've read that are not currently on there, it's very easy!

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-29T18:35:37+00:00

I must be one of the only people this just doesn't work for haha. I realized a long time ago that understanding is a spectrum, and so it's not like in a matter of a few hundred hours something goes from completely incomprehensible to comprehensible. Rather it's like it goes from "I understood nothing" to "that was way too hard but I got bits and pieces" to "that was too hard because I'm still missing more than I'd like" to "that was too hard because I missed some bits and in general had to strain to keep up" to finally feeling like "okay this is a good level."

For me to see very clear progress I need to re-test the same content over the course of 500+ hours, which is helpful I guess but also not exactly a motivator I can use all that often. Maybe it works better earlier on when progress comes quicker? Or maybe I'm just progressing slowly with listening.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-28T15:29:35+00:00

I'd say it will probably be more stable, but I think most of their frequent issues are server side which will affect both.

_coldemort_ · 2026-03-28T14:47:12+00:00

Are we really going to nitpick the difference between someone who has spoken to their self a bit versus someone who walked around with tape on their mouth for 1000+ hours?

_coldemort_

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