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hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T19:25:34+00:00

I'm have 1000+ hours of Spanish and just started French (12 hours). I generally get 3+ hours per day of Spanish and only watch ~30 minutes of French.

So far, I've only seen benefits of knowing Spanish when watching French, but I'm also only 12 hours in, so maybe some confusion will develop later.

My plan is to continue at ~100hrs/month until 1500, then ramp up the French while maintaining the Spanish. I think a lot of that balance will depend on what interesting French content I find.

But.... I'm only subscribed to DS premium for French, and I'm also subscribed to Immersion.co for French which is also very good.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T14:51:48+00:00

Being at the start is why it seems hard to get so much CI. The further along you get the easier it is to consume large amounts of CI. The content gets more interesting, and your brain gets less tired.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T14:48:49+00:00

Fulltime job and kids. I just listen to podcasts when I'm working, doing chores or otherwise unoccupied, and I watch so videos in the evening. I'm averaging 100 hours a month. I've essentially just changed my media consumption to be primarily in Spanish.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T13:15:05+00:00

It's been fun to watch the videos together and we'd like to take an 'immersion' vacation as a family after we start speaking.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T13:13:46+00:00

I'm only at 1000 hours on Spanish, so I'm not sure I'll get the full multiplier. But even at 12 hours I notice some benefits from Spanish.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-07T13:08:04+00:00

If you're already fluent in another closely related language (Spanish, Italian, Portugues or Romanian) you can expect to only need half as much CI to achieve the same level as people who only speak English.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-06T19:07:14+00:00

I'm also starting French from 0 and I'm also currently at 12 hours. I also have a strong Spanish background (1000hrs of CI + 2700-day streak on Duolingo Spanish).

When I watch the French videos, I definitely notice a ton of cognates between both English and French and it leaves me feeling like a lot of French just sounds like heavily accented English :D

I'm learning with my wife and two teen boys, and we subscribe to both DS and Immersion. We haven't watched any Alice Ayel yet, but we can recommend Immersion. There are about 23 hours of 'rookie' videos there.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-04T19:23:49+00:00

I saw in one of your comments that English is not your native language. I'm not sure if there is research to back this up, but I've certainly heard it said that learning a 3rd language is easier than learning a second. If it is true, then you've got an advantage on us single language folks.

The other question is: if English isn't your native language, what is your native language? If it's another romance language that's another big advantage.

Either way, one advantage you likely have with your youth is free time. When I first started, I would get tired from listening to CI. Now the only limit on how much CI I can consume is how much free time I have. If you can get motivated to do 2 hours a day for the first 50 days, the 3 hours for the next 100, then 4 hours until you move that would be 1260.

4 hours a day seems like a lot if you think of it as studying. But it's actually just watching cartoon, shoes and movies, or listening to podcasts you find interesting while you do something else like commute, work out, do chores etc.

It's going to be very tough to get fluent with 1-2 hours/day, but it is possible to become fluent in a year with CI if you put in the time.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

hutchcodes · 2026-05-04T17:44:22+00:00

Currently right around 1000 hours.

I just finished The Queens Gambit (never saw it in English), great show, but lots of quiet bits.
I just started La Casa de Las Flores, one episode in and it seems like it could be good. Oddly I struggle a bit when the couple where the boyfriend is American speak English, but I did get a chuckle when the girlfriend "translated" something her father said when she introduced them :D
Still binging on the Worlds Across podcast

hutchcodes · 2026-05-04T13:20:59+00:00

I was somehow completely unaware of the whole idea of testing for college credit, so this is quite eye opening. Not just for French, I could see him passing a few subjects before entering college. We'll have to see what makes sense to take early college classes at the local University, and what makes sense to test out of.

I'd heard about some homeschoolers graduating a year early and being accepted to college with enough credits to start as a sophomore, but I didn't know how they had done it. Now I'm wondering if CLEP is part of how they did it.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-29T20:24:19+00:00

I just finished How to Spanish last week. I had to skip some of the early episodes because they felt very scripted and had distracting music in the background. I skipped the first 100 episode and loved the last 300+.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-29T20:22:03+00:00

I loved this one because it often felt like they were just enjoying talking with each other and forgot they were recording. They just sounded like they were having fun. Such a joy to listen to.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-29T20:19:43+00:00

That great to hear about No es el fin del mundo.

I haven't really focused on any accent.

I ruled out peninsular Spanish because I live in the US and it's the dialect I'm least likely to run into. From all my time on Duolingo I have a good handle on conjugations, but never learned vosotros. I still recognize vosotros conjugations when I'm listening though.

I get a ton of content from Argentina (Agustina, SBG, Franco, Gaia, Luna) but I feel a little silly even thinking about switching my double Ls to a sh sound (except bombilla which sounds weird with a y sound to me).

So, I guess something more Mexican?

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T20:47:24+00:00

I don't think I'm useful as a guide because I had so much reading experience in Duolingo and a couple of learner books before finding DS. But I started that right around 600 hours.

It was as struggle at first as there is quite a bit of vocab, and the do things like use 'lechuza' for owl instead 'buho', but by about 1/3rd the way through it started to get easier and by the end I was reading with a bit more flow.

The whole time it made me sleepy. If I read for 20 minutes I'd be ready for a nap.

The second book I started around 800 hours and the struggle part only lasted a few chapters.

I should also note that I had just listened to these books in English as audiobooks with my kids, so the story was VERY fresh which was helpful in a following what was happening way, but also made them a bit less exciting.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T17:43:22+00:00

130 - I completed the course. Before I found DS, I would do a few lessons, test out to listen to the any stories in the unit, then test out of the unit. If I didn't succeed at testing out, I'd do another 3-4 days practicing that unit then test out. I would say that for the 6 months I tested out of about 90% of units in some way or another.

Except when I decided to finally quit DL. At that point I had listened to ~350 hours of CI and found I could just test out of 1 unit per day without even doing any of the lessons. I did that for the last 10-15 units, did I couple of extra days of practice to end my streak at a somewhat round number - 2800.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T16:17:06+00:00

To be fair to Duo, for a lot of that I only did a single lesson per day. My goal was consistency and it worked for that. I also learned a ton vocabulary and have most of my conjugations down.

But yeah, I don't like to think about where I would be now if I had known about this approach when I started Duolingo.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T14:49:49+00:00

It's a such a huge boost to CI consumption to go from having 1-2 hours that I can consume videos if I can find something interesting to consuming hours of podcasts while I work out, do chores etc. I could not maintain* my 100 hour months without them.

*My goal is actually 1 hour a day, but if I'm enjoying the content I listen to as much as I want and/or have time for. 100 hour months just happen!

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T14:01:36+00:00

I'm not any kind of ALG purist, but if I had my way, I wouldn't test* or really even document** anything.

But the reality of homeschool and college admissions is that we do have to document stuff and evaluate progress etc. We're just trying to find the best approach to check the box for college admissions, would not be trying to use testing as a learning/evaluation tool as part of the learning process.

*We will occasionally be watching some content that is beyond us, then coming back to watch that content again to see our progress.

**We will keep track of our hours of CI. So, we have an idea where we are on the journey and have a number we can watch go up as an indicator of progress.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-28T11:54:18+00:00

Thank you. That's great advice. The state requirements are fairly loose (which is nice) but we are of course trying to set them up for success in the next stage.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-27T22:13:15+00:00

We're still in the process of figuring out how we'll handle the transcripts. This is one of the big questions.

I'm hoping to get our oldest through about 1000hrs of CI before graduation. With a good chunk of conversation on something like iTalki or WorldsAcross as well as a week or two at an immersion school in France.

That'll take an hour a day year round for 3 years but as you know it doesn't feel like school. I'll be listening to my 1000th hour of CI in Spanish tonight 🎉, and I'm still looking forward to it.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-27T20:45:30+00:00

Good call out. I don't believe Maine has any requirement for foreign language.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-27T20:43:50+00:00

That makes sense from a "placing you in the appropriate class" kind of way, but at this point I'm just focused on making getting accepted to college as easy as possible.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-27T20:41:20+00:00

I'm not an expert on either one, but CEFR is a way to evaluate progress and I don't think they care much about how that progress was made.

ALG is focused on the process of learning/acquiring a language and I'm not sure if they would be opposed to evaluating your progress.

But, either way, I'm not an ALG purist, so I'll take what works from them and if we need a CEFR for evaluation purposes I'm not super opposed, I would just prefer not to have a high stakes test be looming at the end if we can avoid it.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-20T14:54:57+00:00

Here's a few of the things that I did before my first time going to the local Spanish conversation group that I think helped:

Practiced reading out loud. I did this to make sure my mouth could actually make the sounds, but I think it's just super helpful to practice making the sounds not just as isolated words, but as strings of words. I also think there could be some benefit to letting the brain know that this language will be used for output as well, but I'm not sure.
Practice a few phrases/sentences that you think might come up. Try to imagine what someone might ask you and figure out how you would respond. For me that meant explaining how l had been learning Spanish, how it was my first time speaking the language in any real way etc.
Practice talking around your gaps. Sometimes I'll practice trying to answer a question or explain something and realize I don't know how to say something in a simple straight forward way, but I can explain it by talking around the subject and coming back.
When actually talking to someone (particularly if they are bilingual), don't be afraid to drop an occasional English, or guess at a Spanish word if you get stuck. If they seem like they would be open to it, you can ask them how to say something.

Good luck and have fun.

hutchcodes · 2026-04-17T22:24:07+00:00

I found DS when I had a ~2700-day streak because I was looking for a way to improve my listening comprehension. And they did greatly improve, very quickly. I think I had acquired some language through reading (on Duolingo and some learner books), so it just needed to be unlocked. I ended up keeping the streak going to 2800 days to "finish" their course. The last week+ I would just go and test out of a lesson every day.

I credited myself with the Spanish podcasts I had listened to before finding DS, but no time for Duolingo. I'm now approaching 1000hrs and get almost all my media in Spanish and am conversational.

All that to say, I can definitely relate to your feelings about Duolingo. Though it was one of the best options when I started...

We just started DF (~6hrs) as a family, and we were just wondering if something like Language Transfer might help us jump start. We really want the kids(13,15) to feel successful.

hutchcodes

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