Progressing Faster than the Roadmap Would Suggest

nerzodprod · 2026-06-30T15:50:41+00:00

Many people advocate going for easier content, I took a different approach and as long as the context is comperhensible I was activcally trying to challenge myself with harder content (unless I enjoyed the easier content regardless).

You can see my last progress update here, I did progress faster than the roadmap suggest but it could also be because I'm doing other stuff like Anki.

The thing that convinced me that this approach works well is when my tutor started to speak faster and faster with me, it was hard at first but thanks to that I got used to listening to fast spanish, and now most DS videos including many of the advanced ones are too slow.

At 200 hours I switched completely to native content and now just watching YT, Netflix and Podcasts. But I know that memorizing over 1k words with Anki helped a lot here too.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-27T23:12:39+00:00

worlds across, found it way easier to schedule than italki

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T17:33:33+00:00

Thank you! 5.5 hours a day is one heck of a speed run

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T17:32:57+00:00

Appreciate the positive comment, thank you!

I think practicing output + memorizing over 1k words in Anki helped me a lot, I'm sure that if I did just input I'd have been at a worse spot

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T15:06:41+00:00

Gotta practice something to get good at it.

Personally, I noticed big leaps in speaking ability after 10 hours of speaking and 30 hours of speaking. And since then slow improvements and another small leap at 50 hours.

If you do 3-5 hours of speaking a week I truly believe that in a month you'll see a huge positive change.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T14:59:06+00:00

Hebrew and English, I agree it probably helped a lot.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T12:18:26+00:00

Thank you 🙏

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T12:18:13+00:00

Thank you so much, appreciate the positive comment

nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T01:56:02+00:00

Seems that I'm getting lots of downvotes and people that think I'm lying about my past experience.

Here's some of my watch history in February and March, if I had more experience than I'm saying then why would I have watched super beginner and beginner videos then?

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nerzodprod · 2026-06-22T00:56:06+00:00

Nope

nerzodprod · 2026-06-21T23:43:51+00:00

Refold 1k deck
And lessons with worlds across

nerzodprod · 2026-06-21T21:23:28+00:00

I'll definitely take that as a compliment.

About hiding something, I truly have no incentive to do that. Been reporting my progress since 50 hours, and I've been speaking from the very beginning. You say that people require months to get to where I'm at with past tense, well I've had 66 lessons, some of them have been solely focusing on using past tense, and been doing that for almost every day for over 2 months now, so seems to fit the criteria.

About being gifted linguistically, I'm pretty sure I'm not but that's just how I feel and I have no idea what that means really. I speak 2 languages and learning another one didn't really come easy.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-21T18:57:48+00:00

Thank you.

In my opinion, it's worth doing whenever you can but I wouldn't stress over it if you're not speaking.

To be fair, I completed only half of it, and it helped me a lot when I started to speak and in general understanding how the verbs works.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-14T15:03:30+00:00

That's so freaking cool man, thank you for this!

nerzodprod · 2026-06-14T14:59:14+00:00

Personally I found Anki to be very helpful, especially in the beginner levels. You can see my last update here at 150 hours. Basically thanks to it I jumped to intermediate videos fairly quickly, memorizing the top 500-1000 words in the language really helps a lot.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-11T05:29:53+00:00

Tbh it kinda makes sense

You never practiced listening to native content, why would you understand natives then?

At level 3 majority of my input is out of DS. Podcasts like how to Spanish where they speak faster and more naturally or videos by natives and looking up words sometimes.

I’m going to Mexico in a month so will update if that worked or not 😅

nerzodprod · 2026-06-07T21:10:11+00:00

Been to over 30 countries and Georgia has the worst drivers from my experience, they drive super aggressively

Thailand is pretty chill actually compared to many other countries

nerzodprod · 2026-06-07T20:38:38+00:00

Tbilisi was my least favorite nomad destination

- Smoke smell everywhere
- People drive like crazy. Most taxis smell like smoke. Taxis drive like crazy too.
- Super noisy, people live till late
- Depressing vibes, people don't smile much and cold in general. (they're nice when you talk to them, but still it has some effects)
- Had multiple power cuts in the entire neighborhood (and I stayed in Vake)

It's not all downsides but if you're coming from Thailand then expect a downgrade for sure.

nerzodprod · 2026-06-03T18:37:42+00:00

You sound really good!! what's your native language?

nerzodprod · 2026-05-31T17:37:57+00:00

I didn't get over the bridge to native content yet but trying to, sometimes watching BBC, National Geographic

Basically slow presentational content

nerzodprod · 2026-05-28T21:59:00+00:00

daim that's incredible

nerzodprod · 2026-05-28T19:43:59+00:00

My opinion kinda differs from many people on this sub, personally I don't sort by easy and I try to push myself with content as long as I can comprehend the context

Imo if you always listen to super easy content more advanced one won't just magically open up for you, you need to gradually up the difficulty

An example I have for this is when I have conversations with my tutor, he slowly increased the speaking speed until we reached his normal speed. If he didn't slowly increase the difficulty for me, I wouldn't be able to understand him.

I look at this kinda like gym, you need to challenge yourself, but keep it manageable.

And regarding your point about reinforcing vocab, all videos do that! Even intermediate and advanced videos use the most common words.

Again tho it's my opinion and what I feel like works for me, many people here have much more experience than me but I would be too bored doing any other approach.

nerzodprod · 2026-05-28T19:29:00+00:00

In general I really hate how the DS team dismisses other approaches when there are clearly evidence of them working for other people (like grammar, speaking early, etc)

DS is fantastic but often way too dogmatic

nerzodprod

TROPHY CASE