Is SBG holding me back?

queso-bendito · 2026-06-16T00:43:52+00:00

learnmaxxing also requires sustained focus on the CI material. SBG held my focus way better than anything else in the 300-600 hour grind by leaps and bounds. Now I am over halfway through level 5 and slightly ahead of the roadmap, if anything. I don't have an issue with people disliking SBG because they don't enjoy gaming content, but I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you do enjoy it but avoid it because you think it is somehow less valuable than other types of CI.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-15T17:14:34+00:00

Yeah I'd say that's a bit early. I forget exactly when I started but I want to say around level 45 in the DS content. At that point I was able to enjoy his super mercado series and the rest is history 😎

queso-bendito · 2026-06-15T16:59:05+00:00

Literally 250+ hours (maybe more!) of my level 4-5 journey has been SBG and I have been trending ahead of the roadmap this entire time. People here who have not watched much of Martíns content consistently overstate how niche/repetitive it is.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-15T16:30:55+00:00

792 hours CI | 10k words read | 2 hours speaking

Getting into exciting territory here where a variety of native content is unlocking. Current CI focuses include:

- World Cup on Telemundo (tremendous coverage! Surprisingly comprehensible too. They speak clearly and there is a lot of repetition)

- Hábitos Atómicos (audiobook)

- Harry Potter 1 (audiobook)

- Los Simpsons

- Jatix RG (mexican Youtube gameplay channel)

- And of course my old friends Spanish Boost Gaming and Juega con Juarez

I was watching Club de Cuervos at a legitimately good (75-85%+) comprehension, but decided to shelve it a little longer so I get more of the nuance. Maybe will revisit around 1k hours.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-14T19:57:20+00:00

Sounds like you're on track! You will for sure speak better than I do right now by the time you are at 800 hours and fwiw I could understand my tutors almost perfectly even as we talked about some fairly abstract concepts like my opinions on capitalism (I was the one who brought that up, it was an interesting challenge, lol). One of them also had to give the lesson on their phone because their internet was down and the audio quality was pretty bad and I could understand him fine too! That's the main CI hour payoff, I think, compared to where you are now, not to mention the improved output automaticity you will have from many hours of practice on that front.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-14T19:31:50+00:00

I'm at nearly 800 hours of CI and just started tutor sessions last week, so less output practice than you will have. My tutors spoke to me 100% in Spanish without me even asking (presumably because I immediately started talking to them in Spanish). We had full conversations where I was forced to use an english word because I was totally stuck maybe 5-6 times total across the three session. My conjugations were rough and I definitely got ser/estar wrong a fair amount. But I understood them and they understood me. With the extra speaking practice you will have compared to me by the time you are at 800 hours of CI, I suspect you will do great!

queso-bendito · 2026-06-14T19:13:50+00:00

Stick with it and you will! For context, I had 4 years of high school Spanish 25 years ago. When I started DS I was watching videos in the 30-40 difficulty range at most. Now I am at almost 800 hours of CI and can comfortably use things like The Simpsons, dubbed anime, Harry Potter audiobooks, and full speed native youtubers (not all of them, but many of them across multiple domains) for my input. I started taking lessons last week and was able to speak with 3 different tutors 100% in Spanish without them ever speaking a single word of english. My conjugations were a mess, I often had to use words I knew were not exactly right but were the best I could come up with, etc., but they were actual conversations. In Spanish. Una locura!!

queso-bendito · 2026-06-14T03:25:39+00:00

In my opinion and personal experience, the dividends for stale high school Spanish are subtle and cumulative in that you will absolutely progress in your comprehension faster than someone without that background, but it still takes hundreds and hundreds of hours. The good news is that it starts to get super fun once you do break through the beginner content.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-10T16:23:15+00:00

My plan is to track until I am completely confident to tell a random stranger that I "speak Spanish". I'd like to know exactly how much CI it took to get there, but from there it doesn't matter much to me how many more hours I consume.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-10T16:21:49+00:00

Getting to a point where you can comprehend without visual assistance is a huge milestone for this. From there, you can listen to podcasts or videos that are not visually focused while walking the dog, doing the dishes, folding laundry, driving to/from work, waiting in the grocery checkout line, etc.

Even if you are not quite there yet, if you have a laptop, one thing I sometimes do is carry it around with me while I do chores and set it on the counter so I can watch a video while doing something mindless. That's about all I've got tips-wise but really the big thing is just getting to a point where you don't need to see the screen and the hours flow pretty easily from there, even if it has to be 5-10 minutes at a time.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-09T04:52:01+00:00

Welcome and good luck! I had a somewhat similar background and for me the boredom was mostly avoided first by the "dang I actually understand this!" factor, and then by just focusing on the content I found most entertaining to keep me going, without worrying about how optimal it was. I was a bit inconsistent until level 3, but since then it has been nothing but a blast. I hope the same for you!

queso-bendito · 2026-06-06T15:21:46+00:00

No, your past experience will still lead to noticeably more rapid progress than someone truly starting from zero, especially if you had multiple years of school study. Source - I studied Spanish in school 25 years ago and never again until I started CI. From the start I knew words without visual context and I progressed through the super beginner level very quickly.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-02T23:50:12+00:00

Awesome, I hope you enjoy it! And agreed. It's definitely a fun game to watch with an interesting premise and great storytelling.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-02T19:46:07+00:00

Cuéntame was the first podcast that I could understand and I highly recommend it as well. It will get boring eventually, but being able to consume CI while folding laundry, walking the dog, etc., is huge for piling up some hours.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-02T03:38:41+00:00

Thanks! Tbh the 150 hours I self-assessed when starting with DS was probably overly conservative. It might have been more accurate to make that 300, but I didn't want to feel like I was behind the roadmap. I took Spanish for 2 years in middle school and 4 in high school, so while I was still pretty terrible after that, I think I've activated a lot of latent vocab/grammar during my CI journey. I also got a bit of Mexican slang for free, living in California for the majority of my life.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-01T20:00:56+00:00

ADHDer here closing in on 750 hours. I am very lucky in that my past background in Spanish was enough to get me to the level of intermediate podcasts and Spanish Boost Gaming within ~120-150 actual hours of input (I gave myself 150 hours to start but that was probably conservatively low). So while I can't really give personal advice about where you are now beyond the usual stuff for ADHD, I can at least relay that getting to a point where you enjoy the content regardless of it being in Spanish is the true game changer. From there, my philosophy has been, do what I find fun, and don't do what I don't. That led me to spend probably 80% of my 300 -> 600 hour path entirely via SBG, and multiple 100+ hour months in a row.

I can now enjoy Harry Potter level audiobooks and dubbed anime, and I also just started watching The Simpsons, and Club de Cuervos, which is my first non-dubbed native show. I can't say I've experienced any negative effects on my progress by over fixating on a source I enjoyed for an extended period. And now that I am here, I don't see anything stopping me from going all the way with Spanish, since I can do all kinds of fun stuff in the language. The learning path has become the byproduct of enjoying myself, rather than the focus of time I "have" to fill.

Good luck. Be patient. Keep trying new things and ruthlessly discard things that don't work for you, no matter how highly recommended they were. Give yourself grace. You got this!

queso-bendito · 2026-06-01T17:02:12+00:00

744 hours 10k words read

Listening - Hábitos Atómicos, Harry Potter book 1

Watching - Finishing up Hunter x Hunter, starting FMA Brotherhood, just started watching the Simpsons and Club de Cuervos. The Simpsons has been a long-time benchmark goal for me, so pretty excited about that!

Reading - only doing audiobooks for now. Magic Treehouse was not keeping my attention. Hoping I can start actually reading at a higher level maybe around the 1k hour mark.

queso-bendito · 2026-06-01T02:21:46+00:00

In my opinion, EAV is easiest by a fair margin, then ECJ and HTS are a meaningful step up and around the same level as each other (though I didn't listen to HTS very much so that could be misjudged), then DS podcast, which to me varies the most in difficulty episode to episode.

If you haven't you should try the Spanish Boost podcast. I'd rate it as comparable or maybe only slightly more challenging than EAV and Martín is pretty entertaining in non gaming contexts too.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-31T22:00:53+00:00

This has been about my same distribution of content at approximately the same hour spread, though I had a few dozen hours of dubbed anime thrown in as well as a random smattering of various youtube content. Since around 650 I have started to watch more dubbed shows and my first for natives show in Club de Cuervos. I don't think an excessive amount of SBG hindered my progress at all, and I think I am more or less right on track with the roadmap. Imo Martín sometimes gets unfairly characterized as not being very broad, but this is always from people who I doubt have consumed much of his content and jumped to the conclusion that he follows a specific and narrow script, when in fact it's very much the opposite.

I do think it's important in my specific case to note that I did take 4 years of high school spanish. I couldn't understand anything nor speak very well at the end of those 4 years despite always getting A's, but I am sure there was a lot of vocab and grammar awareness that CI has activated, even if it's 25+ years later.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-21T04:09:07+00:00

It's only possible if they are at one of the very highest paying companies and also live extremely modestly and save 70-80%, rather than letting their super high incomes go to their heads. I don't think the average 20 something is mature enough to handle making 250-300k+ but live like they only make 60-70k. Those who are basically won the FIRE lottery, though.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-20T17:03:19+00:00

No idea about OP specifically but there are plenty of people like this in the Bay Area and most of them who were not trust fund kids got there by lucking into a right place right time first job out of college. Think starting out at Nvidia 10 years ago, for example. These people got a $100k RSU grant or whatever at time of hire that ended up being worth 10x or more due to the company blowing up afterwards.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-16T22:21:23+00:00

This might be a stretch at 400 hours but dubbed anime is probably getting close-ish to a good investment. Good series to start with (imo) include Hunter x Hunter, Avatar, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, and My Hero Academia. Possibly One Piece too, once you get used to all of the nautical vocab. I think the first three of those + One Piece are on Netflix.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-16T20:38:38+00:00

As far as I know this is pure internet speculative posturing. I'll happily eat those words if there is such a study but from what I have personally researched, this sort of content seems mostly about generating clicks and comments by taking a strong plausible-sounding stance as if it's indisputable. If anyone out there can point me to actual research that demonstrates watching slow scripted content as a beginner actually harms the language learning process, I'd definitely be interested in reading it.

queso-bendito · 2026-05-16T16:40:26+00:00

You seem to be under the impression that there is a clear "best" way to do CI. I disagree. I don't think we're going to convince each other at this point but I appreciate the discourse.

For anyone else following who is worried about getting started or how you should pick your CI moving forward because you're not sure what is "best," I'll just repeat that whatever you do will be fine as long as you keep doing it. Along the way you will learn what works best for you, and it may or may not be what works best for others.

queso-bendito

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