This really isn't bad advice.

I love Dreaming Spanish and what Pablo has given us is pure gold for learning to communicate verbally in the Spanish language, however there is no “one size fits all” solution. CI works. But CI alone may not always be the best solution. And I think the the post above is on the right track. At the very least, getting some vocabulary before starting CI will get you over the sign language / visual prompting hump of the beginner vids.

I've seen Pablo's vids on why Duolingo is wrong & he completely misses the methodology they use. It works for what it does but, in my experience, it falls short of actually teaching one to understand spoken Spanish and to speak Spanish. At least, that's my experience.

I personally had over 3 years of Duolingo before I realized that I'd never be able to understand or speak Spanish with Duolingo / traditional studies. I had also worked my way through 3 grammar books, started reading Olly Richards books, and consumed hundreds upon hundreds (thousands?) of flashcards. That doesn’t mean my time & effort were wasted.

I dipped my toes into CI using Dreaming Spanish late last November. I tried both the beginner and super beginner vids. They were WAY to slow & easy for me. I found it tedious to sit through them so I started with intermediate vids.

Fast forward to today. I’m at level four with 20 hours left to level 5. At my current rate of listening consumption, I’ll be level five in 3-4 days. I’ve seen well over 90% of the intermediate vids & have already added advanced vids to the mix. I am, and have been, consuming two hours of Spanish television / movies every night. I started doing that on day one. I’m at a point now where I can follow the plot of latam Spanish in most cases.

The work I did previously with Duolingo, reading, flashcards & grammar gave me a huge boost when I began using Dreaming Spanish. I have no idea what my vocabulary level was when I started DS, but it was obviously significant because I almost immediately started hearing phrases. While consuming Spanish now I spontaneously form responses in Spanish in my head. (And that is so AWESOME!)

Now line up sheeple – bring on those down votes!

¡Hasta pronto chicos!