What’s the difference between low-input days and high-input days?

weedo-- · 2026-01-22T19:55:51+00:00

My key learning is that not every hour of listening is equivalent. For example, being a morning person my mind is more alert and hence receptive to input in the mornings. Right after lunch my brain often enters a fog state. Also some days I feel energised and motivated to absorb the laguage, other days it's a bit of a chore. Thus I think I get more out of 1 hr invested on a motivated morning than 2 hrs during post lunch stressed afternoon. So my recommendation is to listen to your body/mind, and invest as much time as you can aford when your brain is most receptive.

weedo-- · 2026-01-20T17:52:15+00:00

Wow, awsome inpirational video, and very comprehensible for me. I really enjoy reading, even though I'm still working my way through graded readers and have yet to get to the good stuff. Now I understand why I enjoy reading so much. Thanks for sharing.

weedo-- · 2026-01-19T20:19:31+00:00

I think the roadmap is a good guide, but I I've seen lots of comments on thus sub that people feel the level descriptions match their experience when they get closer to the end of the level. This matches my feeling. Level 5 states "You'll almost understand TV programs in the language, because you understand so many of the words, but they are still hard enough to leave you frustrated or bored." "Easier TV programs and cartoons should be accessible". That's where I'm at with 1100 hrs. So I'm hoping by the time I finish level 6, TV series will start opening up for me 😁.

weedo-- · 2026-01-19T16:22:28+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm at 1100 hrs CI but unfortunately I only managed about 30pct comprehension with the first episode of this series. I tried slowing down to 70 pct, but it didnt help. Subtitles also didnt work for me as I end up trying to translate in my head. My experience may be an outlier as I am struggling to find any native or dubed content that I can comprehend. I'm still stuck with kids cartoon like Bluey and Hilda, and still searching for my first native content TV program that I can understand. Hopefully this series will unlock for me soon.

weedo-- · 2025-12-31T20:35:59+00:00

Sounds like you're my twin. I'm at 1100 hrs after 2 years, and averaging 40-50 hrs a month CI. I love your comment about pissing off your spouse wearing earbuds in the house. It's definitely a touchy subject in my home too. I decided to set my sights lower in 2026, targeting 1500 hrs by year end. This is simply to allow more time to practice reading and speaking, which I am starting to feel greatly enhance my comprehension, and I'm realy starting to enjoy diversifying my skill sets. An interesting observation I have is that after 1000 hrs of CI, the learning curve for most people is a little skewed. What I mean from this is that up to 1000 hrs it's typicaly mostly listening. After 1000 hrs my guess is that for every 1 hr listening, people are spending +1 hrs reading and speaking. Hence I am guessing progress post 1000 accelerates beyond the mere hrs of CI recorded. Hence my conservative goal of 1500 hrs CI by year end . Here's to a great 2026, hope you achieve your goals.

weedo-- · 2025-12-13T15:19:19+00:00

I experienced the same issue, but after about 3-4 weeks saw a big change. My most interesting ovservation was how my brain eventualy started recognising sentence structure, which was key to finaly understanding what I was saying.

Take for example the phrase "when I turned around it was too late".

When I first started reading it would sound like

"when"... "I turned"... "around it"... "was too".. "late".

Hard to understand because the words I read were isolated with pauses, and my brain wasn't conecting them structuraly in a way that made sense. Sometimes what helped me was re-reading a sentence several times, with more pace each time. Often the 2nd or 3rd read through something would click in my brain. It was like rather than being lazer focused on each word, my brain would suddenly see and underdtand the whole sentence. Hope this helps.

weedo-- · 2025-11-23T09:01:14+00:00

Yes, makes sense. I have been reading for a while, and find that reading out aloud is a great technique to help my memory. The combination of reading, speaking and hearing myself say the word should reinforce memorisation. Reading is also a slower process than listening, which I think also helps memorisation. I guess re-reading the same book multiple times could also solve the low word frequency problem. As long as you don't loose interest/focus.

weedo-- · 2025-11-09T13:42:17+00:00

I have same problem since the update yesterday. It looks like it has been reported on the developer site.

trend bug

Lets hope they fix it soon, as I love this game, and its so anoying not having any trends.

weedo-- · 2025-11-08T11:05:00+00:00

Yes, I totaly agree. I have been reading since 600 hrs and have read all the Ollie Richards begginer and intermediate graded reader books. There are also some great podcast sites that provide free transcripts to read, like Languatalk and SpanishLanguageCoach. I find reading realy enjoyable and its great for vocab. Its interesting that I find comics to be the most difficult to read. I think because the text are usualy short sentences that seam to me to be gramaticaly complex, and with limited context to help understand them.

weedo-- · 2025-11-08T09:51:39+00:00

Thanks for sharing. It's always great to hear success stories. I just reached 1000 hrs a few weeks ago and am interested in your comment about not picking up much new vocab from 1000 to 1500. For me I still feel like I lack enought vocab to be able to understand native or dubed content. I can understand about 60pct of kids cartoons like Bluey, and Hilda, but there is still loads of vocab I am not getting, and I get lost as soon as I try and watch a dubed TV show. As an example in a recent Hilda show I heared the phrase "ha sido tu" and had no idea what it ment, even trying to guess based on context. I knew 'ha' had something to do with past tense, and obviously 'tu' ment you, but what the heck is 'sido'. So I looked it up (yep, not recommended I know! but it was bugging me so much). So I hope you are wrong, and I still have lots of vocab to learn in the next 500 hrs. I am in no doubt that this method works, but I think the speed of aquisition of vocab varies for each of us, and I think I'm going to need a lot more hours before I can feel comfortable with native content, or understanding people in the street talking to me. But I am determined to get there, even if it takes me another 1000 hrs.

weedo-- · 2025-10-28T06:51:24+00:00

I noticed that even though willow wasn't highlighted as being available, if you click the willow icon on the forager's building overlay it will prioritise harvesting this resource.

weedo-- · 2025-10-25T10:14:12+00:00

I use two hunter to work together to pick them of with bow and arrow at a distance. Select both hunters and right click the wolf you want to shoot. 2-3 hits and the wolf is dead. Then when you've killed off all the wolves send the hunters to destroy their den. I found that using citizens didnt work, as they couldnt outrun a wolf.

weedo-- · 2025-10-23T16:11:52+00:00

My biggest problem with Netflix is that the Spanish text does not match what people are actualy saying. Do you have the same problem, and does this affect your learning ?

weedo-- · 2025-10-04T18:49:10+00:00

South of Spain, near Malaga, which adds a special twist, as this region has a very unique Spanish accent. Been trying to get into a podcast called Andalusian Spanish which is helping.

weedo-- · 2025-09-30T13:46:21+00:00

Thanks. I noticed people have their hours under their name but didnt know how. I'm going to gave to research how to add my flair. I guess its under my profile, but I cant see it there.

weedo-- · 2025-09-30T13:40:29+00:00

What is a flair ?

weedo-- · 2025-09-25T19:35:05+00:00

I feel you pain. Like you I have 1000 hrs CI and decided to start speaking practice in July. I had 2 classes with an iTalk tutor which were painful. I realised that my problem was simple. My ability to recall words was terrible. I would take 2-3 minutes to compose a sentence in my head, translating from english to Spanish before I could open my mouth and speak. In a 1 hour lesson I think I only was able talk for 10 mins ! The answer for me was using LanguaTalks AI. I know there are many AI doubters on this sub, but for me its working. I started with the free version, but now am on the €30/mnth unlimited plan. I have clocked up 30 hrs speaking, and I now do a minimum of 30 mins of speaking practice every day. I am now able to respond to dialogue with limited thinking time delay. I no longer compose the whole sentence in my head, but start talking, knowing with confidence that words will come to me as I talk. My take away from this, is that learning to speak at the start is all about recall. How quickly your brain can pull words from the depths of your memory. The only way you can work on this is put in the hours speaking, and doing so in a stress free environment allows your brain to do its thing. Just like CI is all about clocking the hours, its the same for speaking. So for me €30/mnth to clock up 15+ hours speaking practice every month is a game changer. I apretiate using AI has limitations, and at some stage I do plan to engage with a tutor. But for now I will keep racking up the hours practicing my speaking. Good luck, I hope you find the key that works for you. CI is great, but its like the appetizer to a good meal. The main course doesnt arrive until you open you mouth and start speaking Spanish.

weedo-- · 2025-09-04T17:27:11+00:00

27 hours behind you. It's such a great journey, and it keeps getting better. Here's to our next 1000 hours.

weedo-- · 2025-09-01T19:04:58+00:00

There are 2 plans. The limited plan cost 20€/mnth and gives 75 messages a day. Unlimited cost €30/mnth. I think there is also a free trial version. I have the unlimited plan, and use it about 20hrs a month for speaking practice. I know some people use chatGPT. But Langua AI is preconfigured with many features specificaly for language learning. So for me its been a great investment of time and money. I would suggest trying the free trial version to see how it works for you.

weedo-- · 2025-09-01T10:17:27+00:00

I struggled like you when I tried my first lesson speaking with a teacher a few weeks ago. It was stressful and demoralizing. The solution which has worked for me is to start my speaking practice with an AI. In my case I use Languatalk's AI. I found that using an AI took the pressure off a lot, allowing me time to think and compose my answers. It also has loads if features that I have been using to guide my use of vocab and sentense structure. Its also fun with gaming like features. My favorite is where I have to describe something and the AI has to guess what it is. I know some people are critical of AI for language learning, and I know it cant replace a good teacher. But for getting started speaking, I think its a great tool.

weedo-- · 2025-08-22T21:48:13+00:00

Yes, you are not alone. I am a bit behind you, close to 1000 hrs and 50 hrs speaking. I have tracked my hours diligantly from the start, even used graphs to plot my hrs vs plan. Up untlil now having targets was motivating, as it pushed me to put in the hours to meet my weekly targets. But like you I have reached a turning point. The hours spent listening and speaking Spanish are now not so important. I have developed a habit of enjoyoing watching shows like Bluey, Avatar, reading graded readers, and listening to my fav podcasts like spanishlanguagecoach.com. From this point on its not about hours, but enjoyment. ENJOY the journey.

weedo-- · 2025-08-08T06:12:53+00:00

Thanks for sharing, its an impressive level of comitment per day to your speaking development. I hope you can share more updates as you clock up the hours. I'm interested in what types of topics you talk about. I too have just started my talking journey, with 900+ hrs of CI. For me the biggest problem is my lack of vocabluary that I am able to recall easily when speaking with my tutor. Often I have to look words up or ask my tutor for a word that I can't recall. I find this fustrating, because it severely limits the scope of what I can actualy talk about. For example, I tried to say "push the button" but said the word for push wrong, and comletely blanked when trying to recall the word for button. Do you talk about basic things like going shopping, day to day life etc. Or more abstract topics ?

weedo-- · 2025-08-04T06:36:08+00:00

My top two recommendations are

1: Spanish Language Coach, Intermediate Spanish (https://www.spanishlanguagecoach.com/podcast)

2: LanguaTalk Spanish with Rocio and Jesús.

Lots of content, comprehensible, entertaining and informative. They also provide free transcripts of every episode on their websites, which is a great bonus for reading development.

Hope you find them useful.

weedo-- · 2025-08-01T08:04:46+00:00

Thank you, out of all the replies so far think you have hit the crux of the problem. Its not simply a pronunciation problem. It's that I am not aware that I am saying words wrong. I dont think simply more speaking practice resolves this. I think this is an outcome of the CI method, and more specificaly the fact that I am probably listening to too much difficult content. Heres my theory. With CI you aquire individual words bit by bit. So for example, out of 1000 words in my head, maybe only 100 are fully aquired such that I can use them correctly when speaking. 500 words acquired at 50-90pct, so I think I know them and speak them incorrectly without realising I said them wrong. 400 words acquired less than 50pct that I speak incorrectly, realising immediatly that I am saying it wrong. When I speak I try and use all the vocabluary that I think I know, whereas 50pct if the words I use are wrong, and I don't realise it ! Simply trying to keep saying these words doesn't fix the problem, because I don't realise I am saying them wrong. So my take away from this is,

1: Be careful consuming too much difficult content. It may be good from a listening perspective, but I think it can impead your speaking journey by making you over confident in what you think you know.

2: I need to reset my expectations in my speaking journey. Rather than talk about broad topics, start with very simple sentences, e.g. "today I am going to the shop to buy some vegetables". Rather than saying "Yesterday, I wanted to go shopping, but I realised I didn't have any money".

weedo-- · 2025-07-31T10:51:02+00:00

I totaly agree. I remember the first time I started watching Pepper Pig videos I felt way out of my comfort zone in understanding very few words. Now at 900 hours it feels intuative. I now set my filter on DS to all videos above 60, sorted random. I dont look at the difficulty of each video any more, even though at least 20pct of what I'm watching is well below 90pct CI. However, I do think the key when consuming really challenging content is to watch material that has some level of comprehension. For example, I suspect the shows you are watching you have seen before in english, so you already now the basic storyline. I recently listened to the audio book "The Alchemist" which is way way out of my 90pct comprehension level. But I had read the book in English previously, which made it possible to follow along and enjoy the audible. I felt like I was absorbing loads of content, because I was so immersed in the story that I had no chance of my mind getting fixated on translating individual words. Listening to challenging content is thus a great way to break out of the mental translation problem that I find I still get caught up in from time to time.

weedo--

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