40 hours in Learning Spanish

July 6, 2023, by Croc

I have reached 40 hours in learning Spanish using the Comprehensible Input (CI) method. I thought I would write out many of the thoughts I had while doing this. I am trying to get myself to do more, but hey, baby steps!

First off, I started January 1st this year. Do the math, you can already tell that I am not the most consistent person. I notice that I get super into watching content for a week or two before dropping off it for a month. I know that it would be better to be consistent, but I often times have troubles with consistency, as my interests change rapidly week by week, it’s hard to finish anything for myself.

But, I am happy with the first 40 hours, and even with the noticeable gaps of learning, I still notice the difference! Sometimes when taking a break you can even notice the difference since the last time you’ve worked on something, and I can say that it’s the same for this.

So, what did I watch to get to 40 hours? Well, at the start of my journey I of course watched a lot of Dreaming Spanish’s super beginner videos. They were very much a drag. I had some Spanish knowledge before starting Dreaming Spanish and logging hours, though I don’t have any of those numbers logged anywhere. I think after watching about 150 of those super beginner videos I tried to abandon that ship ASAP, and take the leap into beginner videos. The immediate leap from super beginner was difficult, but I think now I can understand many of the beginner videos. I keep trying to watch content that is way harder to understand, hoping that maybe I would be able to leap from beginner to intermediate faster? But I don’t think there’s any clear shortcut, so I’ll just keep watching the beginner videos.

I also started watching a lot of Peppa Pig in Spanish, which I think helps a lot. The visuals and the narrator explaining constantly what is happening on the screen is very nice. I also watched about 20 episodes of Bluey, though I would say my comprehension was even lower. But I was having fun, so what the heck right? I highly recommend Bluey to anyone wanting to learn a foreign language. There are so many dubs on disney+, its crazy!

Another thing that I think is good is making a new YouTube channel, and then watching Peppa Pig in Spanish. YouTube has started to recommend a lot of other cartoons dubbed in Spanish, like Garfield (which I used to watch as a kid) and SpongeBob. Unfortunately for me, I still can’t really understand what is going on in those cartoons. YouTube also started recommending me a lot of other Spanish speaking YouTubers that if I find interesting, I go ahead and subscribe to them so that I can remember them for later. My goal for Spanish is to be able to understand Spanish gamers, because that is my interest as well.

I would like to mention here that Spanish isn’t my first ever language that I’ve attempted to learn. Before Spanish, I tried learning Russian. Unfortunately, the method I used for learning Russian I think set me back a lot. Instead of using comprehensible input, I jumped straight into the deep end and forced myself to watch over 400 hours of incomprehensible input, using google translate to understand words I didn’t understand. I think that’s what ultimately lead me to quit learning Russian, in which I haven’t touched the language since early 2020. I think that at this point my Russian is about on par with my Spanish, though that could be because my Russian has greatly deteriorated over the past 3 and a half years.

Anyhow, I am glad to have gotten to 40 hours! Dreaming Spanish says that at 150 I can start understanding their intermediate videos, in which there is a lot more interesting content there than in the beginner, or even super beginner area. Good luck to me!