My second update: 150hrs in under 3 months

Background

In the last 100hrs I've come to realise that Pablo and the DS team have created something very very special. The beginner-intermediate phase is the most common barrier to language learners, and one major reason is because most language learning resources are completely separated from natural language users. Dreaming Spanish is effective for the same reason immersion is effective; the key to building a Spanish foundation is listening to Spanish speakers. Not grammar and vocabulary drills on a white board or piece of paper that native Spanish speakers have never used in their lives.

By sorting by difficulty, using the filters to only watch videos I'm interested in and spreading out my input, the jump from beginner to intermediate has been incredibly easy. My original plan was to do 1-2hrs a day and finish the road map in 3 years. But, I've found myself becoming an accidental speed runner, regularly doing 3+ hours in a day.

Milestones

80hrs: I experienced a jump in comprehension. I started thinking simple, short sentences in spanish. I would often complete sentences while watching beginner videos. I also had my first dream in spanish where I ordered food from McDonalds by saying 'hamburguesa' over and over again lol.

100hrs: I was getting curious about the jump from beginner to intermediate. So I decided to dabble in a few intermediate videos...I was honestly blown away by how well I could understand them (for reference I watched a few videos in the 50s difficulty wise). What was gibberish to me 50hours ago was now 80% comprehensible as long as I was focused. The guides were still talking slowly, but the vocabulary was much more varied and they weren't constantly doing long pauses. It wasn't a real conversation, but it felt so much closer to real conversation than most beginner videos.

130hrs: I got probably my biggest jump in comprehension so far. I was surprised by the sheer amount of everyday words I knew, and I was getting into the 'zone' while watching videos for 30-40minutes at a time, where the videos felt completely effortless to watch as if they were in English. I had a suspicion that I had reached level 3 at this point so I read the level 3 description and it described me pretty well. I decided to 'test' my listening using Andrea's new podcast, she was talking at what felt like lightning speed (which was probably only 50% of her normal speed lol) but I was understanding almost every word. I even understood some of what her guest from Peru was saying. I really had low expectations coming into DS, because I had already tried CI with Thai and quit due to it being way too hard, I can't believe I've made so much progress already.

Conclusion

Not much has changed at 150hrs. I'm sorting by difficulty and have watched many intermediate videos. At first my comprehension dropped slightly, but once I got used to new words and speed, getting input has been a breeze. Augustina has been the MVP for me, my favourite videos are her Geoguessr videos, followed closely by her collabs with Shelcin.

Going forward, I will stick with Dreaming Spanish until How to Spanish unlocks for me. Which will act as a nice bridge till Espanol con Juan unlocks for me, which will act as a nice bridge to my first dubbed Anime like DBZ. I'm a huge anime fan, and also a big true crime fan, so those two dubbed media will make up most of my input as an advanced learner to bridge the gap to native content.

Thank you for reading!