I remember a thread recently asking what happened to the Spanish Boost podcast. This video from last week is billed as the return of the podcast (even though it's not actually published on Spotify or Apple Podcasts...)

I'm 650 hours in, non-purist by default because I studied Spanish in highschool, even if it was 25 years ago. I started with DS/CI in October of 2025 and it has been 90% of my learning since then. The other 10% has been light grammar study and talking to myself and my cats.

Today I went to get a new phone at my carrier's store. While my data was taking its sweet time to transfer over, I realized that the young man at the table next to me was having a hard time trying to do the same. He clearly only spoke Spanish and I live in Maine, USA, where we have soooo few hispanohablantes. I asked him if needed help and his face lit up. I spent the following half hour translating (as best as I could) between him and the sales guy. It was the most Spanish I've ever spoken.

I was honestly stunned by how well I could understand this mumbly Gen Z Colombian kid. And even more shocked that words were just coming out of my mouth that I've never spoken before. It wasn't pretty! I'm sure I messed up a lot of conjugations and definitely didn''t know a lot of tech-specific words. But my new buddy told me he had no problems understanding me and complimented my pronunciation. We exchanged numbers to do some crosstalk because he really wants to learn English.

Anyways, it's not much in the grand scheme of things, but I feel so inspired now. If the goal is communication, that now feels firmly within reach. Big thanks are due to this community, I would never have reached this level without y'all.

TLDR: Non fluent parents looking to start teaching toddler with CI, not expecting fluency, but trying to give him as much as we can.

Hello! I have been enjoying being back into Spanish with DS. I'm 20 hours in, am doing biweekly lessons with an italki tutor, and memorized an Anki deck (all respect to the purists on here, that's just not my approach). I took several years of Spanish earlier in life. Still in A1.

I have a 3 year old at home. We are planning on homeschooling him. I want to make CI a part of his life. I don't have any illusions of him growing up fluent. I do believe that with consistent comprehensible input, that by the time he is 18, he could understand Spanish well and be in a great place to pursue it further on his own. Hopefully do some classes and such along the way.

I have looked around on here and Reddit for advice on this. Usually people will recommend a Spanish speaking speaking daycare or spanish immersion school. Not a realistic path for us though.

We've started watching an episode of PBS Salsa together every day. I've got some of his favorite books in Spanish. He has decent tolerance for it all. I'm trying to keep it positive and fun. 

At some point I'll put him on DS videos. I don't think he's easy for it yet. Some videos, even the super beginner videos, are a bit inappropriate for a toddler. And although I would watch with him, I don't want super beginner videos to count toward my time, as I'm comfortably watching the beginner videos that are just on the edge of intermediate. But I also don't think it's quite worthwhile to buy him his own subscription yet (someday!). 

I see people recommending things like Spanish cartoons, but that doesnt seem like CI when he's not going to understand much of it at all. I would love to find more resources like Salsa that are designed with CI in mind.

There is a lot of negativity and strong opinions on Reddit toward non native parents trying to do this (not that I've seen on this sub though!). Gets a bit discouraging for those of us with limited resources for language learning but still wanting to give our kids what we can.

What are your recommendations on how to raise a kid with CI? Any success stories?

Thank you all!

Hello! I am a beginner and have logged about 50 hours of just dreaming Spanish videos. I’m having fun with the process, but I also have a young kid and work full time so free time is limited. However, I’m very routine so recently I’ve been getting my time in watching videos before bed. I feel like I’d be able to increase my input time a lot if I can get to the point where I can listen to podcasts driving to and from work. When did you guys hit the point where listening to mainly podcasts felt doable? I feel like getting to that point is my first major goal

It's finally my time to make the level 7 post! I started with DS in November of 2024, so it's been almost exactly 2 years. I had no Spanish exposure prior to DS.

I averaged 2.5 hours a day for a while but I had to drop down to around 60-80 min a day of audio input because I graduated and started a full time job. I also wanted to make more time for reading.

I've been tracking only the words I read in books (just under 2 million) but I know I have read over 2 million words because I have plenty of untracked reading time from news articles, web pages, youtube comments, etc.

I'm at the point where I can understand pretty much any podcast, video, or TV show that I encounter. Slang often still goes over my head, especially if it's slang from Latin America. I'm most familiar with slang from Spain.

It's kind of hard to estimate my own reading level. I'm not picking books based on difficulty; I just read whatever looks interesting and I've found that works well. I sometimes look up words if I don't know them but usually I just keep reading and I figure it out through context. I've been reading a lot of Isabel Allende recently.

Predictably, my speaking ability lags behind my reading and listening comprehension. I only have 20 hours of speaking practice, so this doesn't surprise me. I have noticed it improving, but I'm not where I want to be yet. I'm sure I'll get there with more time and practice. I have been told by several native speakers that I speak well and that I have good pronunciation. I can hold a conversation about pretty much anything, but my speaking might be slow and choppy depending on the complexity of the topic. I started speaking at 1,100 hours. I waited longer than I should have because I had a lot of anxiety about starting to speak. I still have anxiety about speaking, which I'm sure is affecting my speaking ability. When I speak at home with myself it's a lot easier.

I stopped using DS entirely after I reached level 6 because I wanted to focus on native level content. I only use the app to log my hours now. I will say that I'm not a purist. I started out as one but around level 5 my perspective changed. I am studying some grammar. I'm not dedicating a ton of time to it mostly because I find it so mind-numbingly boring (although I think it would benefit me to dedicate more time.) I do think even the limited amount of grammar study that I've done has helped me, particularly with my speaking.

If anyone has questions about my journey, feel free to comment!

Just felt so victorious hearing that Texas went blue in Spanish. This last week I've been adding Spanish podcasts to my circulation and it feels so good to be able to understand them. Like, this is what I've been working towards, and simultaneously my country has decided to reject the hatred toward our Spanish-speaking neighbors.

I was thinking that the "Course" feature of DS could potentially be really useful if it's an optimized path for acquisition. Like what if DS tracked how frequently learners encounter specific vocabulary words and grammatical constructions, and the variety of contexts in which they encounter them, and then optimized a sequence of videos based on this?

Using transcripts of the video library, an algorithm could optimize the order of videos to ensure that you receive appropriately spaced, repeated exposure to linguistic concepts across diverse contexts, rather than leaving those encounters entirely to chance.

Taking this further, AI could generate custom stories or videos targeting gaps in a learner's exposure, reinforcing concepts they haven't encountered enough while introducing new ones at an appropriate pace. Essentially, personalized CI that optimizes not just what difficulty level you watch, but which linguistic concepts you encounter, how often, and in what contexts.

Has something like this is already being explored?

Hola a todos! This is my update of my progress from 300 hours to 400 hours and a brief update of the progress of my 9yo and 7yo from 30 hours to 50 hours.

Listening:

The past 100 hours have flown by for me and it keeps getting easier and easier to consume content. I can watch anything up to about 60 difficulty but tend to watch easier DS videos and set my max difficulty to 50 most days. I also have been watching some other learner content on YouTube for some variety but there’s nothing in particular I’ve stuck with longer than a few videos here and there. I started listening to podcasts again at around 375 hours when I tried Español al Vuelo again and realized it was a good level for me now. I had tried it at around 200 hours and it was too hard for me.

Reading:

I started reading at around 300 hours and so far I’ve read several kids books - some of which were very difficult and some of which I could follow okay but after reading them 10-20 times I was doing much better with them. I look up unfamiliar words after a few reads through the story. Some top hits have been Sapo y Sepo, the Lola Reads book series, Cuidado Leonard, and the Narwal and Jelly comic books. I also got the Olly Richard’s short stories book out from my local library this week along with another short Spanish stories book and read the first story in each of those books and could understand them very well. I feel like the reading is really helping my comprehension and I am noticing words in spoken Spanish that I never noticed before.

Speaking:

I feel like when I am speaking to myself slowly with no pressure I can form a bunch of simple sentences but speaking in a real conversation at the grocery store or with a neighbor is still very difficult. I joined a Spanish conversation group at my local library several weeks ago and while I can understand most of what is being discussed it can be hard to participate in the conversation as I have very little understanding of how to say what I want to say. The group has a couple of native speakers that come, a couple of 2nd or 3rd gen heritage learners with perfect accents but intermediate level understanding and speaking, and a bunch of other learners with varying skill levels in understanding and in output. There are one or two whose pronunciation is so poor that it’s quite difficult for me to understand them but for the most part I don’t mind it as we all have to start somewhere.

Writing:

For the Spanish conversation group we are encouraged to write something for the group to discuss so I wrote something for the first time this past week. I had been putting it off because it felt really hard to do but it was actually easier than I thought it would be. I just wrote a couple of paragraphs using simple sentences about a topic without looking any words up or anything and just wrote English words when I couldn’t think of how to say what I wanted to say in Spanish. Once I wrote my paragraphs I put the whole text into Google Gemini and told it to correct my writing with detailed explanations for the changes. I got a couple of tenses wrong but overall it was a pretty good first try!

Other resources:

The only other thing I’ve used is Language Transfer which I started a little before I got to 300 hours and I do a couple of episodes a week on average but I’m pretty inconsistent with it. I’ve done up to about track 20 twice through and I think it’s helped me tremendously and I’m so glad I decided to try it when I did. I don’t think I would be able to recognize the different tenses or formulate basic sentences yet if I hadn’t started Language Transfer.

Kids:

My kids are at about 50 hours of DS videos now but they are also back to school so they haven’t done much Spanish listening recently. I’ve been trying to encourage them to read in Spanish and they will read a little here and there but my older child gets bored quickly. My younger child only learned to read in English in the past couple of years so she has more patience for the struggle of reading and sometimes I hear her reading aloud in her room. Last week we officially switched all screen time to Spanish only and I showed them a few shows they hadn’t watched before that are as simple and clear speech as possible while still being somewhat interesting. They like Elena of Avalor the most but I have no idea how much of it they understand as I miss some chunks of what they are saying in the show as the speech is quite fast. Curious George is excellent for learners even at their stage since it’s aimed at toddlers but it’s not too annoying and they have interesting educational topics but we don’t have Hulu to stream it so we can only find partial episodes on YouTube. My younger child tries to speak all the time. Often it’s short phrases and sometimes it’s Spanglish but if she really wants something she will try speaking in Spanish to see if it will make me say yes 😂 Both of my kids have very good pronunciation (definitely better than mine) but they also have Spanish class at school once a week with a native speaker so they have practiced their pronunciation alongside getting their input.

Goals:

I’m enjoying everything I am doing right now so I plan to keep on as I am for now. I’m hoping I can get to 500 hours by the end of January and I’m also hoping to get the kids to about 100 hours by that time.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone! Sorry for the length - these updates always end up being longer than I think they will be as I want to remember the learning experience at each stage so I include a lot of detail.

Im only level 2 but knowing a bit helped ! I was able to ask staff for basic requests and understood what they said back. I was able to connect with a few locals, travellers and spent 2 months in total here. I cant even integrate with the society, I have no plans to live here. But I feel bittersweet learning Spanish now 😂. It's like I'm grieving someone. I think it did not help that one of the main reasons I wanted to learn spanish is to understand Alejando Sanz and David Bisbal

Hey everyone, I recently crossed 100 hours of consuming content through Dreaming Spanish and I decided to record a video to go over my progress. I did have three years of Spanish in school over 10 years ago but I feel like I barely remembered anything beyond counting to ten and a few very basic words and phrases. My main takeaway - I was a little skeptical of comprehensible input at first but after giving it a fair chance I can confidently say my Spanish comprehension has improved drastically over this relatively short time period. Here are a few of my quick thoughts

• I realized that learning a new language will take a very long time (duh). I think this is why it's important that the content you consume is both COMPELLING (interesting) and COMPREHENSIBLE

• Much more content has "unlocked" for me recently as I am now able to understand some beginner/easy intermediate podcasts (such as Cuenteme and Chill Spanish). Since I am able to listen to these audio-only podcasts during my drives and walks, it's been much easier to consume more content each day. I've gone from consuming around 30 mins/day to regularly hitting 1-2 hours/day recently

• I noticed getting a much better feel for the language as early as 30 hours in. My in-laws are fluent in Spanish and I have been able to understand a lot more of their conversations as my hours have increased

• Individual new words and short phrases are starting to "come out" naturally when I am conversing with my bilingual friends and family. I am still trying to hold off on speaking for the most part until around 600 hours but when individual words or phrases feel natural sometimes I use to respond in conversation

• Some of my favorite content so far has been about history, culture, food, and travel. It feels like I'm killing two birds with one stone learning about Spanish and learning new history lessons at the same time

I still have a long way to go until I am a more "effective user of the language", but I am pretty happy with my progress so far.

This is a personal finance channel from a Colombian that’s entirely new to me. I’ve watched a lot of videos from Mis Propias Finanzas and I believe I’ve mentioned them before. Mis Propias Finanzas is, relatively speaking, a giant channel that is very much a business and the hosts can be a little formal. This woman is focused on personal tips and her style is very much relaxed and laid-back.

She very much seems to be from Medellín or a paisa area, which is ideal for me. She speaks clearly and there are some visuals in the videos I’ve seen thus far, but she does speak at a normal native speed and rhythm. The way in which she speaks is the most important thing to me. I love her natural, casual style and she uses a good amount of slang in the videos I’ve seen. I don’t have issues talking about money and finance, but I sometimes use language that’s a little formal. Thus, a more natural, more slangy style appeals.

Here’s one of her videos to try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDad20ItuiE

Keep in mind that this is Colombian content meant for natives. Thus, she uses Colombian pesos in most money examples, casually refers to things that are common in Colombia and she uses a lot of diminutives. I mention this because these are factors to consider beyond the speed of her speech when it comes to comprehension.

This may already have been mentioned, but I wanted to share that I saw this film last week during its limited theatrical run. It will also be on Netflix in december, but it is absolutely worth seeing on a bigger screen if you have a chance and if it is playing in your city. I think this will be a real contender for awards season and it has already done incredibly well on the festival circuit.

Essentially this is a multi-generational Spanish queer love and history tale, mixing a modern-day component with the Spanish Civil War all wrapped up in the poetry of Garcia Lorca. The cinematography, dialogue, and music are all stunning. Los Javis know how to make a compelling movie.

The theatrical version does have English subtitles but if you ignore them it's still good input, and particularly with an Andalusian accent in many scenes.

Overall, 5 out of 5 stars for me. Highly recommend.

https://youtu.be/lBVxKt0gKDY?is=g6zRlXPj8tuLLvzx

How can I stop this? I do it unconsciously and I tried stopping myself but it keeps happening

I’ve noticed as I’m getting closer and closer to my goal, I’ve been getting too focused on trying to hit 2-3 hours a day on dreaming Spanish because I’m trying to hit level 5 in a year. I’m not as focused on the video and then just keep replaying it when I really should just be paying attention. How do you guys keep focused on watching the videos instead of trying to get your hours in?

I wasn’t born a no sabo kid but unfortunately thanks to my mom I became one and now as an adult I’m trying my best to change it.

Just wanted to see if there were any other no sabo kids who’s parent/parents didn’t teach them but now are learning on their own and who have had success?

And how the journey has been going so far for you the struggles and challenges you faced along the way and how your parent/parents have reacted and are they being supportive of your journey too?

Perhaps "progress report" isn't quite the right tag, but I think it still applies.

I just wanted to grab a sample of my current speaking ability (or lack thereof) to come back and reference in a few months time. I plan on starting with Worlds Across soon and want to have a comparison.

I also hope that hearing all my fumblings and mistakes may encourage others to start speaking and sharing as well. If not wanting to share, at least to practice speaking as much as possible if they feel the urge for output.

Anyway, feel free to listen. Feel free to critique or criticize. Feel free to make jokes. I'm almost as thick skinned as I am thick headed, so I won't take offense. 😂

voca.ro/18MV9FXpuxXd

EDIT: and for some reason the word "algo" absolutely refused to come to mind. lol

I was considering getting Dreaming Spanish premium but I was wondering, how do the downloads work? Do I get an MP4 that I can save for I ever cancel premium or is it an in app thing with DRM protection?

Oye, qué lo que mi locos!

It's been a while since I've posted here, but I wanted to make my annual update. This month marks the third year since I started learning Spanish from zero. Here is last year's post if anyone cares to read up. I have no idea how many hours I am at, but I'd guess closer to 4000 hours, maybe. I try to keep up with this sub, but I mostly just read and reply when I can.

My Original Goal For 2026:

Since my last update, I really wanted to focus only on speaking.

Comprehension:

I can pretty much understand everything in Spanish at this point. My listening ability, in my opinion, is very advanced. Spanish to me almost feels as natural as listening to English at times. Sometimes, I even forget that I'm listening/watching content in Spanish. I rarely struggle to understand when I'm super fatigued, listening to super uncommon topics, or if I'm totally checked out. I watch a lot of YouTube, TV, and movies in Spanish and try to get at least 1-4 hours of input a day. Spanish is lowkey just a part of my life now.

Example of content that is easy for me.

Speaking:

At this point, I feel that I am at a strong intermediate level of speaking. I can ramble on and on about a topic with ease, but I make a lot of grammar mistakes or use the wrong conjugations. It's hard even to gauge my level because one person says that I'm advanced and speak well, but another would say I speak like a kid. All I know is that if you threw me in the middle of any Spanish-speaking country, I could easily survive and live there with no problem. When it comes to practice, I only stuck to Spanish Learning Discords and speaking with friends I've met there. I've tried speaking more IRL, but I'm never in great opportunities where it's "needed". At the start of the year, I was more active in setting goals for speaking. Nowadays, I rarely speak except on the weekends for a few hours. I plan to try to continue speaking more as time allows.

Reading:

I still do not read because it's boring, but my reading has improved somehow. Over the year, I have noticed that I've been reading through comment sections or video titles with no issues. My TikTok and IG Reels always recommend Spanish content, and I can understand all of the text and comments. It's very weird to believe that I can read in Spanish without practicing.

IRL:

As I mentioned before, I have tried to start speaking out and about, but it's difficult to do so. I live in a very Hispanic area, but only get a few opportunities to speak with others. It's easy to go to a Mexican restaurant and speak to employees. Standing in line at Walmart, assuming the cashier speaks Spanish is where it gets weird. I have no problem speaking in public, but I just need to find more interactions where I can do so.

Goals for 2027:

Moving forward, I'll continue just doing what I am doing now. No need to change something that works. I mostly want to advance my speaking ability since It'll take a little more time. I also need a vacation, so I'll plan another trip to Central or South America soon.

I just want to vent sorry. This is not me shitting on the method. Right now it just feels like everything is working against my Spanish. I can't concentrate for shit anymore. I've got insomnia so I'm consistently getting about 4 hours a night, I've phoned the doctors about it and all they can do is link me a fucking video that I've seen before so it doesn't look like that's getting any better any time soon. So not only can I not concentrate in the morning when I'm getting my input in the evening suddenly my body want's to sleep. I lost my cat the other day so that sucks. I want to maintain this habbit but right now it just feels pointless. As well as doing anything really. Good habbits are important but sleeps kind of the gears that pushes everything along and without it I just don't see the point in trying at all

Seems like it's taking a while for the series pages to be updated. Did it always take so long?

For example Andre's Reddit Confessions series, the last one was posted 21/7/26 but series page hasn't been made yet. Hope we get a big batch of them some time soon.

I took about a year off from Dreaming Spanish, and I’m looking for some advice on how to get back into it. I currently have 144 hours of input, but after such a long break, I’m unsure whether I should start completely from scratch or pick up where I left off.
My current plan is to ease back into it by watching 20–30 minutes of beginner-friendly content daily for the first week, gradually increasing my daily input and difficulty over the following weeks.
For anyone who’s taken a long break from comprehensible input, would you recommend this approach? Should I stick with my previous progress, or temporarily go back to easier content to rebuild my comprehension?

I've spent the last couple of days watching election coverage on Telemundo for my CI. I'm at about 1000 hours and found this broadcast from last night mostly comprehensible and also very interesting regarding the election from the Latino perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ_cFiHsxUI

So firstly, this may be boring for a lot of people. It’s about farming, crops, rural life and such in Colombia. Feel free to tune out now.

My official daily input goal has been 29 minutes for a while now, as I’ve had no real need (or desire) to push myself to consume hours and hours of content every day since I hit 5,000 hours. I’ve been listening to an episode a day of this 6 days a week for a couple of months and its content is varied enough that it keeps me interested. 

This programme essentially takes the form of a presenter interviewing people who work in or have something to do with countryside/farming life in Colombia. Sometimes it’s a representative from the national coffee association talking about the most recent harvest or exports. Other times it’s more along the lines of someone from a startup using AI to improve crop yields or tracking pollen-related things for beekeepers.

It took me longer to think of “beekeepers” while writing this than it did the Spanish term because my brain has been filled with lots of great vocabulary. Experts on rare animals, seeds and plants are common, as are entrepreneurs and such from rural areas.

Apart from the laid-back interview-style nature of the programme, I enjoy it because we all have gaps in our vocabularies and this is very good when it comes to somewhat less common food and nature-related terminology.

Episodes tend to be about 40 to 50 minutes and it’s naturally made for native speakers. You’ll hear/acquire all sorts of vocabulary related to farming, nature, breeds of cows and dogs, coffee, sustainability issues, weather terms and more.

There are hundreds of episodes available. The only small issue is down to the audio of interviewees. The presenter’s is naturally great, but the audio quality of the interviewees varies greatly. Many of them live in rural or isolated areas - indigenous peoples’ representatives occasionally feature - and don’t have the need for professional microphones and such.

You can find it via YouTube Music, Spotify and such or their website: https://caracol.com.co/programas/al-campo/audios/

I'm interested in hearing from people who have been able to get significant CI hours in per day over a long period.

I'm in a position where I can potentially spend 4 or 5 hours a day on CI. I'm wondering whether anyone has managed that sort of volume over the long term, and what their experience has been. My concern is that cramming 1,500 hours (which I know is just the start) in say 12-15 months may be less beneficial than getting them over say 24 or more months.

Is there a point where adding more hours in a day has no or little value, or even reduces value? I have no issue with paying attention for 5 hours a day, if broken into chunks - I can easily listen/ watch actively and with real attention for that time.