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rigelmejo · 2 months ago

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Dreaming Spanish Levels - A good reference in general for progress milestones when studying X hours

I'm about to paste in the entire Levels Guide Dreaming Spanish has on their site, if you make an account and look at their levels. It's on this Progress page, when logged in. A less detailed version of the Levels can be found on the roadmap picture on this public Method page. I want to paste in the detailed levels descriptions, because I want to be able to reference them in my notes generally, when I'm not logged into Dreaming Spanish.

Level 1

Starting from zero.

Hours of input: 0

Known words: 0

Videos to watch: Superbeginner

What you can do: The sounds of the language sound weird to your ears. You can't tell many of those sounds apart from each other. When hearing the language, it’s hard for you to know when one word ends and when the next one begins. Even when you guess what a sentence means, many times you can’t guess at the meaning of the different parts. You can't say any words and be confident that a native speaker would understand you.

What you need to do: Listen A LOT. The listening needs to be very comprehensible. The best materials are classes or videos where the teachers speak in the language, but make it easy to understand by using a lot of drawings, pictures, and gestures. Crosstalk is the most efficient activity that you can do, if you can find speakers of the language. Reading is not recommended until later on, especially if you care about having clear pronunciation. Practicing writing or speaking is not recommended yet.

What you are learning: You mostly learn individual nouns for concrete things: car, nose, elephant. Action verbs: walk, eat, sing. Adjectives for simple emotions and sensations: happy, scared, cold. Adjectives for physical properties: blue, tall, fat, beautiful. Interjections are the clearest words early on: Hey! Wow! Hi! You may learn the numbers early on, but this depends quite a lot on the kind of content you listen to.

Level 2

You know some common words.

Hours of input: 50

Known words: 300

Videos to watch: Beginner

What you can do: You understand some common words, even if you are not 100% sure how to pronounce them. You can now guess the meaning of some 2-word sentences, like "go home", or "eat cake". There are only a few words that you could produce yourself. For many words, you’re still not sure what sounds they’re made of.

What you need to do: Listen A LOT. You are still best served with Crosstalk or classes or videos where the teacher(s) speak in a very comprehensible way. However, with a few words under your belt you are better prepared to make the most of that input. Those words will help you understand the rest of the input you are listening to. Reading not recommended yet.

What you are learning: More verbs, since nouns help you understand them. Still mostly nouns and verbs for concrete things. Many expressions are learned as a chunk. You don’t know what their parts mean yet. Grammar for basic sentence order. Many common function words will remain unclear for a long time.

Level 3

You can follow topics that are adapted for learners.

Hours of input: 150

Known words: 1,500

Videos to watch: Intermediate

What you can do: You can now understand people if they stay within certain topics. They still need to talk to you in a way that's appropriate for you, but you know many words, and you don’t rely exclusively on visual information. You still aren’t completely used to the sounds of the language. You have a good intuition for basic grammar, like sentence order. You can sometimes feel it when other learners make mistakes. It sounds wrong somehow. You can now say quite a few words and that will already be useful when traveling to the country.

What you need to do: Listen A LOT. Now you can listen to videos or classes in which the teacher doesn't use as much visual input, and may even be able to take advantage of really easy audios and podcasts that are catered to learners at your level. Crosstalk is still the best way to spend your time. At this level it becomes easier than before to do crosstalk over the internet using video call software, so you won't need to find native speakers where you live anymore. Reading is still not recommended if you care about your final achievement in pronunciation, but it starts becoming possible to understand lower level graded readers.

What you are learning: Because you are starting to get used to what the language sounds like, and what kinds of sound combinations to expect, you start learning words faster, without needing to hear them so many times. You learn nouns faster and faster. Knowing a decent amount of nouns helps you also learn more adjectives. You start learning more abstract terms for feelings, appearance, and more abstract verbs: to need, to have to, to be good at, etc. You are now getting used to more complicated grammar faster.

Level 4 (purple-blue on the DS site)

You can understand a person speaking to you patiently.

Hours of input: 300

Known words: 3,000

Videos to watch: Intermediate

What you can do: You're at the intermediate level! You can understand a patient native speaker. You still miss some words, but the speaker can explain their meaning to you without resorting to translation. You can understand a range of daily topics without visual support like drawings or pictures. The sounds of the language are becoming clearer now, and you are getting used to how the sounds are likely to be combined. That helps with retaining new words. If you tried speaking at a store, you could get your point across most of the time, but you still struggle producing even some basic words. Making friends in the language is now possible, but you need to find people who are quite patient, because not everybody will want to make that effort. Depending on your tolerance for getting negative reactions, you may want to wait a bit longer before speaking.

What you need to do: Listen A LOT. You can understand videos or classes in which the teacher doesn't use any visual cues, and can now benefit from listening extensively to audios and podcasts for learners everywhere you go, anytime you can. Crosstalk is still the best, most efficient way to improve. You can now make friends with whom you communicate only in the target language. While you will learn a lot when listening to people speak to you, speaking this early will invariably result in hard-to-fix non-native pronunciation, noticeably bad grammar, and poor word usage. If you really want to start having conversations with people it's recommended that you don't try to actively practice grammar or vocabulary, but rather speak in single words or simple sentences that come to mind easily. Reading is still not recommended if you care about your final achievement in pronunciation. By now you could understand slightly more difficult books, but still mostly just graded readers.

What you are learning: Surprisingly, in this phase you learn many common function words that are taught right at the beginning of most language courses. These words are used very frequently, but carry very little meaning. For example: the verb "to be" (or equivalent), prepositions (in, at, on), conjunctions (therefore, so, and), and even some pronouns. Once you become aware of a new word, you’ll encounter it everywhere. At this point you may start feeling that there are many more words that you don't know than words you do know. The exposure to less controlled speech allows you to notice many new words. Don't worry, you'll eventually also acquire those words the same way you acquired all the words you have learned until now. By this point you are full on acquiring all kinds of vocabulary, both concrete and abstract.

Level 5

You can understand native speakers speaking to you normally.

Hours of input: 600

Known words: 5,000

Videos to watch: Intermediate/advanced

What you can do: You can understand people well when they speak directly to you. They won’t need to adapt their speech for you. Understanding a conversation between native speakers is still hard. 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. Conversation can be tiresome, and if you try to speak you can feel a bit like a child, since it will be hard to express abstract concepts and complex thoughts. You understand most of the words used during daily conversation, but you still can’t use many yourself. If you try to speak the language, it will feel like you are missing many important words. However, you can, often, already speak with the correct intonation patterns of the language, without knowing why, and even make a distinction between similar sounds in the language when you say them out loud.

What you need to do: Listen A LOT. You'll be able to understand more advanced materials for learners. Listen to audios and podcasts daily if you want to learn fast. Crosstalk is still as good as always. You may start feeling you are not getting much out of getting input about daily life topics. Try getting input about new topics. Easier TV programs and cartoons should be accessible too. The purists who want to get really close to a native speaker and get a really good accent may still want to hold off on speaking and reading for a little more, but if you do start speaking and reading it's not a big deal by this point. You'll still end up with better pronunciation and fluency than the vast majority of learners. If you want to start reading, by this point you'll be able to understand books targeted at children of lower grade levels, and you can skip over graded readers. If you start reading, try setting every gadget you own (PC, phone, Google and Facebook settings, etc.) to the target language, and following speakers of the language on social media.

What you are learning: This level can feel frustratingly similar to the previous one. You will still feel that there are many more words that you don't know than words you do know. You'll now feel many more instances of finally understanding that word that you have been hearing since forever. It may feel like these words are infinite, but no! Continue doing what you are doing and you'll little by little fill in all the missing gaps. For some words, you’ll even wonder why you hadn’t learned such a basic word yet. Learning abstract words (democracy, absence, patience) will be your bread and butter, as will be learning more and more grammatical connectors. At this level you’ll mostly finish up the grammar and the different sentence types. While still not being able to make the most complex sentences yourself, you’ll become able to understand almost every type of sentence.

Level 6 (green-blue on the site)

You are comfortable with daily conversation.

Hours of input: 1,000

Known words: 7,000

Videos to watch: Advanced

What you can do: You can really have fun with the language at this point. You are conversationally fluent for daily purposes of living in the country and you can get by at the bank, at the hospital, at the post office, or looking for an apartment to rent. In spite of that odd word that is not quite there when you need it, you can always manage to get your point across in one way or another, and by now you are already making complex longer phrases. At this level, for the first time, you start feeling like you are actually thinking about what you want to say, and not about how you want to say it, even though you may fall back on thinking about how you say things, especially in stressful situations or when feeling self-conscious. Using humor in the language is much easier now. You can understand TV shows about daily life quite well (80 to 90%). Shows about families, friends, etc. Unscripted shows will usually also be easier to understand than scripted shows, as long as they are not too chaotic or rely too much on cultural knowledge. Thrillers and other genres will still be hard.

What you need to do: Listen and read A LOT. It's also a good idea to get massive input in authentic media, be it TV, podcasts, radio, movies, etc. If you can't find a lot of easy media in the target language, you may find that videos and audios for learners are still more efficient for acquiring new vocabulary until you get a bit better. If your target language has many common words with a language you already know you may be able to understand quite well things like TED talks and university lectures. Lots of reading is also recommended if you want to be literate and if you care about reading. You'll still want to read books that are targeted at elementary school children, although maybe you don't need to stick to the lower grades. Nonfiction will often be much easier to understand than fiction. By this point, speaking and reading are completely unrestricted, and it's really encouraged to make friends in the language. If you live in the country, join as many social activities as you can. Live in a shared apartment, go to bars, join dance classes, a sports team, anything! Set your PC, phone, and all your online profiles to your target language. Make a list of daily things you do in your own language, and find alternatives to do them in your target language.

What you are learning: You may find the odd common word that you haven't learned yet, but by now your known vocabulary pretty much covers everything that you will usually want to say during everyday conversation. If you make friends and have real conversations, or watch certain TV shows, you will now be learning a lot of slang. By now, your knowledge will cover most sentence structures and grammatical words, so you will rarely learn these anymore, unless they are specific to certain registers of the language. You will mostly learn specific vocabulary used in formal speech or in writing. Most words that you learn now will be words that are used in more formal registers of speech like in the news, words used in formal writing, literary writing, or technical terms used in the specific fields that you are interested in: politics, technology, science, or 13th century woodblock prints. If your language doesn’t share a lot of its specialized vocabulary with your new language, you may still have to work on this for a long while.

Level 7

You can use the language effectively for all practical purposes.

Hours of input: 1,500

Known words: 12,000+

Videos to watch: Advanced

What you can do: You can understand any general content effortlessly, including newspapers, novels, and all types of TV shows and movies. You might still struggle with technical texts in unfamiliar fields, heavy regional slang, and shows with intricate plots. You speak fluently and effortlessly, without thinking about the language. While native speakers might still detect a slight accent, your clarity and fluidity make your speech easy to understand, and no one considers you a learner anymore. You may still make some mistakes, or miss a specific word here and there, but it doesn’t hinder you from being an effective member of society.

What you need to do: Listen and read A LOT. Add variety to what you read and listen to. By this point it's easy to find media in the target language that you understand very well, but it's also easy to get comfortable and not seek new challenges. If you want to continue improving, simply do things that you have never done before. Try reading a book by a new author, try watching a show about a topic that you're unfamiliar with (about space, about the Middle Ages, about lawyers, etc). If you live in the country, try joining activities that are new to you: a sports team, an improv group, comedy nights, etc.

What you are learning: You will continue learning slang, and learning about the culture, and that will allow you to understand more and more cultural references. You can explore other regional dialects of the language, ancient literary versions of the language, or vocabulary in other technical or scientific fields that you may want to learn about. You will still encounter new idioms and proverbs, but they will almost always be clear from the context. And of course, you can start learning your next language!

#dreaming spanish #language levels #reference #resource #level #progress #comprehensible input #ALG

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rigelmejo · 2 months ago

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Dreaming Spanish, Paper of 1200 hours learning French only watching shows, Personal Notes

So I signed up for Dreaming Spanish's site yesterday. However: it quickly became clear I have absolutely no time for studying something on top of Japanese and Chinese so. I will not get to use it much.

The good: their website is very nice, I think. The free videos are listed, and part of all collections, and they can track on the website how many minutes/hours you've watched and skip videos you've watched before if you wish. Meaning if you're using DS videos to study, going on their site is useful if you watch on a computer or phone, because their site will track your minutes watched for the day and put on a playlist for you for your language level. So it requires much less navigation and keeping track from you compared to the youtube site. I am super bad at tracking time doing X and what video I was on in youtube, so these features are awesome. It also tells you how many days it will take to reach each study level they have.

I think this is a super good tool to keep you realistic, and accountable to your own personal goal. If you only set your goal on DS to the learner option of 30 minutes a day (do NOT set it to 15 minutes a day), then you're looking at hitting goals at these points: you'll know 1500 words in 299 days, you'll know 5,000 words in 1,199 days (~3.3 years), and you'll be level 7 comparable to a native speaker in 2,999 days ~8.2 years). As you can see... 8.2 years is comparable to maybe if you took Spanish all through elementary school for 30 minutes a day (if that elementary school spanish was an immersion class). Now, languages take years to learn no matter what, and sometimes it will just have to look like 8 years for you (I'm studying Japanese and definitely getting close to that lol, and if I only had 30 minutes to study I'd obviously have to settle with the pace I can do). But if you study 2 hours a day, you can make a huge amount of progress in just 2 years (see below).

If you set it to 120 minutes per day (2 hours, like I tend to recommend for decently paced progress) then you'll know 1,500 words in 75 days (great progress from absolute beginner to able to start doing basic graded readers and learner podcasts if you want, and about where I got to when self studying in Chinese in the first few months), you'll learn 5,000 words in 300 days (less than a year!) at which point slow native speakers talking and books for children should be understandable (and shows will almost be without any word lookups, easier shows like cartoons and daily life romance may be). That's AMAZING progress for less than a year. I know for an English speaker, learning French or Spanish takes less time to understand... but I forgot how much less time. I guess my Chinese progress was only a little slower but I did a lot of 4+ hour study days the first year. And you'd get to DS Level 2 comparable to a native speaker in 750 days (just over 2 years).

That's a perfectly snappy progression, to be honest with you. People complain that comprehensible input lesson plans/ALG plans take 1500-2000 hours (DS takes 1500 hours), but the Foreign Service institute suggests 750 hours in class for Spanish then another 750 outside of class study, which is 1500! Same time period FSI suggests. For Thai it recommends 1100 class hours and 1100 out of class study, which is 2200 hours. So the CI lesson plans/ALG plans take about as much time as FSI estimates it takes their learners, the difference appears to be that ALG plans just do NOT include in any outside time spent studying. (A note: Dreaming Spanish does suggest doing lots of listening outside of their materials, but gives you the option to log that time on their site, so I am guessing outside listening you understand the meaning of would count toward their hours required of study).

Anyway, back to my point about Dreaming Spanish's tracking: I deeply appreciate how it shows you the goal study time per day you set, how much you're actually reaching it (so you know if it's unrealistic for you), and how long the milestone goals of understanding should take if you study at your goal study time per day. I think this tool on their site is incredibly useful. And even the Levels area on it's own, listing hours to get to each level and what you should be able to do at it, is quite good as a guide for what you should expect as a language learner.

Their guide matches up fairly well with what I could do in French, Chinese, and Japanese at various levels, very well. I read earlier and watched shows earlier than the guide suggests - I started when I was between level 2 and level 3 (so when I knew between 300-1500 words... I usually start graded readers ASAP so I started Chinese graded readers at 500 words studied, and with Japanese I waited longer than usual and read them at 1500-2000 words but read manga before that ToT, with French I started graded readers at 300 words and normal reading material at 1500 words... but also keep in mind, I was looking words up whereas the DS method does NOT suggest you look any words up, so me looking words up likely made harder materials like novels and shows understandable at an earlier point). And I found French reading material readable with no dictionary around level 4 (far earlier than DS suggests native speaker reading material being doable), I found Chinese shows understandable without word lookups earlier for me around level 4 (earlier than DS suggests - but I tolerate ambiguity okay and am Great at guessing new things from context, it's my favorite way to learn).

Semi Related things:

I read a whole paper a man wrote about learning French entirely through shows for 1200 hours, then an additional 300 hours of talking to people in French, a little grammar conjugation table reading and wikipedia in french reading and comic reading, and taking the B1 and B2 test and passing at the conclusion of 1500 hours. I recommend reading it if interested, I found it fascinating. The man looked up NO WORDS AT ALL in the first 1200 hours. The man did not pre-study much, he did not even know French was not spelled phoenetically much until 1200 hours in when he finally saw the writing system. He switched to watching cartoons a couple hundred hours in, because he could figure out new word meanings much faster with the direct visual context for what characters said (compared to shows for adults having discussions of things not happening on screen), and switched to shows for adults later once his vocabulary rose. (*Note: I did something similar with Chinese, I started with action wuxia because they would say 'get her/grab it/kick him/run/fight me/she's X' and I could learn a LOT of verbs and nouns by guessing instead of having to look up words every minute, back in that early point... action shows generally do more describing of whats actually on screen happening, and then comedic romance daily life shows, if you don't want to watch cartoons). His experience was brutal, he watched 5 hours on average a day, paid attention and made concious guesses of new words and features. It worked though!

And it is a great point to use as comparisons. His method worked, so the ALG/CI method type lessons should work as they are also 'watching audio visual' stuff in the language. While also being LESS exhausting than what this man did, since the ALG/CI lessons are structured to make it much easier to figure out new word meanings without as much uncertainty, are spoken slower to be understandable to learners, and are designed to teach you specific vocabulary and grammar.

He mentioned in his method, that if he were to do it again, he thinks he'd make faster progress if he'd allowed himself to 1. watch with French subtitles (to work on reading skill at the same time as listening), and 2. to look up words meanings to compare with the guesses he was making so he could quickly confirm correct meanings and move on.

I personally, based on my own experience, think he was somewhat right in thinking this and ALSO somewhat wrong. What I think is true about his guess that looking up words would've sped up the process: I know it does, I learned 2000 Chinese words in 6 months, then another thousand at least in the next 6 months, and while I cram studied an SRS app for 2 weeks (and 2 review) I think the bulk of reinforcement of remembering was me watching shows and confirming word guesses by looking up key words. If I'd done zero SRS app, and just watched shows from day 1, I would've looked up 1 keyword per minute at first probably. And it would've got me a similar pace of progress. I learned all my Chinese vocab after that first SRS app cram, by looking words up as I read or watched stuff. It definitely sped up progress. In French, I took 6 months to get where that guy got in 1 year... I was reading instead of listening mind you (and listening seems harder), but looking up words sped up my ability to comprehend more faster.

I think his assumptions about watching with French subtitles were wrong though: I think while subtitles DO help with reading (helped my Chinese reading a ton), I think (especially with similar alphabet languages - if you know another language uses that alphabet too) seeing the written form gives your brain more space to sub-vocalize the WRONG pronunciation mentally. You tend to prioritize reading subs over hearing actual dialogue, and so also I think you'll fail to develop the skill of parsing real muddled and slurred and muffled and sped up together language as fast as learners who do NOT use subtitles. When I watch Chinese shows without subtitles I have a noticeably more difficult time parsing what's said, and when I watch audio dramas and audiobooks I feel a whole comprehension level Lower than I feel when reading a book. I'm years into studying and specifically working on my ability to parse speech with no reading aid, so that's what only watching with subtitles did for me lol. (Also in French, I can't comprehend listening anywhere close to how well I can read, but that's more of an example of "what happens if you study primarily through reading and ignore listening skills"). So I think while practicing reading and seeing the spelling of new words IS useful (especially if you desire to train reading skill), it's also useful to spend at least SOME time watching shows or listening to audio with no subtitles or transcript to rely on... to practice parsing the sounds.

I did find it interesting he picked up reading so quickly, after all the work on listening. I had personally hoped, that learning to read things you already know in listening, might be easier to do than learning to read Brand New words. Based on his experience, this seems true. And I'm hoping I can eventually do something similar with Japanese... have a listening skill above my reading skill, and then work on reading (but either way I plan to use reading-listening at once, so even if there's new words in reading I don't want to develop a totally wrong pronunciation guess in my head).

And then, a note about Dreaming Spanish and my personal experience with Spanish: When I actually watch the Dreaming Spanish videos, it's the Intermediate Level videos that feel correct for me - I hear some new words and can understand/guess them in the context of the video, they speak at a pace I find understandable, they're not so boring I want to tune out, they're not so difficult I feel exhausted (interestingly when I checked out Lazy Chinese the intermediate level feels easier than this but a comfortable 'easier' spot for listening skills, and Comprehensible Japanese's intermediate videos feel a bit more focus-intensive for me than Dreaming Spanish's but also provide the right amount of new stuff to learn in context). I would assume knowing some French helps A TON with comprehending Spanish, and I have read several Spanish nonfiction books and don't find trouble with nonfiction (fiction Spanish books have enough unknown words though that I do need to look things up). I did also read Madrigal's Magical Key to Spanish self-study book back in college, and do a few months of Language Transfer Spanish podcast, so I saw a couple thousand cognates and basic grammar rules from those.

Anyway... I just find it curious that the actual content Dreaming Spanish has, I don't feel Superbeginner matches me despite being a beginner overall. The Superbeginner videos do have new words for me (tall, old, eyes, head, nose, hand), with context they're immediately understandable of course. Then also: some of them sound just like French to me or like words I've heard before. Garden is jardin, like french. Apprend is learn, like french.

Another interesting thing I noticed... some Spanish accents are easier for me to parse than French. I'm not super surprised, because that summer I was focusing on Spanish in college on my own, the goal was to MAKE IT SOUND DIFFERENT than French in my head, because mentally I'd confuse spanish and french when reading. I succeeded and developed a better ear for Spanish, and a slightly better ear for French (but clearly not as much as Spanish now that I'm hearing Spanish and parsing words better than I do in French). There's a few Spanish accents that feel almost as difficult as French to parse - the JARDIN video accent, with J like a Y but a way different Y sound than the French jardin threw me off a lot. The dropping of certain letters pronunciation also confused me... I think Spanish maybe does some ll sounds as y/i sound, so maybe that's what I heard? And the 'th' sound instead of s, my ears struggled with but I was more aware to look out for that in Spain pronunciation.

Then again, who knows how much my knowledge of French was simply interfering with Spanish: making a lot of cognates way easier to understand, but making certain pronunciations harder to parse. That could be both what helped and what makes things more confusing to me.

I have no time to study Spanish or French right now, so I can't really dive into what kind of work it would take to separate French and Spanish more in my head (but apparently they do need to be more firmly separated...still, in pronunciation). But it was interesting to see that effect.

#rant #article #articles #ALG #Dreaming Spanish #CI #comprehensible input #comprehensible input method

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