#its just there arent nearly as many lessons and textbooks designed for learning through comprehensible input as i WISH there were

[rigelmejo]

Dreaming Spanish

Because I talk about it a lot, I'm going to link Dreaming Spanish's site, their youtube channel, and the subreddit r/dreamingspanish. (And fyi Dreaming Spanish site is free to use and tracks which videos you complete - the premium version just has more lessons, the youtube is free and has the same free lessons as the website, and the subreddit is quite welcoming to people who study using DS lessons in addition to whatever else they're using - I've found them to be one of the most friendly and least gatekeeping language learning subreddits I've visited so far).

So here's my thoughts narrowed down to their most basic: I think the type of lessons Dreaming Spanish makes - which are designed to help a learner understand what's being said with visuals for context - are a wonderful way to learn a language for people who enjoy learning things by doing them, and guessing from context. If you were the kind of kid who learned new words by reading books and fanfiction, from watching shows/movies with your parents, playing video games with your older siblings and then trying to play them without your sibling around, and guessing what the new words meant? Then you're the kind of person who will likely enjoy this type of lesson. I love learning from context. I love learning by doing. I like to learn something by doing it with someone - and learning by trying to do the thing, to understand how it's done AS I'm doing it. Learning by simply listening to the language being spoken, and by using the surrounding context of visuals/physical gestures/words you know to figure out what the rest of it means? My favorite way to learn. Oh sure, I also like reading explanations of how things work, but I prefer to learn by doing if that's an option. If you're also the kind of learner who enjoys learning to understand a language BY immediately listening to that language and trying to understand? Comprehensible Input type lessons are excellent. (And will be much EASIER than just trying to make yourself watch a show or read a novel in the language with zero aids to help you). If you're the kind of learner who hates ambiguity, who hates trying to figure things out from context and prefers to have a task explained before trying it? If you're the kind of kid who looked up most unknown words in a dictionary or into google growing up? Then Comprehensible Input type lessons are probably NOT going to be enjoyable for you. And that's fine, there's many other types of lessons that may suit your preferences more.

*A side note, that if you do enjoy comprehensible input type lessons, this wiki has links to those kinds of lessons in many languages: comprehensibleinputwiki.org (And the old Nature Method textbooks one can find on archive.org, and Ayan Academy on youtube, also teach using comprehensible input)

I think the Dreaming Spanish roadmap is also quite applicable to many language learners - how many hours it recommends to study, and the kind of skills you can expect to be capable of, at those amounts of study hours. Yes, it's a rough guide, it's not perfect. Yes, the guide is more applicable to you if you're studying with Comprehensible Input lessons and/or listening to and reading stuff you understand the main idea of, as your main study activities. But I find the level hours recommended matches up fairly well with estimates like FSI has, and ALG courses mention. People who study Dreaming Spanish the way the lessons are instructed to be used ('purists') and people who study Dreaming Spanish lessons in addition to other methods (duolingo, formal classes, word-translation tools, graded readers, anki, tutors who explain with translations, textbooks, grammar guides etc.) all report on r/dreamingspanish experiences that roughly align with the study hour level milestones expected by Dreaming Spanish's roadmap. So even if you're not studying with comprehensible input type lessons, or not exclusively studying with those kinds of lessons, I find the roadmap's suggestions for 'study hours to reach X skills' useful to a degree. Again, I want to repeat: I do not think you need to use Dreaming Spanish's lessons (or any comprehensible input lessons) as your only method of study, I think reaching milestones in terms of skills can be reached in a variety of study methods, and using other methods won't change your progress that much. I think comprehensible input type lessons can be completely ignored if they're not you're cup of tea, and the Dreaming Spanish roadmap might still be roughly useful for you to gauge how many more hours to study to be able to do X.