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I use both sites for my language learning journey. Dreaming Spanish(DS) feels too hands-off for me, while Refold is a bit too intense. So, I have settled into using DS for 1-2 hours of comprehensible input a day. I also study flashcards, use Pimsleur, and listen to as much passive Spanish as I can, even when I don't understand the words or the meaning usually música or shows. Along with random RUclips videos, some Memrise, and anything else that catches my interest, I'm keeping the process fun. I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds, tailored to my needs and abilities.

The real secret is just doing both of these. I use Dreaming Spanish every single day (1,400 hours right now) and supplement with the ES1K deck from Refold and I read. These two are made for one another.

I fall into the category for Dreaming Spanish as someone who doesn´t necessarily enjoy a lot of the content. I do typically like Agustina´s videos about history, travel, geography, etc. That´s not to say I like zero percent of what the others put out but just not consistently, so it makes it a little disheartening when I find a lot of it kind of boring.

So basically just immersion... I recommend Migaku, which is paid and language reactor or better said comprehensible input but the crosstalk is a fascinating, never heard about that

Thanks for sharing! One of my goals is to be able to read Percy Jackson in Spanish. The mini stories on LingQ don't capture my attention enough even though I appreciate the purpose of their structure. I normally listen to Spanish teaching podcasts and follow along with the transcript on LingQ

The biggest problem I see with DS is that it takes a very long time. If you're devoting 1 hour per day, it will take you FOUR YEARS to reach 1500 hours. If you're devoting two hours a day, it will still take TWO years before starting to even try output. And that's just to START with output. Of course, when you first start outputting, you're going to have a whole new set of learning to do. I don't see DS as being a good method by itself. It's a good source of material to leverage comprehensible input. But unless you're willing to spend a very long time for low-effort methods to eventually pay off, it should only be a PART of your learning plan.

My perspective is a little different. I have a solid foundation of grammar and vocabulary but still had the habit of translating in my head which inhibits my conversational skills. A video on RUclips recommended comprehensible input as a solution to this problem. I have no idea the why but watching the DS videos has greatly improved my conversational skills. I hear the Spanish and I respond in Spanish without the stop off at English in both directions. Even though they speak slower than normal, it helps me process faster Speakers.

Hace unos meses empecé a leer libros en inglés en voz alta y descubrí que el tiempo de mi concentración aumentaba considerablemente y que muchas palabras, que aún no había dicho, en mi cabeza sonaban bien, pero cuando intentaba decirlas, mi boca no era capaz de pronunciarlas correctamente. Así que, creo que con este método también estoy trabajando la pronunciación y la musculatura de la boca. El punto negativo es que lo hago en todos los lugares donde suelo leer, como la playa, la piscina, el salón de mi casa... y a mis hijas y mi mujer les da mucha vergüenza estar a mi lado xD. No sé si le servirá a todo el mundo, pero para mi funciona muy bien. Gracias por los consejos.

When I set out on the Spanish learning journey I bought Cuentos de Eva Luna by Isabel Allende to read when I could. I read it in English years ago and loved it. I’m only at just under 200 hours with Dreaming Spanish but I use LingQ and Lingopie to read and listen at the same time. I enjoy it.

I like your idea of a “goal book.” Brilliant.

“When you read easier stuff, you can read more stuff. And when you read more stuff, you get better at reading and can read harder stuff.” Amen.

I have the first 5 books in Juan Fernandez Spanish For Beginners series. They build in difficulty level but I found them easy and interesting to read.

This is so true & such a great reminder!!

Learning to be as kind to yourself as you are to others is SUCH a valuable skill!

Some really helpful insights here! AND this makes me want to try watching Avatar in Spanish 😄

I love your videos though I’m terribly biased (I did 2.5 years or so of DS. The best IMO). Great stuff! Keep up the nice work. Have you ever tried crosstalk?

I needed this video today. Thank you.

Well said!!! Also, what a relaxing video.

You mention about taking Spanish in school for years and lessons etc . Did you include those hours in how long it took to be fluent ? If not , how many hours in and out of DS has it taken you , Total ? Nice video by the way . Very encouraging .

Thank you for mentioning this series. I need to do more reading in Spanish.

The best option is both!

Cool story, mate

TLDR: there are more efficient ways of learning Spanish at half the time. How bad do you want to learn Spanish? 1500 hours is quite the devotion and frankly that many hours you should get some kind of Latin American citizenship! That's 4 hours a day for 7 days a week for 52 weeks. And that's still not 1500 but rather 1456 hours. So the claim is in a year studying 4 hours a day you could be fluent in this target language (never mind all of your "wasted efforts" but in reality you have still learned something from each of them). That's a lot and after that much time for Spanish, you'd better be fluent! Especially almost half of the time you are not doing anything but watching videos. I am a Generation Xer and that just seems like a lot of wasted time on the computer or in front of a screen. I look at it this way, millions if not billions of people have learned a foreign language. Think of our brave servicemen and women who have braved DLI, I don't know how it is today but back in the day (yeah I know I'm old) it was simply a record or tape player and the instructor who didn't speak English (on purpose). These people go down afterwards and help out in country, conversating with the natives, teaching them, and making allies. While most of our learning isn't going to be for such noble causes, we still have to decide how much time we are willing to spend in order to communicate with our Brothers and Sisters in Christ. At 600 hours you should be able to get through a basic conversation (conversational fluency) and be able to read anything even if you don't understand it all.

I dislike the Refold method because it feels way too tedious and like you have to micromanage every single minute of studying. I'm not the kind of person who could enjoy sentence-mining, flash cards, and the other methods they advise especially since I've used Dreaming Spanish. Dreaming Spanish is way less effort and still gives pretty good results. Refold takes all the fun out of language-learning for me because it feels like you have to do it basically full-time to benefit

How do you keep hitting with these video themes, most of these have been so relevant it's amazing, this was served up mid scroll wasting time between my input for today, ironically useful in retrospect for it to hit then. The time wasting spiral is terrifying when you step back and see the Web of distraction and wasted life, ironically slamming in 7 hours of video content with DS is what helped me realise the large chunks of "useless" time I've had up until now. Also how I do have all this free time to be used for more useful means, once I get my spanish to maintenance I don't think I'll want to fill the void with scrolling ever again. Good video, I got more input ahead now. The few English words I've heard today were from you lmao. Worth it.

I’m 71 so don’t have a strong connection to screens but nevertheless spend far too much time looking at them. Food for thought here.

I used DS almost exclusively for about 600 hours. I found that I didn't need video, and and switched to podcasts in Spanish. However my motivation is for Neuroplasticity not because I will be traveling, grammar isn't important. Any language acquisition isn't a smooth increasing line. Some days its like pushing a boulder uphill in waist deep mud, you might have to go back to an easier level from time to time, it's ok I have the rest of my life.

This video is AMAZING!!!!! DS needs to hire you to make commercials for them...en serio! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Helpful video once again, glad I've painfully worked all this out but I'm glad the infos here for people who need it

Brilliant! This video is great. Sincere, honest, and correct. There are a lot of us with parallel experiences. DS also unlocked my ability to listen to podcasts, so driving gives me more input using time that otherwise is not well used. Also, some of us with the DS experience are making content for people to learn our language, in my case English. I am referring to two RUclips channels, Input English and English Input. DS is building a community of committed language learners. Thanks for a great video!

I'm so tired of their omnipresent advertising. It's not a method, just a website. There are hundreds of websites/channels like that.

Great to see a ‘side-by-side’ review. I’m definitely a fan of Dreaming Spanish but being at a little less than 150 hours the type of content frustrates me no end. One, it’s boring and two, I keep thinking ‘but people don’t actually speak like this’. I do not watch anything that labels itself as ‘slow Spanish’. Despite the frustration, I do love the ease of the DS approach. I’m trying to ramp it up a bit by finding podcasts, Español con Juan for example, where transcripts are available. I listen first, then listen again reading the transcript. If I find not knowing a word really blocks my understanding I look it up in a Spanish-Spanish dictionary, no translations. I’ve only just started this process but I feel good doing it because I’m hearing Spanish at a pretty normal pace (Juan speaks quite quickly). I have no idea whether this will actually speed up the process but as I said, I feel good doing it.

There's a lot to appreciate about both methods, and I've used both. However, input only learning can be counter productive in the long term. Too much emphasis on input without any concern about output will slow language learning in my experience. If you want to learn to read Spanish, you have to read in Spanish. If you want to learn to speak Spanish, you must speak in Spanish. Input and output have their own learning curves and are mutually supporting.

Cool video

bro, do you have an Instagram account or discord ?

when you say you're watching content and listening, were you using target language subtitles or none at all in your journey ?

I am now at 1200 hours of Dreaming Spanish CI. I recently started doing CrossTalk. I am still waiting for the language to emerge naturally. I think the DS Roadmap is a little optomistic with the hours. Thanks for the video.

Even tho im not learning Spanish rn it is a language i wanna learn im learning German and i kept hearing about dreaming Spanish and comprehensible input and that what made me make a new yt account for German only videos and comprehensible videos but i always felt like I wasn’t learning anything but after seeing your video i will continue with the process but the thing im confused about is when i was on the sub Reddit i saw one post on how to watch the videos and they said try and get the gist of it but i do t understand what they mean by get the gist of the video but i wanna thank you for this video and i hope you do well in life and stuff and once im done learning German. Spanish,Russian,Chinese will 100% be the language i will learn next but with only comprehensible input

Just found this channel, might be one of the best ones in the topic of language learning. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the tips! Quick feedback - the background music in the video is too loud and makes it hard to hear your voice. I think it'd be much clearer without the music.

So don’t use the subtitles in Spanish?

Great video!

Great video!

Great video!

Great video and great point of View 😀

I feel so honored to be on the thumbnail haha!! I’m so glad our videos have helped you ❤

Can vouch the method works. You properly acquire the language just as the natives do

I have been trying to focus on one language parent, and I do get bored at times, so I do listen to other content so that I don’t get burned out. I like the language family idea. Very nice! Thanks for sharing!

Wish the music was a little quieter. Sometimes it’s hard to make out what you’re saying sometimes

Should one try this if they’ve never watched avatar? I’m 430 hours but I might save it to 500