B1 spanish speaker here. Started learning the language from scratch in Sept. I can 100% agree with everything you said. Things started to get easier for me when I began to simplify my learning process. I used to get so stressed out trying to learn 10-20 words, listen to an hour podcast, journal 3-5 pages and read 15 pages in a book every single day. The burnout was insane every 2-3 weeks. Now, I prioritize my listening skills, speaking skills, and focus on one thing at a time (grammar/structure/etc) with a tutor that I hired like 4 months ago. Now I'm way more confident in my ability to diagnose and relay information in Spanish. I'm at the point where I'm even having my dreams in Spanish or sometimes wanting to reply in Spanish when I'm having a convo in english, lol. It's definitely been a lot more enjoyable once I simplified everything and I do not feel the burnout like I did the first 5 months of me learning. How many languages are you wanting to eventually learn? I remember you posting something about Portuguese a while ago. I'm trying to be intermediate to advanced in 4 - english, spanish, portuguese, and french or arabic. P.S - Sorry for the long message, haha.
Hey Matt! Thanks for the long message I appreciate it 😊 I totally understand, I like to analyse and break stuff down but it’s too easy to overdo it and just make everything to painful, better just to get on with it haha!
For now I’m working on Spanish Portuguese and Russian. I don’t have any plans to pick up any other languages properly for now outside of maybe just dabbling for fun or a little challenge
Hey Matt! Just wanted to encourage you to learn Portuguese! I'm a C1 Spanish speaker, and although I stopped, learning Portuguese through pure immersion was SUPER easy. I was able to go from no Portuguese to hour long conversations with Brazilians in just a few weeks, immersing probably 3-6 hours a day. A few teachers told me I was at a B1 after just a few weeks, but I was speaking some "Portunhol", so take that with a grain of salt. But, anyway, the languages are so so so similar that when you start immersing, the ambiguity that we have to tolerate when starting a new language is almost non-existent. You should be able to understand a LOT once you can understand that the Portuguese words might just have a different ending or pronunciation than the Spanish words, but they are all pretty much cognates. Good luck!
@@MellySkyWalker of course! :) And starting French once you have Spanish and Portuguese, although harder than Portuguese, won’t be too bad at all! I did about a month of French immersion, didn’t stick with it for different reasons, but I really started to understand a lot and their beautiful but mysterious pronunciation starts to click pretty fast. I’m moving to Germany in October and just started my German immersion and study. Mannnnnn German is tough 😂😂 aiming for B1-2 by October. After German though I will go back and do all the Latin languages :) I’d say you should try Italian as well after French, it’ll be pretty easy to get fluent! EDIT: with Portuguese, do everything from SpanishPortuguese, not English. You’ll reinforce your Spanish and you will also be able to catch all the different word rules (anything ending with “cion” now ends with ção, like tentación is now tentação), pronunciation differences of cognates (yo tengo frío vs eu tenho frio), and how they change quite regularly. For example, use Spanish language content you’ve already watched, dubbed in Portuguese, to start your immersion. I’d also watch Portuguese language shows with a Spanish dub FIRST to reduce ambiguity and then rewatch in Portuguese. And use Spanish subs as your NL subs rather than English if you need them. Again, your Spanish will improve and you will recognize all the pronunciation differences and word rules within a few weeks max since Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible.
This has got to be the best breakdown of learning a language that i've found over the last few months. It's easy to feel "lost," without a guide for moving through a language, but watching this video pushed me to be comfortable with the idea, and that maybe that's exactly where I need to be. Dropping this comment to say thanks for the strength. I'm looking forward to your channel blowing up, and I'll reference this video whenever I need a solid reminder that i'm on the right track. Cheers from Jamaica.
My duuude I just put 2 and 2 together, I watched a few of your videos here and there then I met you on Omegle without recognizing you haha, I wrote your name in calligraphy and stuff, you were really chill and cool to talk to. Sigue haciendo estas videos, la verdad me estan dando mucha motivacion y recordando a lo que me emociona en este idioma !
Hi Shane, one of the biggest challenges for any English speaking student of Spanish is conjugating verbs. My facility with conjugations increased enormously after I started using an app called Ella Verbs, which I highly recommend. I think your subscribers would be interested to know how you approach learning to conjugate verbs.
Honestly that might be a boring video because I didn’t really ever focus on it that much, I looked at one or two videos explaining the main concepts and then just learnt it through lots of exposure
@@ShaneGodliman In that case my hat is off to you sir! I was hoping that would happen for me, but it didn’t really. Using the app I mentioned above and a ton of systematic practice I have gotten much better, but it’s still a bit of a struggle!
@@robertallair7278 Thats not to say I haven't struggled, just that I haven't used a specific resource or methodology for learning conjugations specifically
As I'm progressing, I definitely worry about not learning enough new words. I've been trying to work on that feeling. I definitely notice progress in other things. I think tracking my hours helps me feel like I'm progressing. For some TV shows I'll log the full minutes since they're harder to pay attention to than a podcast. Especially if the show is full of super fast dialogue and doesn't actually have very many scenes without dialogue.
Hey Shane: love your channel! Just discovered it relatively recently and I feel like you’re a brother from another mother (intermediate-advances Spanish learner, beginner at Russian; learning Spanish mostly from YT sites like Dreaming Spanish, Spanish with Vincente etc)! Keep making vids and keep being you, hombre. Your Spanish conversational abilities = GOALS.
@@ShaneGodliman a funny off topic bit re our favorite Spanish teachers: some of their ‘Spain-Spanish’ just doesn’t fly here on this side of the pond (EEUU/Virginia). I tried some leche metaphors on my Guatemalan and Salvadorian neighbors the other day - 101 mierda right from Español con Juan - and they didn’t know WTF I was on about. Good vibe: instantly killed. Like they looked concerned about my mental health for a minute. Leave the leche in Europe!:)
this is a fantastic video man, it deserves way more views. Everything you say makes perfect sense and the way you have gone about tracking your immersion is very logical. Thanks :)
Thanks Shane for all your hard work you're about the 1st one that I've seen on RUclips that talked about reading but using audible or something to read along with because if you don't know Spanish to read it it's gonna be very difficult I'm a little bit older studying Spanish for about a year getting better but it's been a struggle thank you so much for your videos and may God-bless you I've watched every one of your videos keep up the great work your inspiration to many people
Hi Shane, Another interesting video! I think a key factor in getting the most out of the time you spend in the language is the degree to which you are active, or “deliberate”. In my experience, passive listening is better than doing nothing, but not all that much better! Anything I can do to make myself more involved, whether it’s reading along, or trying to mentally repeat what I am hearing, or afterwards trying to briefly summarize what I have heard, makes the session much more valuable.
Hace poco vi los videos que me recomendabas, debo admitir que Valeria Ros de La lengua moderna es genial. Muchas gracias por el video, saludos desde Irlanda.
It's definitely a challenge but you do get used to it the more you expose yourself to the language. "The Spanish Dude" is a good channel for videos on those tricky little parts of the grammar from the perspective of a learner, he has a video on "lo" that really helped me
There is so much talk from language learners about how many books and hours they have spent by quantifying the process. What would be interesting to know to a certain extent would be the monetary value. For example, in you case, would you be comfortable to share how many dollars/ pounds you have spent with your Spanish learning from the onset. This revelation actually might help debutants like myself who are in the process but do not know how much to dive into the learning process. All the physical books, audio books, italki classes all add up I am sure. Thanks, just a thought.
The problem is that it’s not an accurate representation of very much. Different currencies having different buying power is a small factor, but more importantly there are many different ways to do things. For example I’ve spent money on physical books when realistically I could have saved my self money buying ebooks (or even finding a way to download them for free) so people could have access to the same resources but spend relatively different amounts on them. Another thing is I’ve paid for convenience essentially with italki classes, rather than trying to find an ideal language exchange, but you can of course get the same results without necessarily spending money on classes. I have no problem saying that I’ve sunk a decent amount of money into MY learning but I wouldn’t want to make a whole video about it in terms of how much it costs to learn Spanish because it makes it seem like you need to spend money to get a decent level in Spanish which isn’t true. Also I don’t have a specific record of how much I’ve spent and I can’t be bothered to look at all my different accounts to work it out 😂
You've inspired me to commit more to my Spanish learning, specifically the listening part. Since finding you on youtube a month ago I've averaged about 1.5 hours a day of comprehensible listening. It's definitely better bang for buck than reading. How many hours of input did you get before starting speaking?
That’s awesome man, 1.5 hours is great! I actually started speaking very early I hadn’t done that much immersion at all but I soldiered through for better or for worse haha
Great video - this is a very encouraging message to hear! A question about your 500 hours of active immersion: Did you use Spanish subtitles while watching series and movies, or was this pure listening? Also, how "active" was "active"... would you pause on any dialog you didn't fully understand (grammar, vocabulary, whatever), and study it until you did understand it fully? I'm at the point in my Spanish learning where I feel I need to do some similar immersion, and I'm wondering exactly what it should look like to get good results.
Thank you! I actually started watching without subtitles at the beginning of this period. I didn’t stop too much to look things up to be honest, I wanted to focus on just enjoying the process and committing to the hours and I knew that stopped every time I didn’t understand something would ultimately frustrate me. I did of course look things up sometimes but I tried to do it as little as possible unless I saw words or phrases that I specifically wanted to remember
@@ShaneGodliman Thanks Shane! That's super helpful. I still need (Spanish) subtitles on a lot of content, but it's good to know I should be able to get some good results without pausing. On every. Line. Of dialog. :)
I’m currently reading ( and listening to) REINA ROJA at your suggestion…but I’m still struggling, as you put it, with developing a ‘tolerance to ambiguity’as regarding words and phrases that you don’t know..I’m reading on Kindle, so the urge to look up words and sentences up by highlighting and clicking on them is enormous. Have you any advice about this…specifically how much should I just try to grab the essence of each chapter ..even if it’s pretty basic sometimes because there have been some turns of phrases and words I just can’t take a successful educated guess at from the context….?
Firstly I must just say that the "tolerance for ambiguity" was a phrase I got from Matt vs Japan (one of my favourite YT channel for language learning if you're not already subscribed). In regards to wanting to look up words, I would say read the chapter first, then go back through and look up the main things you didn't understand, then you can always read that chapter again if you want to be thorough. I started doing that exact method with this book but I just found it a bit annoying going back through and once I started looking up "some" words I had to look up every single thing I didn't recognise, which obviously took a lot of time, and ultimately while it was cool to pick up a few words here and there, for the most part it didn't make the general experience of reading the book much more fun or interesting. So I decided to just read it and try and enjoy it and only look up things if I literally had not understood at all what just happened in a scene or something
Thank you! Well I haven't officially achieved a C1 level yet, but what I think is helping me most is writing practice. Having to write about a variety of different topics in a variety of different registers really helps we refine my grammar and vocabulary. Apart from that, just exposing myself to the language in lots of different forms, watching more indepth youtube videos, analysing stand-up comedy, reading and listening to audiobooks etc. The idea is just to challenge your level really and to try and keep discovering new things
Hey Shane, great video! Can I ask a question, what listening materials would you suggest? I have just completed A2. Do you think I should be listening to any type of Spanish or is there somewhere you started and progressed through? Dreaming Spanish intermediate level videos I can grasp most things. What audio/books would be a good place to start? Thanks in advance, Rob
Well of course you could try the advanced videos on dreaming Spanish if intermediate is a bit easier, maybe look into some graded reader audiobooks as well. I didn’t follow a direct path at all I just looked for things that were interesting and tried to watch them. You could look for some Netflix series, intermediate podcasts, anything really, I didn’t pay much attention to specific levels
@@ShaneGodliman Hey Shane, thanks so much for taking the time to reply to me. I will do that mate. Really want to try and immerse myself as much as possible. Enjoy your weekend and keep up the great work.
Could you name some content you listened to during the first 100 hours? I'm trying to reach the intermediate level but am currently only watching videos by Dreaming Spanish and Spanish After Hours. I probably have around 25 hours of comprehensible, active listening under my belt. It is difficult to find input that is both very comprehensible for beginners and also interesting.
Yeah honestly especially in the first 100 hours or so I wasn’t particularly organised so I wasn’t finding that much more stuff than you. Just lots of random videos here and there of beginner Spanish or about certain topics. I wish I had thought about more accurately tracking what I was doing in the very early stages to be honest. I did manage to work with a couple of videos of español con Juan as well where he repeats quite a lot I could pick up a few little things , but especially at the very beginning I think you’re going to have to deal with a bit less exciting content for the most part
Hi. I'm curious about how long it took for your speaking to improve from struggling to string together a sentence in Spanish to having your conversation flow? According to your videos you are roughly 4-5 months ahead of me with Spanish learning, however I am only just now starting to speak (literally started a little over a week ago). I find myself nervous and forgetting things that I should know when I speak it. I'm curious how long it took you to get decent at speaking. Any advice?
Hey Angel, it took me quite a while to get comfortable speaking to be honest, I had multiple lessons a week so I was practicing a lot, I guess I had been speaking for about 6 months before I started to feel noticeably better and less nervous. Honestly I just powered through and kept trying, getting lots of input at the same time and asking questions about things I wasn’t sure about. I think it’s also important to build your confidence in finding other ways to say things when you can’t remember or don’t know a word or how to structure something
![Over 200 Classes on italki! [My Experiences and Tips]](/img/1.gif)
B1 spanish speaker here. Started learning the language from scratch in Sept. I can 100% agree with everything you said. Things started to get easier for me when I began to simplify my learning process. I used to get so stressed out trying to learn 10-20 words, listen to an hour podcast, journal 3-5 pages and read 15 pages in a book every single day. The burnout was insane every 2-3 weeks. Now, I prioritize my listening skills, speaking skills, and focus on one thing at a time (grammar/structure/etc) with a tutor that I hired like 4 months ago. Now I'm way more confident in my ability to diagnose and relay information in Spanish. I'm at the point where I'm even having my dreams in Spanish or sometimes wanting to reply in Spanish when I'm having a convo in english, lol. It's definitely been a lot more enjoyable once I simplified everything and I do not feel the burnout like I did the first 5 months of me learning. How many languages are you wanting to eventually learn? I remember you posting something about Portuguese a while ago. I'm trying to be intermediate to advanced in 4 - english, spanish, portuguese, and french or arabic.
P.S - Sorry for the long message, haha.
Hey Matt! Thanks for the long message I appreciate it 😊 I totally understand, I like to analyse and break stuff down but it’s too easy to overdo it and just make everything to painful, better just to get on with it haha!
For now I’m working on Spanish Portuguese and Russian. I don’t have any plans to pick up any other languages properly for now outside of maybe just dabbling for fun or a little challenge
Hey Matt! Just wanted to encourage you to learn Portuguese! I'm a C1 Spanish speaker, and although I stopped, learning Portuguese through pure immersion was SUPER easy. I was able to go from no Portuguese to hour long conversations with Brazilians in just a few weeks, immersing probably 3-6 hours a day. A few teachers told me I was at a B1 after just a few weeks, but I was speaking some "Portunhol", so take that with a grain of salt. But, anyway, the languages are so so so similar that when you start immersing, the ambiguity that we have to tolerate when starting a new language is almost non-existent. You should be able to understand a LOT once you can understand that the Portuguese words might just have a different ending or pronunciation than the Spanish words, but they are all pretty much cognates. Good luck!
@@cashglobe wow thank you for the detailed response man! Def looking forward to the moment I start 🙂
@@MellySkyWalker of course! :) And starting French once you have Spanish and Portuguese, although harder than Portuguese, won’t be too bad at all! I did about a month of French immersion, didn’t stick with it for different reasons, but I really started to understand a lot and their beautiful but mysterious pronunciation starts to click pretty fast. I’m moving to Germany in October and just started my German immersion and study. Mannnnnn German is tough 😂😂 aiming for B1-2 by October. After German though I will go back and do all the Latin languages :) I’d say you should try Italian as well after French, it’ll be pretty easy to get fluent!
EDIT: with Portuguese, do everything from SpanishPortuguese, not English. You’ll reinforce your Spanish and you will also be able to catch all the different word rules (anything ending with “cion” now ends with ção, like tentación is now tentação), pronunciation differences of cognates (yo tengo frío vs eu tenho frio), and how they change quite regularly.
For example, use Spanish language content you’ve already watched, dubbed in Portuguese, to start your immersion. I’d also watch Portuguese language shows with a Spanish dub FIRST to reduce ambiguity and then rewatch in Portuguese. And use Spanish subs as your NL subs rather than English if you need them. Again, your Spanish will improve and you will recognize all the pronunciation differences and word rules within a few weeks max since Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible.
This has got to be the best breakdown of learning a language that i've found over the last few months. It's easy to feel "lost," without a guide for moving through a language, but watching this video pushed me to be comfortable with the idea, and that maybe that's exactly where I need to be. Dropping this comment to say thanks for the strength. I'm looking forward to your channel blowing up, and I'll reference this video whenever I need a solid reminder that i'm on the right track. Cheers from Jamaica.
Wow, thank you so much! I’m really glad you got something out of it 🙏🏽🙌🏽
My duuude I just put 2 and 2 together, I watched a few of your videos here and there then I met you on Omegle without recognizing you haha, I wrote your name in calligraphy and stuff, you were really chill and cool to talk to. Sigue haciendo estas videos, la verdad me estan dando mucha motivacion y recordando a lo que me emociona en este idioma !
I still have the picture saved on my laptop haha! Thanks for checking out the video man 😊
This video is spot on, the way you have simplified everything that I relate to is amazing. Thank you 🙏🏽
Thank you! I think this is my favourite video
WOW! I needed this because I’ve been feeling discouraged lately! Thanks so much! You’re so right!
Don’t get discouraged, you can do it 😊🙌🏽💪🏽
Hi Shane, one of the biggest challenges for any English speaking student of Spanish is conjugating verbs. My facility with conjugations increased enormously after I started using an app called Ella Verbs, which I highly recommend. I think your subscribers would be interested to know how you approach learning to conjugate verbs.
Honestly that might be a boring video because I didn’t really ever focus on it that much, I looked at one or two videos explaining the main concepts and then just learnt it through lots of exposure
@@ShaneGodliman In that case my hat is off to you sir! I was hoping that would happen for me, but it didn’t really. Using the app I mentioned above and a ton of systematic practice I have gotten much better, but it’s still a bit of a struggle!
@@robertallair7278 Thats not to say I haven't struggled, just that I haven't used a specific resource or methodology for learning conjugations specifically
As I'm progressing, I definitely worry about not learning enough new words. I've been trying to work on that feeling. I definitely notice progress in other things. I think tracking my hours helps me feel like I'm progressing. For some TV shows I'll log the full minutes since they're harder to pay attention to than a podcast. Especially if the show is full of super fast dialogue and doesn't actually have very many scenes without dialogue.
I definitely think tracking your hours is a big thing for keeping yourself consistent and focused on whats most important, time with the language
Hey Shane: love your channel! Just discovered it relatively recently and I feel like you’re a brother from another mother (intermediate-advances Spanish learner, beginner at Russian; learning Spanish mostly from YT sites like Dreaming Spanish, Spanish with Vincente etc)!
Keep making vids and keep being you, hombre. Your Spanish conversational abilities = GOALS.
Haha thanks so much man! And good luck to you with the Spanish and Russian too 🙌🏽🙌🏽
@@ShaneGodliman a funny off topic bit re our favorite Spanish teachers: some of their ‘Spain-Spanish’ just doesn’t fly here on this side of the pond (EEUU/Virginia). I tried some leche metaphors on my Guatemalan and Salvadorian neighbors the other day - 101 mierda right from Español con Juan - and they didn’t know WTF I was on about. Good vibe: instantly killed. Like they looked concerned about my mental health for a minute.
Leave the leche in Europe!:)
this is a fantastic video man, it deserves way more views. Everything you say makes perfect sense and the way you have gone about tracking your immersion is very logical. Thanks :)
Thank you!
Thanks Shane for all your hard work you're about the 1st one that I've seen on RUclips that talked about reading but using audible or something to read along with because if you don't know Spanish to read it it's gonna be very difficult I'm a little bit older studying Spanish for about a year getting better but it's been a struggle thank you so much for your videos and may God-bless you I've watched every one of your videos keep up the great work your inspiration to many people
Thank you so much Ken! I’m really glad you’re enjoying the videos so far 🙌🏽
Hi Shane, Another interesting video! I think a key factor in getting the most out of the time you spend in the language is the degree to which you are active, or “deliberate”. In my experience, passive listening is better than doing nothing, but not all that much better! Anything I can do to make myself more involved, whether it’s reading along, or trying to mentally repeat what I am hearing, or afterwards trying to briefly summarize what I have heard, makes the session much more valuable.
Hey Robert! Thank you I’m glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah I totally agree deliberate practice is definitely the way to go
Very, very useful and articúlate take on skill learning in general and language learning specifically …gracias por todo el genial consejo.
Thank you very much Peter, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Love your videos , i like the 15 minute immersion marking, all the best bro! keep going!
Thanks Roberto!
Well done! Very interesting video
Thanks man! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
@@ShaneGodliman For sure! Not gonna lie, I'm also kinda hoping for a calisthenics/acrobatics video now!
@@MadChirpy now that things are starting to open up again I’m hoping to get back to it so hopefully I’ll be able to do one soon!
The idea of cognitive to automatic in skill development is so true! Thank you for this reminder Shane!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hace poco vi los videos que me recomendabas, debo admitir que Valeria Ros de La lengua moderna es genial. Muchas gracias por el video, saludos desde Irlanda.
Adoro a Valeria Ros! Gracias por ver el vídeo Marek
Gracias por el consejo hermano!
De nada 🙌🏽
I get confused by all the combinations of ‘así, como, lo, que, la que, cuál, de, ya, tal, tan’ etc that fill every sentence.
It's definitely a challenge but you do get used to it the more you expose yourself to the language. "The Spanish Dude" is a good channel for videos on those tricky little parts of the grammar from the perspective of a learner, he has a video on "lo" that really helped me
@@ShaneGodliman Ok thanks
There is so much talk from language learners about how many books and hours they have spent by quantifying the process. What would be interesting to know to a certain extent would be the monetary value. For example, in you case, would you be comfortable to share how many dollars/ pounds you have spent with your Spanish learning from the onset. This revelation actually might help debutants like myself who are in the process but do not know how much to dive into the learning process. All the physical books, audio books, italki classes all add up I am sure. Thanks, just a thought.
The problem is that it’s not an accurate representation of very much. Different currencies having different buying power is a small factor, but more importantly there are many different ways to do things. For example I’ve spent money on physical books when realistically I could have saved my self money buying ebooks (or even finding a way to download them for free) so people could have access to the same resources but spend relatively different amounts on them. Another thing is I’ve paid for convenience essentially with italki classes, rather than trying to find an ideal language exchange, but you can of course get the same results without necessarily spending money on classes. I have no problem saying that I’ve sunk a decent amount of money into MY learning but I wouldn’t want to make a whole video about it in terms of how much it costs to learn Spanish because it makes it seem like you need to spend money to get a decent level in Spanish which isn’t true. Also I don’t have a specific record of how much I’ve spent and I can’t be bothered to look at all my different accounts to work it out 😂
You've inspired me to commit more to my Spanish learning, specifically the listening part. Since finding you on youtube a month ago I've averaged about 1.5 hours a day of comprehensible listening. It's definitely better bang for buck than reading. How many hours of input did you get before starting speaking?
That’s awesome man, 1.5 hours is great! I actually started speaking very early I hadn’t done that much immersion at all but I soldiered through for better or for worse haha
Thank you
I’m glad you enjoyed the video Kev!
Great video - this is a very encouraging message to hear! A question about your 500 hours of active immersion: Did you use Spanish subtitles while watching series and movies, or was this pure listening? Also, how "active" was "active"... would you pause on any dialog you didn't fully understand (grammar, vocabulary, whatever), and study it until you did understand it fully? I'm at the point in my Spanish learning where I feel I need to do some similar immersion, and I'm wondering exactly what it should look like to get good results.
Thank you! I actually started watching without subtitles at the beginning of this period. I didn’t stop too much to look things up to be honest, I wanted to focus on just enjoying the process and committing to the hours and I knew that stopped every time I didn’t understand something would ultimately frustrate me. I did of course look things up sometimes but I tried to do it as little as possible unless I saw words or phrases that I specifically wanted to remember
@@ShaneGodliman Thanks Shane! That's super helpful. I still need (Spanish) subtitles on a lot of content, but it's good to know I should be able to get some good results without pausing. On every. Line. Of dialog. :)
I’m currently reading ( and listening to) REINA ROJA at your suggestion…but I’m still struggling, as you put it, with developing a ‘tolerance to ambiguity’as regarding words and phrases that you don’t know..I’m reading on Kindle, so the urge to look up words and sentences up by highlighting and clicking on them is enormous.
Have you any advice about this…specifically how much should I just try to grab the essence of each chapter ..even if it’s pretty basic sometimes because there have been some turns of phrases and words I just can’t take a successful educated guess at from the context….?
Firstly I must just say that the "tolerance for ambiguity" was a phrase I got from Matt vs Japan (one of my favourite YT channel for language learning if you're not already subscribed). In regards to wanting to look up words, I would say read the chapter first, then go back through and look up the main things you didn't understand, then you can always read that chapter again if you want to be thorough. I started doing that exact method with this book but I just found it a bit annoying going back through and once I started looking up "some" words I had to look up every single thing I didn't recognise, which obviously took a lot of time, and ultimately while it was cool to pick up a few words here and there, for the most part it didn't make the general experience of reading the book much more fun or interesting. So I decided to just read it and try and enjoy it and only look up things if I literally had not understood at all what just happened in a scene or something
@@ShaneGodliman ….great thanks for that Shane 👍
Hello. Your videos are very inspiring! I’m a new subscriber. Do you have any advice on how to go from a B2 level to C1 in Spanish. Much appreciated 😊
Thank you! Well I haven't officially achieved a C1 level yet, but what I think is helping me most is writing practice. Having to write about a variety of different topics in a variety of different registers really helps we refine my grammar and vocabulary. Apart from that, just exposing myself to the language in lots of different forms, watching more indepth youtube videos, analysing stand-up comedy, reading and listening to audiobooks etc. The idea is just to challenge your level really and to try and keep discovering new things
What is the level you got to after 500 hours?
Hey Shane, great video! Can I ask a question, what listening materials would you suggest? I have just completed A2. Do you think I should be listening to any type of Spanish or is there somewhere you started and progressed through? Dreaming Spanish intermediate level videos I can grasp most things. What audio/books would be a good place to start? Thanks in advance, Rob
Well of course you could try the advanced videos on dreaming Spanish if intermediate is a bit easier, maybe look into some graded reader audiobooks as well. I didn’t follow a direct path at all I just looked for things that were interesting and tried to watch them. You could look for some Netflix series, intermediate podcasts, anything really, I didn’t pay much attention to specific levels
Extr@ might be a good place to start if the idea of series seems too intimidating right now, it’s a bit silly but it works as a good bridge
@@ShaneGodliman Hey Shane, thanks so much for taking the time to reply to me. I will do that mate. Really want to try and immerse myself as much as possible. Enjoy your weekend and keep up the great work.
Could you name some content you listened to during the first 100 hours? I'm trying to reach the intermediate level but am currently only watching videos by Dreaming Spanish and Spanish After Hours. I probably have around 25 hours of comprehensible, active listening under my belt. It is difficult to find input that is both very comprehensible for beginners and also interesting.
Yeah honestly especially in the first 100 hours or so I wasn’t particularly organised so I wasn’t finding that much more stuff than you. Just lots of random videos here and there of beginner Spanish or about certain topics. I wish I had thought about more accurately tracking what I was doing in the very early stages to be honest. I did manage to work with a couple of videos of español con Juan as well where he repeats quite a lot I could pick up a few little things , but especially at the very beginning I think you’re going to have to deal with a bit less exciting content for the most part
Hi. I'm curious about how long it took for your speaking to improve from struggling to string together a sentence in Spanish to having your conversation flow? According to your videos you are roughly 4-5 months ahead of me with Spanish learning, however I am only just now starting to speak (literally started a little over a week ago). I find myself nervous and forgetting things that I should know when I speak it. I'm curious how long it took you to get decent at speaking. Any advice?
Hey Angel, it took me quite a while to get comfortable speaking to be honest, I had multiple lessons a week so I was practicing a lot, I guess I had been speaking for about 6 months before I started to feel noticeably better and less nervous. Honestly I just powered through and kept trying, getting lots of input at the same time and asking questions about things I wasn’t sure about. I think it’s also important to build your confidence in finding other ways to say things when you can’t remember or don’t know a word or how to structure something
@@ShaneGodliman Thanks Shane.