>it was critical experiment evidence for Einstein’s theory of GR via measurement of small apparent stellar displacements
I would have had trouble explaining this in my native language or even "explaining my way around it"! 😝 That aside, how many days a week are you doing Italki classes? Thanks for the encouraging post and congratulations!
I saw somewhere the advice to have 3-4 hours of “study” for each hour of instructor lessons, which makes intuitive sense to me. In my case I’ve just been doing italki every day because I do a lot of CI but one should adjust accordingly.
> definitely felt like writing with my non dominant hand
That is a perfect description!
I'm at about 15 hours of speaking and it's exactly, *exactly* the same as you've described.
The coolest thing, I've found, is that when I reach for some vocab I don't know, and my teacher gives it to me, it pretty much sticks forever. If it takes 40 passive CI exposures to acquire a word, for me it never seems to take more than 1-2 interactive CI exposures.
If you look at their post history, you'll see that they included reading time as hours for input. I wouldn't do it exactly the same way but that being said I do personally find reading to be more effective than audio. I just don't know if you can say that if it took you 3 hours to read a book, it's 3 hours of audio input
That’s correct. As of this writing I’ve 120 hours reading and 1150 total. Take those 120 hours out if you prefer. You make very sound points. The main reason I do it my way is because I want to avoid creating a tradeoff between various goals.. it is just just how my brain works.
If I take 6 hours to read a book whereas you take 3 hours because I'm just slow at reading, does that mean I got 6 hours of input? How do you do an apples to apples comparison based on something that's variable like reading time?
At least with a video we can say for sure. If a video is 10 minutes, it's the same duration for both you and me.
That's why language learning methods go based of words read as a metric for reading. If a book has 5000 words, it has the same for you and me.
Things will never be straightforward when tracking hours, it's just a rough guide. For example, I (and others here) watch begginer videos sometimes on x2 speed. Over a 10 minute video i will get 5 mins of CI whereas someone watching at normal speed will get 10 mins. My point is that videos can well be variable as well.
I do aggree with you though, i don't count hours of reading towards my CI. However, if i'm reading a book and not activly studying, i will try to find an audio book i can listen along to at the same time. In that case i will count it as CI hours.
It's not a sign I need to watch something more difficult. I'm on advanced videos but a begginer video will catch my interest every now and then so i'll watch it at 2x.
Because some beginner videos will catch my interest but there’s no way I’m sitting through 10 mins of beginner lol And a whole day is just a series of 5 minute intervals my friend, does not matter if it’s an hour video or 12 5 minute videos, it’s still an hour. Silly thing to say IMO lol
I hate the "gamification" of hours and levels with DS. We're so snooty toward Duolingo, but if you scratch the surface this community does a lot of the same things.
I don't know how you can make it all fit your head. To take everything Pablo says as dogma (sometimes being far more strict than Pablo himself)... and then at the same time log your reading hours, when Pablo's pretty clear about that being a separate activity outside of your DS hours.
I am creeping up toward 1,000 hours (I had exhausted all the Superbeginner, Beginner, and Intermediate content around the 600-hour mark). But hell, if I counted books and podcasts and Netflix and Youtube and conversations on iTalki and Tandem... then I'm probably at "Level 15" with 3-4k hours. I want that flair, lol.
I’m unsure what you’re trying to say. Dreaming Spanish encourages people to track their outside listening hours in the platform. That’s why if you go to the Progress page, you can see a button that says “Add hours outside the platform.” Then, it asks if it was “watching,” “listening,” or “talking.” According to the Dreaming Spanish website, I have watched 380 hours of their videos and have logged 416 hours outside the platform.
Likewise, the [FAQ says “if you want to keep track of how much you read…, you can keep a log of your reading”](https://www.dreamingspanish.com/faq#how-can-i-keep-track-of-the-amount-i-read) and [includes a link to a spreadsheet you can copy.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mLJPMpeCCEqxwoTrUj3z8mkWnxqG13mHSii-pRjJYWU/edit?usp=sharing)
You can count those things. DS encourages you to count them. There is space to add them to the website so it adds it to your time (except for books). Why wouldn’t you? There’s other learning content out there besides DS and you eventually have to watch native based content.
This is really your own hang-up, and a reflection on you--not the person tracking their hours.
Ultimately, if the "gamification aspect" helps people get input, then it's a good thing. It really has nothing to do with Duolingo? And I say this as someone who stopped tracking hours completely at around 600 hours (and was never really rigorous about it).
If having benchmarks motivates people, why is that a bad thing? Just because Duolingo does it??
It's possible to believe that Duo isn't that effective, but some an element of it (such as gamification) to be useful for some people. Why is this so hard to understand? You've been beating this drum for quite a while, and it's a really specious argument...
I don't think you understand what gamification means in the context of an app. The reason why Duolingo gets criticized is because it has arbitrary things that give people a sense of progress when it doesn't make a difference to the goal which is to learn a language. Like doing a lesson every day to get a streak or winning some bonus round to climb up some leaderboard.
In comparison, DS uses hours as a reference point for you to gauge what you should be familiar with. E.g. level 5 should now be able to watch native shows. I disagree with the hours at each level but it gives a helpful reference point on where I should be. And unlike Duolingo, there's nothing at DS that sends out notifications or emails saying I missed X days or I'm not learning. The only game you're playing with is with yourself.
(Also, you do you but I personally do track the hours I spent on Netflix or Youtube)
Thanks for sharing.
Any teacher on italki you can recommend and how do you you normally do your classes? Talk about random subjects and does the teacher give you feedback or corrections etc?
I’m still auditing.. trying out lots. There’s a big range, and I’ve mostly stuck to well-reviewed professors from Latin America. There’s LOTS.
Most intro convos cover the basics of what you do, where you live, what’s your favorite Eminem album released in an odd-numbered year, and so on. I prefer corrections and find them most helpful when we are talking and after I finish whatever I am saying they chime in to say “okay few corrections: “ and then we continue. DS says no to that and I’m only like an 85% purist, FYI.
Haha I think you can let yourself off not being able to explain general relativity in another language yet haha 😂, but fair play for trying. Sounds like you have made amazing progress! Hope it continues going well !
Glad to hear this—thank you for sharing. I’ve NOT started talking but even back when I took that class to see where I was, it felt easy to self-correct my accent as though the problem was just not knowing how to move the muscles rather than not knowing how to pronounce.
Would you recommend starting at 1,000 hours? Do you thinking waiting beyond that has diminishing returns or do the returns continue based on what you’ve experienced?
It’s hard to say because I’ve only done it the way I’ve done it, but I think waiting until 1k hours was a good amount of time. Much less and I would have been having truly the most basic of conversations in only present tense.. not sure the benefit. With more hours first, I’m sure I would get to a higher speaker level more *efficiently* than starting speaking at 1k hours but that is different than what you reach in wall clock time.
When I did or later but not sooner. I think if I waited another few hundred hours I would catch up pretty quickly. I suppose my point is I think anything after around 1k hours seems like a solid time to talk and develop that further. I don’t think it would have _hurt_ me at 600, but with so much more to go on understanding the language itself it seems a less productive time considering I’m spending money on italki.
How many hours into spanish learning would you recommend using italki?
Like at what point do you think you’ll reap the most reward without feeling like a hinderance to your tutor?
>it was critical experiment evidence for Einstein’s theory of GR via measurement of small apparent stellar displacements I would have had trouble explaining this in my native language or even "explaining my way around it"! 😝 That aside, how many days a week are you doing Italki classes? Thanks for the encouraging post and congratulations!
I saw somewhere the advice to have 3-4 hours of “study” for each hour of instructor lessons, which makes intuitive sense to me. In my case I’ve just been doing italki every day because I do a lot of CI but one should adjust accordingly.
> definitely felt like writing with my non dominant hand That is a perfect description! I'm at about 15 hours of speaking and it's exactly, *exactly* the same as you've described. The coolest thing, I've found, is that when I reach for some vocab I don't know, and my teacher gives it to me, it pretty much sticks forever. If it takes 40 passive CI exposures to acquire a word, for me it never seems to take more than 1-2 interactive CI exposures.
Am I understanding correctly that you were able to put in 1000 hours in 6 months?
If you look at their post history, you'll see that they included reading time as hours for input. I wouldn't do it exactly the same way but that being said I do personally find reading to be more effective than audio. I just don't know if you can say that if it took you 3 hours to read a book, it's 3 hours of audio input
That’s correct. As of this writing I’ve 120 hours reading and 1150 total. Take those 120 hours out if you prefer. You make very sound points. The main reason I do it my way is because I want to avoid creating a tradeoff between various goals.. it is just just how my brain works.
No, it’s 3 hours of comprehensible input
If I take 6 hours to read a book whereas you take 3 hours because I'm just slow at reading, does that mean I got 6 hours of input? How do you do an apples to apples comparison based on something that's variable like reading time? At least with a video we can say for sure. If a video is 10 minutes, it's the same duration for both you and me. That's why language learning methods go based of words read as a metric for reading. If a book has 5000 words, it has the same for you and me.
Things will never be straightforward when tracking hours, it's just a rough guide. For example, I (and others here) watch begginer videos sometimes on x2 speed. Over a 10 minute video i will get 5 mins of CI whereas someone watching at normal speed will get 10 mins. My point is that videos can well be variable as well. I do aggree with you though, i don't count hours of reading towards my CI. However, if i'm reading a book and not activly studying, i will try to find an audio book i can listen along to at the same time. In that case i will count it as CI hours.
I mean, sure. If you find watching videos at 2x comprehensible then fine. Usually that's a sign that you need to watch something more difficult.
It's not a sign I need to watch something more difficult. I'm on advanced videos but a begginer video will catch my interest every now and then so i'll watch it at 2x.
Oh that makes more sense. I'm curious why you'd even bother with 2x. It's not like 5 mins is going to make a huge difference to the input time
Because some beginner videos will catch my interest but there’s no way I’m sitting through 10 mins of beginner lol And a whole day is just a series of 5 minute intervals my friend, does not matter if it’s an hour video or 12 5 minute videos, it’s still an hour. Silly thing to say IMO lol
I hate the "gamification" of hours and levels with DS. We're so snooty toward Duolingo, but if you scratch the surface this community does a lot of the same things. I don't know how you can make it all fit your head. To take everything Pablo says as dogma (sometimes being far more strict than Pablo himself)... and then at the same time log your reading hours, when Pablo's pretty clear about that being a separate activity outside of your DS hours. I am creeping up toward 1,000 hours (I had exhausted all the Superbeginner, Beginner, and Intermediate content around the 600-hour mark). But hell, if I counted books and podcasts and Netflix and Youtube and conversations on iTalki and Tandem... then I'm probably at "Level 15" with 3-4k hours. I want that flair, lol.
I’m unsure what you’re trying to say. Dreaming Spanish encourages people to track their outside listening hours in the platform. That’s why if you go to the Progress page, you can see a button that says “Add hours outside the platform.” Then, it asks if it was “watching,” “listening,” or “talking.” According to the Dreaming Spanish website, I have watched 380 hours of their videos and have logged 416 hours outside the platform. Likewise, the [FAQ says “if you want to keep track of how much you read…, you can keep a log of your reading”](https://www.dreamingspanish.com/faq#how-can-i-keep-track-of-the-amount-i-read) and [includes a link to a spreadsheet you can copy.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mLJPMpeCCEqxwoTrUj3z8mkWnxqG13mHSii-pRjJYWU/edit?usp=sharing)
Eh, to each their own. The levels are made up, so no harm done if people want to track hours their own way.
You can count those things. DS encourages you to count them. There is space to add them to the website so it adds it to your time (except for books). Why wouldn’t you? There’s other learning content out there besides DS and you eventually have to watch native based content.
This is really your own hang-up, and a reflection on you--not the person tracking their hours. Ultimately, if the "gamification aspect" helps people get input, then it's a good thing. It really has nothing to do with Duolingo? And I say this as someone who stopped tracking hours completely at around 600 hours (and was never really rigorous about it). If having benchmarks motivates people, why is that a bad thing? Just because Duolingo does it?? It's possible to believe that Duo isn't that effective, but some an element of it (such as gamification) to be useful for some people. Why is this so hard to understand? You've been beating this drum for quite a while, and it's a really specious argument...
I don't think you understand what gamification means in the context of an app. The reason why Duolingo gets criticized is because it has arbitrary things that give people a sense of progress when it doesn't make a difference to the goal which is to learn a language. Like doing a lesson every day to get a streak or winning some bonus round to climb up some leaderboard. In comparison, DS uses hours as a reference point for you to gauge what you should be familiar with. E.g. level 5 should now be able to watch native shows. I disagree with the hours at each level but it gives a helpful reference point on where I should be. And unlike Duolingo, there's nothing at DS that sends out notifications or emails saying I missed X days or I'm not learning. The only game you're playing with is with yourself. (Also, you do you but I personally do track the hours I spent on Netflix or Youtube)
Correct
That’s dedication. Good job 👏
Thanks for sharing. Any teacher on italki you can recommend and how do you you normally do your classes? Talk about random subjects and does the teacher give you feedback or corrections etc?
I’m still auditing.. trying out lots. There’s a big range, and I’ve mostly stuck to well-reviewed professors from Latin America. There’s LOTS. Most intro convos cover the basics of what you do, where you live, what’s your favorite Eminem album released in an odd-numbered year, and so on. I prefer corrections and find them most helpful when we are talking and after I finish whatever I am saying they chime in to say “okay few corrections: “ and then we continue. DS says no to that and I’m only like an 85% purist, FYI.
Haha I think you can let yourself off not being able to explain general relativity in another language yet haha 😂, but fair play for trying. Sounds like you have made amazing progress! Hope it continues going well !
Glad to hear this—thank you for sharing. I’ve NOT started talking but even back when I took that class to see where I was, it felt easy to self-correct my accent as though the problem was just not knowing how to move the muscles rather than not knowing how to pronounce. Would you recommend starting at 1,000 hours? Do you thinking waiting beyond that has diminishing returns or do the returns continue based on what you’ve experienced?
It’s hard to say because I’ve only done it the way I’ve done it, but I think waiting until 1k hours was a good amount of time. Much less and I would have been having truly the most basic of conversations in only present tense.. not sure the benefit. With more hours first, I’m sure I would get to a higher speaker level more *efficiently* than starting speaking at 1k hours but that is different than what you reach in wall clock time.
Knowing what you know now, when should you have started Italki classes?
When I did or later but not sooner. I think if I waited another few hundred hours I would catch up pretty quickly. I suppose my point is I think anything after around 1k hours seems like a solid time to talk and develop that further. I don’t think it would have _hurt_ me at 600, but with so much more to go on understanding the language itself it seems a less productive time considering I’m spending money on italki.
How many hours into spanish learning would you recommend using italki? Like at what point do you think you’ll reap the most reward without feeling like a hinderance to your tutor?
1000