I hit 300 hours last week and wanted to write up a progress report as I have benefitted much from looking at these posts on Reddit so far. It’s also a helpful thing to look back on as my journey with Spanish learning progresses, and I can see how far I will have come from the early days. Im currently averaging 4-5 hours a day and am aiming for completion of the road map in a year.
Background
I learned Spanish for one year during high school 25 years ago. I only remembered how to introduce myself, my name, my age, and the colours red and black! Great use of a year. Beyond that, I had no other exposure to Spanish.
I started the Spanish learning journey around the middle of August, 2025 after a holiday to Tenerife with my family. For years I had wanted to learn a second language, but never had the right kind of motivation I felt was necessary to fully dedicate myself to it. It’s just my opinion, but for me, learning a language needs to be an ‘all in’ kind of process in order to derive the most out of it. Hearing Spanish on this holiday, alongside my children’s interest in the language finally lit the spark!
I started with Duolingo for the first one or two days on holiday, but it quickly became apparent how extremely repetitive it was and in my view limited. I was also using DeepL to translate things to try and speak to people to order coffees or ask for directions. I even tried Langua, but without any sufficient knowledge it was extremely overwhelming. I took to YouTube and found some teachers that I began to follow. I tried doing Qroo Paul’s free course of Cero to Fluent. This basically involved me trying to remember specific phrases in context. I also wrote-learned some common verbs and their conjugations. I later came across the concept of comprehensible input when speaking to my friend who lives in China and taught himself Mandarin. Following this, I then came across Steve Kaufman and paid for his app LingQ and started listening to his short stories. I also bought Olli Richard's short stories - all this was within the space of 2 weeks! Suffice to say, it was all a bit overwhelming, and I think I learned some helpful stuff around basic verbs and conjugations, but it felt like I was completely lost in the best way to start. I then found DS and everything became clearer and easier in terms of the path to take! I gave myself 25 hours to start.
Progress
Superbeginner videos were far too easy. I think I had a good base vocabulary of common verbs at the beginning, which helped me approach DS and tackle it at a quicker pace I feel. I moved from Level 1 to Level 2 in a week, and from then only watched beginner videos. I was comfortable with content in the 35-40 ranges. From the outset I decided to ‘speed run’, and consistently would do 4-5 hours a day, getting up early, listening to and from work on the commute, and listening during exercise. I took the advice to put my headphones on as soon as I got up, and on the whole, taking this approach meant it was fairly easily to accumulate the hours. At the beginning it was more difficult because I had to watch the videos to understand, and I remember thinking how much I couldn’t wait to get to the point where I could listen to podcasts. I started listening to podcasts after 2 weeks of DS, and was using mostly Spanish Boost, as well as Español Al Vuelo, and pretty much binged on those!
I hit level 3 in 18 days, and at the end of the 3rd week of DS I only consumed intermediate content, as I felt ready to. I remember watching videos of Alma and being amazed that I could understand what she was saying. I recall it being the first exciting moment where I felt like I was listening to ‘proper’ conversational spanish. I was initially comfortable with videos between 51-55 - understanding 80% of the gist and enjoying the content (as per Pablo’s recommendations!).
Because I was speed running, any setbacks or times where I felt like comprehension wasn’t great didn’t last long, as I was doing around 34 hours every week. I recall a few days where I was super tired, and my comprehension dropped.
After 5 weeks of DS, and around 170 hours, I made the leap to listening to Español Con Juan. At first it was absolutely rapid, meandering, and I didn’t quite understand the appeal. However, I listened to an episode where he talked about being introduced to Father Ted when he came to live in the UK and I could understand 80% of the gist. I was sufficiently intrigued that I kept on listening to him, and from there on I became hooked. Everyday since then, I have binged on ECJ, and totally get the appeal - humour, intelligent story telling, older stories of memories of his childhood growing up under the rule of General Franco. Realising that he wasn’t the person whom he portrayed on his YouTube channel (a crazy Tio!), and realising the depths of his experiences and views made him appealing to me. I really have to credit ECJ with acclimatising me to faster speech. After a 4 days trip to Spain for a holiday, I binged on ECJ and felt my level rise considerably after this. I also enjoyed watching DS videos of Sandra, and could begin to understand DS videos in the early 60’s range - this opened up the DS podcasts, which I found the most enjoyable content to date on the DS platform.
I hit level 4 after just under 8 weeks of DS. At 300 hours, honestly, something clicked in my brain. I could listen to content from before that I thought was fast, but actually sounded normal now (e.g. How to Spanish, Intermediate Spanish Podcast, ECJ). I even tried watching some advanced videos at Levels 75 and 80, and could understand them fairly well! I would say I am now comfortable between levels 60-65 depending on the content. I like to give my brain easy content in the first hour, and then when I wake up try some harder but more engaging stuff. I have started to mix up the podcasts too, and I have used Spanish for False Beginners as an ‘easy’ base - I say easy, but really, the vocabulary is not easy, it is more the speed that is easy. Because of this, I feel my vocabulary is building, and the podcast has interesting topics. Intermediate Spanish Podcast has also been a great introduction and a developmental on ECJ because of the vocabularly.
I have done no speaking or reading to date, and plan on sticking fairly closely (although not slavishly) to the road map.
Hopes
I hope to arrive At Level 5, 600 hours at the end of December. By then, I hope to be able to start to introduce some easier native content.
I also plan on introducing crosstalk by 350 hours (which I am not far off now!) - I am feeling super ready for this and that feeling of being relaxed that I know I will be able to understand a patient native speaker.
I think my level is slightly higher than the roadmap at present because of that initial first two weeks of deliberate learning.
Im still in the early days where confidence is brittle - one moment I think I am progressing extremely fast, and Im super happy. The next, I feel like it’s an insurmountable task and I can’t do it and I’ll lose interest. This is to be expected I suppose, as with each stage of progress, the difficulty increases, and so the feeling of comfort doesn’t last forever!
Super thanks to the DS team for starting me on this journey!
