150 Hours

100 hours on! Feels like a big achievement. With a large gap in the middle, completing the first 50 hours took about a year, but the last 100 hours took about 3 and a half months. I’ve made huge progress in that time and the comparison to 50 hours is massive.

Progress and Goal Tracking

After 50 hours I was just about reaching some content that I found was enjoyable outside of learning Spanish (i.e. I’d watch that in my spare time whether I was learning a language or not). Although there is still some content I watch that feels like I am pushing myself for engagement, there is definitely a massive amount more that is genuinely really funny and easy to engage with. Being able to comprehend more entertaining content I’ve found has been a big driver to be consistent. I’ve been saving Spanish speaking documentaries and videos which I would love to watch but can’t quite understand yet, and having the carrot of being able to watch them is a good motivator.

The biggest difference between the first 50 hours and the last 100 hours has been consistency. When I reviewed my progress at 50 hours one of the big things I wanted to aim for was consistency in the time I put in. Instead of setting a daily goal, I set a goal based on daily averages over the month, which for the last 100 hours has been 1 hour average a day. I found this has been a lot more productive for me as I often have commitments or weekends when I’ll be away or busy and can’t commit to an hour, but other times in the week I’ll be about to do 1.5 or 2 hours.

Setting an average goal has overall been a big success for me, and I’ve hit or been close to hitting that goal each month. I also set a minimum of 15 minutes a day regardless which has also helped me to keep pace with my learning. I have tracked this by building a dashboard on the Spanish page on my website which pulls my data in from the Dreaming Spanish API and analyses my monthly stats:

This has made tracking my monthly goal really easy and has allowed me to ramp up or slow my progress over the month. I want to expand on this as I progress through the hours and my goals change.

Comprehension

The way I take in Spanish content has change a lot also. The first 50 hours I sorted by easy on the DS website and pretty much watched in order of difficulty. I now have a much wider range of difficulty levels I watch and enjoy, and will now just select whatever I enjoy in between levels 35 and 45. It has been nice to reach this point as there are definitely things I don’t engage with and it is nice to now be able to skip those if I chose. Previously I just pushed through anything and everything I could comprehend. In the next 150 hours I will continue with this method as it is working for me, although I hope to be able to chose series I like watching and just complete the whole thing without worrying about level.

In terms of podcasts I previously listened to about 10 or so episodes of ¡Cuéntame! which I enjoyed but felt without the visual elements it could be a little tricky at times to follow, and I needed to be sat at home to really give it the focus it needed. Now I am about 75 episodes into ¡Cuéntame! and enjoy listening when travelling or cleaning and can follow without issue. In the next 150 I want to get fully up to date with ¡Cuéntame! and begin on other beginner/intermediate podcasts.

The big change however is being able to watch learner content on YouTube, notably Spanish Boost Gaming 🇦🇷 and Español con Ali 🇲🇽 (among others). This has been great to get content from new voices or regions, as well as a different style of video. I’m not really that into gaming or gaming content but I’ve found it to be pretty engaging and good for vocabulary. I will continue to try out new content on YouTube and see what I get.

Speaking and Reading

I haven’t done any really speaking or reading yet, and although I doubt I will over the next 150 hours, we’ll see. I do find sometimes when I go say something in English that the Spanish word comes to me first instead of the English word, which is interesting.

The Next 150 Hours

I am excited to see what the changes and challenges are on my way to 300 hours. I think some people have reported that progress does feel slower the more input you get, so I am cognisant to the fact that this may be where that begins to become more obvious, but we’ll see what happens.

In terms of goals for the next 150 hours I will continue with an average daily goal rather than a daily goal. I am off to Glastonbury today which will take me to the end of June so I think that’s a good time to have a little break. When I get back I think I’ll review and decide on a daily average. I might keep it at 60 minutes for the first month or may try to push it up a bit. Whichever I chose I think I want to finish this 150 hours with a higher daily average than I have now to keep the momentum high.

And that’s that. See you at 300 hours.