u/hutchcodes

Before finding DS, one of the podcasts I listened to regularly was Coffee Break Spanish. It was a mix of English and Spanish and each episode had grammar segment, a segment on how to use some slang of some sort and during one season they started having a segment that was essentially a radio play.

I really enjoyed that radio play. It was about a family from the UK spending a summer in Spain. The father was from Spain, the daughter spoke Spanish but the mother didn't, so there was a mix of Spanish and English. Which was great at the time, but who wants to listen to English anymore, right???

Seriously though I would absolutely listen to that radio play again if I could find it isolated from the rest of the podcast. It would be fun to hear how much more I pick up ~800hrs later.

But more to the point, does anyone know of any radio play podcasts in Spanish? Or am I just basically looking for an audiobook these days?

We're a family of 4 at 12hrs and we've been doing a little more each day and are at around 30 minutes per day now. But as we begin to consume the CI faster, I think we're going to run out pretty quick.

Does anyone know how much content gets added each week between Dreaming and Immersion? I think Immersion advertised 10 new videos per week and I know Dreaming is adding new guides to increase output but combined the 2 services only* have ~140 hours of content.

*I mean 'only' in relation to the 1500 hours goal and not as a knock on either service for a lack of content.

I put a * on the 1000 because before I found DS, I had roughly a 2700 day streak on Duolingo. Because of that and some podcasts I listened to I credited myself with 200 hours of CI to start.

When I found DS, I was able to understand intermediate videos pretty easily and watched tons of free videos my first month or 2 (I never paid for premium), then switched to listening to lots of podcasts and watching lots of Spanish Boost Gaming and recently I've moved on to dubbed content on Netflix.

Podcasts have played a huge role in my CI. Being able to consume CI while I'm driving, doing yardwork, playing video games etc is a big accelerator. Of my 1001 hours 480 are podcasts, 257 are videos outside DS, and 7 are conversations in Spanish. With my 200 hrs of starting time, that leaves just 57 hours of actual Dreaming Spanish. Which makes it kind of amazing that I credit DS with my success :P

I tend to binge podcasts. I find something at my level and listen to all the episodes then move on the next podcast. Here's what I listened too in order:

• Dreaming Spanish Podcast
• Learn Spanish and Go
• Andrea La Mexicana
• Langua Talk Spanish
• Spanish Boost Podcast
• Español al Vuelo
• Español Desde El Sur
• Hablando con Vos
• How to Spanish Podcast*
• Worlds Across

I'm looking forward to:

• Expertos de Sillon
• No Es El Fin del Mundo
• Radio Ambulante

Where I am on the 4 skills

Reading: Reading was already pretty strong as it's what I practiced most with Duolingo. I've read the 1st Harry Potter book and half of the second. I'm not a big fan of reading in English and I don't enjoy it much more in Spanish, so I gave up on the 2nd Harry Potter book and I'm just focusing on the parts I enjoy - listening.

Writing: The only things I write in Spanish is a few questions to ChatGpt to ask it to explain the usage of some slang or some such. I'm not worried about this skill, and I think it will always be weak, and I'm ok with that.

Listening: Of course I want better comprehension, but dubbed content is mostly comprehensible now, though fast-talking comedy type shows are a struggle.

Speaking: My only speaking practice has been with a local Spanish conversation group. When I go, I struggle for the first few minutes to get even basic sentences out, but the longer I'm there the more my Spanish starts to flow. I know I should practice more, but the time of the meetup doesn't often work with my schedule, and I haven't followed through on booking time with an online tutor.

Would I use DS if I were to start from scratch? Absolutely. I just started French (9hrs) with my family and plan to take a fairly purist approach there.

*I skipped the first 100 episodes of How to Spanish Podcast. They had music in the background, and they were both so nervous and stiff at the start I just couldn't pay attention. I'm not sure where they started to loosen up and enjoy themselves, but from episode 100 on it was a great podcast. I'm glad they stuck with it.

We're homeschooling our high school freshman and as part of that he's learning French. We tried Pimsleur for a while but have switched to an "Automatic Language Growth" approach using Dreaming French and Immersion.co. The idea is to watch/listen to a ton of "Comprehensible Input" with Dreaming French recommending holding off on speaking and/or reading until 600-800 hours, at which point we'll hire a native tutor for conversation practice. The goal is to be conversational before he graduates and take a French immersion vacation as a family (we're all learning together as a family)

My question is when it comes time to apply to colleges, how do we represent that on the transcript/application? If I understand correctly, we can just mark down x years of French on his transcript. I've also heard that it helps to include course descriptions but I'm not sure how best to describe this approach in a way that would be acceptable to a college entrance board.

We've considered the idea of having him take a test to get a CEFR rating later, but that puts a lot of pressure on that test.

We've also considered the idea of having him continue with the ALG approach at home and also taking a class at the local community college or university.

Has anyone else taken an ALG approach to language learning as part of homeschool and used that as part of their college application?