Everything You Need to Know about Dreaming Spanish
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Contents
The content & method
Videos according to your level
The content of the videos
Free content vs. subscription content
How to find what to watch
Playlists
Progress (7 levels of Spanish)
Daily Goals
Tracking time (my favorite part!)
Conclusion
The website “Dreaming Spanish” has recently become increasingly popular for people learning Spanish.
It’s one of the most talked about Spanish learning platforms and resources right now.
For a good reason.
It’s built on the foundation of what we know is the key to effective language learning:
Comprehensible input.
Dreaming Spanish is not only a place to get input, but a place to get lots of it.
The problem with a lot of resources that provide material at lower levels is that content is very limited.
Dreaming Spanish has thousands of videos. Thousands. There’s no way you’ll go through it all (unless you’re crazy! And if that’s the case - hats off to you).
The purpose of the platform is to be a vehicle that takes you from beginner to being able to understand more advanced content.
To the point where you can enjoy and understand native TV shows, movies, podcasts, and such.
I’ve talked about Dreaming Spanish on the blog before (in this and this post).
In this post, you’ll get a more comprehensible look.
Everything you need to know about it.
There are some incredible lessons that we can learn about language learning in general from some of the features on the website (I wish other language learning platforms had these too). We’ll discuss them in this post.
This post will give you 3 things:
An introduction, a review, and a guide for how to get the most out of using Dreaming Spanish.
The content & method
The whole premise of Dreaming in Spanish is to learn Spanish by watching videos.
To naturally pick up new vocabulary, phrases, and sayings through lots of listening input.
There are no subtitles.
No English.
The videos are 100% in Spanish. Spoken by native speakers.
Every day there are new videos coming out.
The idea is to provide so much content that you’ll never run out.
The method is based on Stephen Krashen’s theory on second language acquisition. That we acquire languages by understanding “messages” through comprehensible input.
Learning Spanish through Dreaming Spanish is very simple.
You just sit down and watch videos (or you listen when doing other things, which is what I mostly do. Since I’m learning 2 other languages at the same time.)
You’re learning Spanish through listening only.
They believe that listening is the most important skill to develop in language learning.
I completely agree with this because improving your listening will do several things:
It opens up the range of activities you’re able to enjoy in the language.
It quickly becomes obvious whenever you interact with native speakers how important it is (not understanding is the most frustrating thing).
It is also the skill that will translate the most into you speaking the language well.
You can watch all the available free videos either on YouTube or by signing up on their website (I personally first found the videos on YouTube).
You should definitely sign up and watch through their website though.
It’s an absolute must (signing up is free).
Most of the features are only accessible through their website.
Some of these features are actually game-changers that you definitely don’t wanna miss out on.
(We’ll go through what they are and why they’re so beneficial).
Videos according to your level
The videos have 4 levels different levels:
Superbeginner, beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
The Superbeginner & beginner videos have slower and clearer speech, repetitions of words, and much more limited vocabulary.
The video speakers also make real-time drawings as they speak.
Adding a visual element makes the videos more comprehensible. Especially when your vocabulary is still limited.
Once you get to the intermediate videos the drawings are dropped. The speaking speed and range of vocabulary are also increased.
In the advanced videos, they speak like natives normally would. With the speed, slurring of words, and all the things that native speakers do. Things that make it more challenging to understand.
The idea behind Dreaming Spanish is to watch videos at a very comfortable level. Where you understand 90-95% of each video and only maybe 5 words are new to you.
The content of the videos
The content of the videos is very varied.
It can be someone telling a made-up story, a vlog around a city, showing you a historical place, interviews, humor, sharing embarrassing stories, advice, language learning, travel, playing video games… All sorts of topics.
The videos are anywhere from around 4 mins to 45 mins.
A sample of the wide variety of topics available
The idea is to have a wide range of videos. Covering as many areas of interest as possible.
The speakers in the videos are from different Spanish-speaking countries. Such as Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, to name a few.
That way, it gives you the opportunity to either get used to different dialects or select a particular dialect you want to focus on (some dialects have more videos that others).
Free content vs. subscription content
The free plan currently has 1,000 videos (it will be more by the time you’re reading this. New videos come out regularly).
That’s a very generous amount of free content.
It would take you a long time to get through all of it (which is not even the point).
The subscription plan ($8 a month) has 3,282 additional videos that you will get on top of the free one.
You could use the free plan for quite a long time without running out of content.
With the paid subscription you’ll more than triple the content available (you’ll get 3 new videos each day).
You can then be much more selective about what videos you watch. To only watch what you’re really interested in.
This is actually the whole concept behind Dreaming in Spanish.
It’s not like a course that you go through from start to finish.
You only want to watch what you find interesting.
Skipping the rest.
(You’ll learn better as you’ll be more engaged when watching something that interests you).
Whenever you’d like to unlock more content the subscription is definitely a good choice. Especially if you watch a lot of the videos.
It keeps things interesting since you have much more to choose from. You might also want to vary what you watch depending on your mood that particular day.
How to find what to watch
There are several ways to find what to watch.
You can apply filters to easier find the type of content you’d like to watch.
They can be filtered by:
Speaker
Spanish dialect/country
Level of difficulty
Topic
Length of the video
Example:
Let’s say you wanted to watch videos about “language learning”.
You then just apply that filter, and only those videos will show up. You can also add multiple filters if you want to be even more specific such as only want videos from a certain speaker, and at a certain level, and about a specific topic.
Some topics will obviously have more videos than others.
You can also press “hide watched videos”. Letting you only see videos you haven’t watched.
It makes it a much cleaner experience. It would be hard to keep track of what you have and haven’t watched otherwise. This feature removes that issue.
(It’s the little things that give us a user-friendly experience, isn’t it?)
Another way to find videos is to just scroll the main page (called “Watch”) until you find something interesting.
This is great if you watch videos every morning like I do right now.
It’s fun to open the website every morning and check out what the latest videos are.
Download my guide “Lingtuitive Language Secrets” to learn more about
how to learn a language “by-accident”:
Playlist
This is a very helpful feature that I appreciate. It makes watching multiple videos in a row much more convenient.
You can add videos to your own playlist. So you have a never-ending supply of content to watch.
You might see something interesting that you’d like to watch but don’t have the time right then. The playlist lets you save it for later when you do have the time (just like a YouTube playlist).
When you’re watching the videos through your playlist you can also choose that the videos auto-play.
This makes it very convenient if you’re doing something else at the same time (I most often do). The videos will just keep playing one after another.
One thing I wish was a bit easier is to remove already watched videos from the playlist.
I often accidentally press to watch the video when trying to delete them from the playlist. Because of how small the “remove” button is.
That’s the only minor gripe I have about it.
Even better would be to have an option to “automatically remove” watched videos watched from the playlist.
That would be a time-saver that would improve the already great user experience.
Daily Goals
I love this feature.
It’s something I have always been a big believer in.
Setting a daily goal helps you do one of the most important things to learn a language successfully:
Be consistent.
Without consistency, you won’t see consistent gains. Causing frustration and disappointment. Leading to you eventually giving up.
Seeing the “you’ve reached your goal!” banner come up every day when you reach it gives a sense of accomplishment.
It makes you feel good.
It’s also very effective in combination with the next 2 features.
Progress (7 levels of Spanish)
One interesting aspect of the website is the different “Levels” (which you can find under “Progress”).
In Dreaming Spanish there are 7 levels. All the way from zero to a native-like level. Telling you what you can expect to be able to do at each level.
How long it will take you to get there is based on your current daily listening goal (assuming you complete it every day).
Are these hours accurate?
Good question. I honestly don’t know.
It depends on so many factors that are hard to calculate.
But I think they are more on point than many others that I have seen. For me so far, I think they have been quite realistic.
(I personally reached level 4 quicker than 300 hours, which I attribute to my daily reading habit using LingQ).
I will say though:
I don’t think it’s super important that they are completely accurate.
A rough estimate will still serve its purpose.
It does 2 things:
1.) It gamifies the learning experience.
Giving you a visual of “leveling-up” (who doesn’t like that feeling!). Increasing the motivation to get to the next “level”.
2.) It keeps you honest about your progress. You can then adjust the time you invest every day based on two things:
How fast you want to reach your goal.
The time you need to spend to actually get there.
Tracking time (my favorite part!)
I’m a stats guy. Not gonna lie.
I find it very motivating to see the numbers go up. To get a visual representation of my progress in a language.
This is quite possibly the best feature of Dreaming Spanish.
Tracking the time you have spent should not be underestimated.
Especially if you’re not just messing around with Spanish but you’re actually going for some level of fluency.
Even if you don’t want to watch the videos at Dreaming Spanish, I would still recommend you use this part of the website (it’s free).
It’s just that good.
Their time-tracking system is the best I’ve seen in language learning for listening & watch time.
There’s something about seeing a visual bar telling you your progress.
Not only have far you still have to go to reach your next goal.
But how far you have come.
It gives you a sense of accomplishment seeing all the time you have put in.
It will also give you a reality check if you feel you’re not making quick enough progress (this one is super important).
Time doesn’t lie.
It’s one of the greatest predictors of success in language learning (and in any skill in life for that matter).
If you feel you’re not progressing fast enough - then seeing where you’re at visually will (hopefully) inspire you to put in even more time.
To improve quicker.
I think we often tend to overestimate how much time we have actually spent with a language. Especially over the long haul.
This became blatantly obvious to me when I first started seriously tracking listening time in the languages I’m learning. I thought I was putting in way more time than I did. So I had to adjust what I was doing to fit my goals and expectations.
You either lower your expectations or increase your daily goal. That way you’ll feel much better about your Spanish progress.
It’s probably not that you’re slow at learning, but just that you haven’t put in enough hours.
That’s why tracking is so important.
It keeps us from being frustrated for the wrong reasons.
Add time outside the platform
Chances are you’re going to watch videos outside of the platform.
The people at Dreaming Spanish obviously know this.
By having this function they are telling us where their hearts are at:
They don’t just want you to use their platform. They genuinely want you to learn Spanish.
(The whole point of using Dreaming Spanish is to get to the point where you don’t need it anymore).
I input everything I watch - YouTube, Netflix, or anything else in Spanish. I highly recommend you do that too. It really pays off in the long run.
I watch a lot of Starcraft, I know.
It works as a bit of a language diary where you can type in what you have watched (like “YouTube videos” for example - you can be as specific as you want).
Because when you add the time, it is not only added to the “total input time” and counts towards your “daily goal”.
It is also added as an entry into your Spanish input journey. You can then browse through your history and see what you have watched, how much, and when.
I think it’s brilliant.
Because it encourages you to develop a “history with the language”.
A journey that you will then look back on with fond memories.
You’re creating a connection with the language.
A relationship.
Forming that type of bond and “friendship” with the language will make it much easier to stick with it over time.
Conclusion
Whether Dreaming Spanish is for you or not will depend on whether you enjoy the content (no resource will cater to every single person).
But I think a lot of you are going to really enjoy it. I definitely do.
It’s built on what is most important.
Which is that:
Getting comprehensible input, and getting lots of it, is the best way to learn a language.
And:
Listening is the nr #1 most important language skill to develop.
I personally think Dreaming Spanish is one of the best resources out there for learning Spanish. Because it’s such an effective way to improve your listening.
Especially at the beginner and intermediate levels.
The combination of comprehensible input, a clean and easy-to-navigate website, brilliant automatic tracking functions, and thousands of videos to choose from makes for a wonderful Spanish learning resource that I wholeheartedly recommend.
To the point where I recommend it EVEN if you don’t watch any of the videos.
The tracking tools are just that good.
I wish sites like Dreaming Spanish were available in other languages.
(Think Chinese) - How awesome would that be??!!
At some point, you’re going to want to move on to native content (I even advise watching this type of content before you’re “ready for it”, which I talked about in this blog post).
Dreaming Spanish provides videos right at your level until you reach that point.
It might just be the most “comfortable” way to learn Spanish.
When learning a language it’s crucial to have:
A never-ending stream of content.
A way to easily track your progress.
Dreaming Spanish provides both of these.
Those two together create an unstoppable combination that (if done consistently) will take you to your Spanish fluency goals, guaranteed.
Have you ever tried Dreaming Spanish? If so, let me know in the comments what you think of it!
