Is Dreaming Spanish massively inefficient?

[rowanexer]

I've been seeing a lot of people posting on reddit asking when they should start practising speaking with Dreaming Spanish. Some of them even talk about how they don't feel ready and they'll only start after 700 or 800 hours (!).

Dreaming Spanish recommends that students don't start reading until they've done 300 hours of listening. They don't recommend starting speaking until 600 hours in.
(https://dreaming-spanish-emails.s3.us-e ... panish.pdf)

And yet FSI only takes about 600-750 class hours for students to reach B2/C1 proficiency in a category 1 language.

If a Dreaming Spanish student has done no speaking until 600 hours in, I doubt they could be at B2 of C1 level, although maybe they can reach that for listening/reading.

So what gives? I like comprehensible input but I can't understand how they neglect other language skills, or why they think that speaking can be improved by listening. It's bringing back bad memories of the AJATT cult. Any thoughts?

[Le Baron]

I don't really see much use in listening like that at the start. My own view tallies with that 'Word Brain' fellow Sebastian Kamps. That especially at the beginning you should read what you're listening to (dialogue transcripts ideally). At least for a few rounds before you listen to it unassisted. The idea that you just listen and an unknown language, whose word separations you can't instinctively divine, unravels itself before you seems to me just voodoo rubbish. Best to make the link between the sounds and the written language from the start.

As for speaking... those not in any great hurry probably can wait quite some time before they start to really get talking. Personally I don't count things in strict hours and certainly not some spreadsheet-like idea where I'm counting up to a golden number where I'm then 'allowed' to talk. After all what is the actual reason behind not talking up to some specified number of hours? Not just not talking, because obviously you can't say very much if you haven't heard or read very much. But who decides what is 'sufficient' input as a standard number? It clearly can't apply to all learners.

I have to say that even though I have been doing Spanish for almost the last 3 years, I'd never heard of 'Dreaming Spanish', which is probably a good thing.

[rowanexer]

After all what is the actual reason behind not talking up to some specified number of hours? Not just not talking, because obviously you can't say very much if you haven't heard or read very much. But who decides what is 'sufficient' input as a standard number? It clearly can't apply to all learners.

Basically the idea is that if you speak too early you'll make mistakes and they'll become fossilised. Other gurus like Antimoon have also talked about this (https://www.antimoon.com/other/myths-mistakesok.htm). So a lot of these Dreaming Spanish students freak out about not speaking well at 600 hours and then delay it by doing more listening so that they don't harm their speaking ability.

Another one is Refold (https://refold.la/explained#philosophySection) which follows the same order of Listening->Reading->Speaking and recommends you only start speaking and writing after learning 5,000 words.

I have to say that even though I have been doing Spanish for almost the last 3 years, I'd never heard of 'Dreaming Spanish', which is probably a good thing.

Dreaming Spanish isn't bad. Basically it's youtube videos where the guy talks in graded Spanish, and uses pictures and gestures so you can understand what he's saying. It gets recommended A LOT on reddit.

[Le Baron]

I know about the fossilised mistakes thing and whilst it's sometimes a bother to undo some things, I think it's very exaggerated. It's really not what happens. Does anyone learn any new skill and then make the mistakes they made at the start even though they kept on learning and practising? No. I've never met a cabinet maker who said: I made my first cabinet 6 weeks into my apprenticeship and now 20 years on all my cabinets look like those of a 6-week apprentice. It's just nonsense. I made loads of speaking errors in both German and Dutch, but they've disappeared over time. Quite quickly in fact.

Jethro Tull's frontman and flautist played for over 25 years with self-taught wrong fingering, then rapidly relearned with correct fingering in the 90s. Nothing is too ingrained to relearn. These are second languages not first languages.

I still never see any convincing reasons for all the precise hour numbers these 'don't speak' gurus throw out. Fair enough 700+/- hours is about the 3-month mark - assuming a whopping 8 hours of study a day. Six months for 4 hours a day,. Eight months for 3 hours With the total hours expanding over time as the hours per day decreases. Someone might be doing a three-month self study course - or whatever they're doing - and not really in a state to have conversation, fine. Even six months might be shaky, but a year in if a person hasn't said a dicky bird they'll have a lot of catching up to do once they open their mouth, because the assumption that the vocal apparatus required to produce new sounds simply falls into place on the strength of listening is imaginary. I assume their theory is that after this massive input something somewhere in your brain has primed you for making the right sound rather than the wrong sound, but there's no explanation of this. All this is just stretching the process out longer than it needs to be.

[tastyonions]

A lot of this kind of methodology seems rooted in a superstitious fear that people who start reading or speaking too early will be forever condemned to have a bad accent, and a belief that we have to learn "like a baby" to learn best. Unfortunately I bought into a lot of this guff when I first started learning French years ago.

The most efficient way to learn how to make the right sounds is just to learn what all the right sounds are and how to move your mouth to make them, i.e. spend a few hours studying the basics of the phonology of your TL, and how it differs from that of your NL. Not to fumble around in the dark hoping your brain will eventually draw the right distinctions after a few hundred (or maybe even 4000) hours of listening.

[tractor]

It’s superstitious nonsense.

Foolproof method: Never start speaking, and you’ll never make any mistakes speaking.

[Iversen]

Le Baron's example with the flutist of Jehtro Tull (interesting and historical name, by the way!) illustrates one point I have repeated every time I have seen fit, namely that there isn't such a thing as fossilized errors. The thing that can be fossilized is complacency. Actually you're in better position to correct your own systematic errors when you already are comfortable with a language, but you have to decide to do it. And you may have to accept that there are certain things, like for instance a sound or the use of an verbal form, which you have been doing wrongly for maybe twenty years. And to notice things that should be changed you have to looking for them - which means that it isn't enough to go for the meaning always, you also have to pay attention to the form.

As for listening for hundreds of hours before you do anything else, well...

If you start listening to something without any other preparation (like knowing something related) then you won't understand anything - and probably never will. How do babies deal with that problem? Well, they interact. Or in other words: they speak - or at least they try to. And since they get the new and weird language served in small morsels in relevant situations they miraculously end up knowing at least one language - but they need many years to learn to speak that language at a native level. And kids have malleable brains with a lot of spare capacity so they are wired for doing things that way.

Grown-ups are in another situation. They have already lost half they neurons so they have to use those that remain in an intelligent way. And unless they are in an environment where they get the new language served in tiny morsels in relevant situations AND use it while they learn it (like babies) they have to use another strategy. And that learning things systematically. If they already can read at least one language then they should use that marvellous skill and apply it to the new language too.They should use dictionaries, translations, grammars and intensive text studies - everything they can dream up, in short - to learn the elements of their target language, and if they want to speak it then for heaven's sake let them - though I personally prefer just thinking until I feel I can survive a real conversation.

In short, if the OP has summarized the ideas of Nightmare Spanish correctly then they represent some of the worst pile of bullshit I have heard about for quite some time. But watching their actual videos may be OK - I haven't tried it since I already can understand the Spanish language. And I learnt it from a textbook ..

[BeaP]

Always ask yourself when you see a certain method: Do I belong to the target audience? Is it made for me?

I call these methods (like Dreaming Spanish) 'alternative' methods, and I think they're for people who have been extremely unsuccessful using the more 'traditional' methods. On the list you've linked Level 6 is B1. The highest level, 7 is B2. I've looked at some advanced videos and they're A2-B1. Unsuccessful, demotivated learners find it nice that they can watch passively first, they don't need to do anything hard or scary. They won't make mistakes, they won't experience failure. And maybe for them it's a good thing to begin learning this way. Later, when they've gained some self-confidence, they will hopefully start speaking.

If this description doesn't fit you (and it probably doesn't seeing your profile), choose a quicker, more active method. Because you can deal with it.

About the 'evidence': I've never read Krashen but there's a ton of scientific research proving that active learning is highly superior to passive learning, and the more connections you make in your brain, the more variably you use a certain piece information, the stronger your knowledge will be. You don't need to speak freely from day 1, but you can repeat things after the audio, you can do shadowing, summarize what you've heard, write down what you remember from a video and check your text against the original. There are many ways to be active as a beginner.

[Iversen]

I call these methods (like Dreaming Spanish) 'alternative' methods, and I think they're for people who have been extremely unsuccessful using the more 'traditional' methods. O (...)Unsuccessful, demotivated learners find it nice that they can watch passively first, they don't need to do anything hard or scary. They won't make mistakes, they won't experience failure.

.. and in all likelihood they will remain unsuccesful

[Irena]

Okay, I just took a quick look at that PDF, and it says:

Level 7
You are, for all
practical purposes, comparable to
a native speaker
Hours of input: 1500
Known words: >12000