August 2025 | Spanish Progress Report

My first month committing to Spanish input had some hiccups, but I never had a day with zero input! Let’s look at the numbers:

The Stats

Input hours (at the end of the month): 25 in August; sitting at 425 total.

Monthly streak stats:

The Content

Content I’ve been enjoying lately: I’ve been enjoying exploring the many free videos on Dreaming Spanish! I really enjoyed this video about why some Spanish-speaking countries eat so late, and this DS podcast episode about the culture around marriage in Latin America.

I’ve also discovered some non-DS content I’m enjoying – David and Ana over at the How to Spanish podcast have really great intermediate content, and they’re from Querétaro (the area of central Mexico that Austin and I honeymooned in!) This podcast about Mexican culture made me laugh a lot – there’s a surprising bit of overlap between Mexican and Malaysian culture!

Content I’ve found a bit too difficult: I’ve enjoyed a lot of the Dreaming Spanish podcast episodes, but sometimes the topics require some knowledge of more technical language. I ended up clicking off of this episode about the healthcare system in Spain because there was just a little too much medical and insurance terminology; and while I stuck through this episode about Argentinian versus Spaniard perspectives on Columbus, I didn’t retain very much of it because of the historical vocabulary. (I did learn that corona is the Spanish word for crown, though!)

I also discovered this native-speaking YouTube channel that covers content that’s really similar to what I enjoy in English – a lot of sociology and internet culture stuff – but was barely able to follow the gist of some of the videos I watched due to a lot of unfamiliar grammar structures and vocabulary. I’ll get there someday!

August Reflections

This felt, overall, like a very strong start to me. Building habits with ADHD has always been extra difficult, so the fact that I was able to listen to at least some Spanish every day and not fall off the wagon as soon as my perfect streak broke was really encouraging.

I also attended one Spanish conversation meetup with a friend of mine from college, and I enjoyed myself conversing (rather stiltedly, and with major struggles using anything past tense) for over two hours with different people there! It was humbling, but I was able to keep up with each conversation pretty well, even if I couldn’t respond in kind.

During this month, I wrestled a lot with whether I set myself at the right number of hours on DS to begin with. Some days I felt really confident and like my understanding was in the strong intermediate level – but other days, I’d struggle to understand something in a beginner-level video and wonder whether I really should have started at 400 after all.

I’m assuming this is probably very normal, even for people who start from zero. I see a lot of people using the DS method online hitting similar slumps/plateaus during the intermediate phase (approx. between 300-1000) and wondering whether they’re truly progressing – I think mine is just manifesting slightly differently as did I pick the right level? because of my prior experience.

I’m really enjoying the content I’ve been watching so far, but there’s definitely a few series on the premium side of Dreaming Spanish that I’m excited to try (like their Stardew Valley Let’s Play series!) I’ve decided I’ll upgrade for the extra content if I manage to stick with this for a whole month – so come September 8th, we’ll see if I’ve managed it!