Another update!

I am integrating more and more listening into my daily activities such as driving or walking the dog. I have found it a bit mundane to listen to the same stories etc over and over and it has been difficult to find new material that is interesting to me.

I find that now I am better able to understand native speakers and those that speak with speed. My brain isn't so overloaded by this and I can understand some of what's going on. Some days I feel like I have made no process then another day it seems to 'click' better and it gives me motivation to carry on!

I like reading about football in Spanish, and have recently discovered 'Marca Daily' podcasts. I read a lot on the Marca website, but these podcasts are released daily and are 10 minutes long. They are usually on different topics within the world of current sport, a lot of which is Spanish football. What I am now planning to do is export the Youtube video into Lingq, read it a couple of times, then read while listening to the audio. Then, when I am walking the dog or driving, I can listen a couple more times to get a lot of different exposures to the same information. Because it is current news and something that I am interested in, it won't get boring after 5 listens/reads as I am keen to understand what is being said! It's great to find new content like this, and especially something that is digestible and released daily.

I'll give another update in a week or so time :)

Good discussion! I wonder about this myself.

I've been learning French on LingQ for two months. (Before that I messed around with flash cards and song lyrics for six weeks.)

I do enjoy racking up new words while reading -- currently at 5700. However, I also love the sound of French and one day I hope to hear and speak it decently. It's slow going.

So in Sentence View I listen to the audio 4-6 times. Sometimes for meaning, sometimes for pronunciation, sometimes to speak (after or during the audio).

Lately I close my eyes during the last listen or two and visualize the words being spoken in mind's eye. I don't know how much this helps, but I do notice my very gradual improvement.

I am also learning Spanish language with the help of LingQ.

I wanted to provide an update to my original post.

After some great recommendations and experiences shared by those on this thread (thank you!) I have tried to shift my focus more towards my listening comprehension as it was so far behind my reading. As many of you have said, this is natural given how difficult listening comprehension is to acquire.

I have tried to read the same amount to continue growing my vocabulary, but wanted to listen more to improve this side of things. Which means, more total exposure to Spanish. Some things that have helped:

- When I walk the dog in the morning I wear my headphones and listen to Spanish only. Usually some short stories that I have read before.

- Dreaming Spanish YouTube videos. These have been great! I have filled in some dead time by watching these when I have dinner. The key is that I really trying to listen to the words rather than just letting them pass by. I am watching the intermediate videos now and most of the ones with Pablo that I have watched, I understand pretty much everything. I flirt between INT and BEG levels to get different levels of exposure and love how comprehensive input is developing my listening abilities.

- Listening while commuting. This has been great and I find it easy to listen on the way to work, on the way back is a different story and I have a tired mind and struggle to pay attention to my TL. Does anyone have experience with this and what did you do to help this?

- Watching Spanish shows on Netflix. I need to do more of this. I don't watch much TV as it is but watching some Spanish shows after work with a tired mind is another way to get the language in and the cherry on top to my learning and my day. 

- Generally trying to make the most of my time. Can I get as much exposure to the language as possible without it being overkill and it becoming a drain. I like the challenge of trying to learn more and I feel like with some intense exposure over the next few months I am going to make huge gains. I already feel like I have.

Ultimately, the progress I am making with acquiring new words is slowing, but I am still progressing. Words that I know feel a lot more 'stuck', and they are embedded well in my long-term memory, generally. This gives me MORE confidence to keep going, and actually do more!

@suzmax:

www.lingq.com/en/learn-spanish-online/courses/321309/

ohhhhhh reading is always MUCH MUCH easier !

ohhhhhh leer siempre es mucho mucho mas facil !

My story is the same as yours. I also tried to learn Spanish with different programs. I have a question about reading. How does everybody read. Di you translate every word in their minds. Or do you just read like it would be your native language. I am at story 13 at the mini stories. I understand the story without translating it in my mind. Of course first I had to learn the vocabularies. Listing is the same. I watch enchuveTV on YouTube. Short comedy videos.

After 18 days, listening abilities shouldn't even be entering your mind. It takes thousands of hours practice to tune listening to a level where you can understand a lot of what you hear in the wild (in most native TV shows/movies too).

Reading is easier because you can take all the time in the world you need. Listening is quite a different skill, even though it's closely linked for obvious reasons. I'm at around 4-5k hours of learning Spanish, with probably well over 1k hours of listening practice, and I still have lots of trouble listening. I can read almost anything.

From what I've heard, there will always be some things you can't understand, no matter how good you are. I sometimes watch reaction channels on YouTube and almost all 'English as a 2nd language' speakers use subs when they watch the shows/movies they're reacting to. When they talk, they're really quite fluent, so that just shows you how tough listening can be.

"I usually hit a minimum of 5000 words read per day and then I can relax."

I have to say, this statement worries me somewhat. Just remember that learning a language can't be rushed. After just 18 days, stressing over hitting 5k words/day isn't sustainable and will almost certainly lead to burn out.

We all have this kind of enthusiam when we first start, but there's no need to stress about it at this stage. If/when you get to a more advanced stage, you'll realise that this early stage meant very little in the grand scheme of things. The most important thing is that you find ways to avoid dropping it altogether.

It's such a fun ride, and I hope you stay with it long enough to enjoy the breakthroughs. Just be careful with your expectations at this early stage.

Good luck!

I find reading so so much easier than listening! I actually started out with Pimsleur and am on level 4. I used to always "listen and repeat" as they tell you to do because I did that while walking our dogs. But now I play it while I'm cooking or showering or house cleaning. Sometimes I listen to lessons 4 or 5 times if I'm not fully paying attention. I wish I could import those lessons into LingQ because I know a lot more words than it shows on LingQ.

When I started with LingQ I did all the mini stories and Who Is She and then I imported the by Olly Richards. I was enjoying reading and felt like I was learning vocab, but I started to worry that I was reading too much and not listening enough because I still couldn't understand most of what native speakers were saying. So I started watching the Dreaming Spanish YouTube videos and I feel like that has helped tremendously. Although a lot of them are not Latin American Spanish, he has added more Latin American instructors. Yesterday I was at lunch with a big group of friends and half of them don't speak English. I was surprised at how much more Spanish I understood since starting Dreaming Spanish. I could follow along on the majority of conversations. Except for the one "fast talker". :) I usually watch a Dreaming Spanish lesson on YouTube using Language Reactor for dual subtitles. I know this isn't his recommended method, but I like the added bonus of reading along, even if it's not always a perfect translation. After watching it on YouTube I import it into LingQ for a lesson (something I wasn't doing earlier on which is partly why my stats are all so low!).

All that being said, I feel like I need to have more of a balance between reading and listening to help boost my vocab faster, so I'll probably add in more reading again this week.

OMG is that a Boxer in your profile picture?! I have a boxer too! they are the best!  

When I first started German I was really heavily focused on reading mainly and would hardly get any listening at all. I figured how can I comprehend anything meaningful people are saying if I don't know the words. If I know the words then I at least will have a chance to understand what I'm hearing.

(I will still miss a lot of words in the beginning, but at least I have the potential to understand)

I think that you focusing more of your time on reading is a great approach!

It's not until much later that I find that my listening comprehension is catching up to my reading.  Vocabulary really is like the foundation. And the quickest way to build that foundation is through a lot of reading.

Listening is still important in the earlier stages, but I totally hear what you're saying. It's hard to get listening in, because most content is too hard.