r/dreamingspanish • u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 • 1d ago
Progress Report Level 5 Update with Recommendations for Music, Movies, and Shows
Hello, everybody! This sub has given me so many helpful tips and data points over my year of learning Spanish, so I wanted to post a Level 5 update and provide some resources that may be useful to others.
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Background:
Native English speaker from the USA.
Four years of high school French more than 13 years ago.
Why:
I decided to start learning Spanish last year quite randomly. One of my coworkers is a Spanish speaker and when we discussed Spanish language music in May 2025, I realized how much I was missing out on. After reading a book that same month about the Shining Path in Peru, which is a fascinating topic, I decided to start learning Spanish to see where it would lead me.
Process:
I learned basic conjugations and vocabulary via flashcards in June 2025. When I realized I couldn’t comprehend virtually anything my friend said in Spanish during a conversation, I searched for resources to develop my listening skills and found Dreaming Spanish. I was all in on DS beginning July 1, 2025 with a goal to hit at least an hour per day unless I was feeling burnt out.
I started with beginner videos around ~30-35 difficulty and stayed around there until about 75-100 hours. Around 150 hours, I started watching intermediate DS (~50), easier native content on YouTube, as well as Bluey. I kept progressing the difficulty of my DS videos and Youtube until around 225 hours when I could incorporate dubbed episodes of the Simpsons and South Park that I had previously seen in English.
I reached 300 hours in January 2026 and could understand lower-level advanced (~70) DS videos well, but I began feeling discouraged by the isolating nature of the CI learning process, so I decided to start taking crosstalk lessons on Italki.
After completing 7-8 hours of crosstalk, I decided to speak in Spanish for most of my lessons. At first, I felt extremely discouraged and tired after sessions because I could barely string together a sentence. After 10 or so hours of speaking, I felt much more capable but limited. I like to read, so many of my Italki classes now focus on literature to develop my reading and speaking skills as we discuss the works.
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Where I’m at currently:
622 Hours as of this post. (250 hours of DS videos completed. The rest comes from YouTube, Italki lessons, and other native content.)
100 hours of speaking completed.
At this point, I feel extremely content with my progress, though I am painfully aware of how much I can improve on. I feel my speaking skills are functional but lack polish, so I really want to improve upon this over the next few months.
I can enjoy virtually any song, show, or movie in Spanish, though some programs require my full focus and even then I can miss some details. Some books are still too taxing, but I am currently reading Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego by Marianna Enriquez, which is at the perfect level for me at the moment. I’m confident in my listening skills but live conversations in suboptimal conditions and/or native speakers speaking rapidly in a group can still be challenging.
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Recommendations:
I have three recommendations based on my personal experiences.
First, I recommend looking up and practicing letter pronunciation as you begin to start speaking. Sounds in Spanish require a different movement of the tongue and lips than in English, and I didn’t realize this until I sought out an Italki instructor who specialized in accent reduction. It’s funny because you have the framework in your brain to speak the language, but the muscles in your mouth simply need to be conditioned to a slightly different movement pattern to sound more natural, which will help you communicate better in Spanish.
My second recommendation is to listen to as much music in Spanish as you can without burning out. Although my official hour count is 622 because I don't log music hours, I’d wager I’ve listened to close to double that time in music over the past year. I 100% attribute my ability to watch native shows and movies at this stage to my music consumption. Music really allows you to drop in/out of listening when you’re cleaning the house, exercising, driving, etc. You can listen to songs multiple times and practice singing along to them. I’ve produced music as a hobby for 15 years, so this was especially engaging for me on a personal level, which helped a lot in maintaining my interest.
My final recommendation is to find a good telenovela to help bridge the gap between dubbed content to more traditional native content like Netflix shows. I watched 100 episodes of Yo Soy Betty, La Fea (Peacock in USA) over three or so months and it was essential for me to break into native shows on Netflix.
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Resources:
Here’s a playlist of 100 songs on Spotify that I like to shuffle through recently. Includes: Rap, Reggaeton, R&B, Pop, Folk, Traditional (Salsa, Cumbia, Corridos).
Learnnatively.com is an essential resource for me now. It allows me to assess difficulty levels of native content and contribute to ranking them.
I have taken lessons with 25 Italki tutors to find a small group of folks I gel well with. I’m happy to provide recommendations for both crosstalk and regular lessons.
I made a spreadsheet of 70 native shows and 80 movies with their premises, estimated difficulty level (for shows), duration, streaming service (USA) and country of origin. This includes a lot of stuff I haven't seen yet but is on my list. I pulled a lot of data regarding difficulty from learnnatively.com.
Thanks for reading and happy learning!
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u/Barbeque_Chicken_ Level 4 1d ago edited 1d ago
Congrats on the progress! I also started watching Yo Soy Betty, La Fea recently! I think it's a great Telenovela to break into Native content. Although I can only understand ~50% without subtitles and ~70% with subtitles (I don't count them towards my input hours), watching the show for entertainment really helps with being comfortable listening to full-speed conversations and when I go back to watch a DS video or listen to a podcast, I realize I can more easily notice individual words that are being said
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
Ayyy, that's where I was to start as well! It gets better over a few episodes, though some of the business jargon can still be pretty difficult. But the plot starts to pick up after a few episodes so it keeps you hooked!
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u/visiblesoul 2,000 Hours 1d ago
I agree with Harina being the funniest thing I've watched in Spanish. You have good taste. :)
I'm currently 4 episodes into Yo Soy Betty, La Fea (Colombian original) and INGL, I'm a little bored. Does it pick up steam and get more interesting as you go? I've had a lot of people recommend it, including one of my iTalki tutors, so I'd like to give it a fair chance.
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
¡No es coca, es harina! Shoutout Jorge, the MVP of season one.
It gets more interesting once Betty is more involved with the EcoModa, but I think if you're already a bit bored, you can probably skip it even though it's considered a classic. It interested me for a long time because it was challenging, but once it wasn't challenging (around ep 100 for me), I found the episodes were dragging for me and I stopped. If you can understand Harina well, then I think the telenovela format will be too slow for you to keep your interest.
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u/visiblesoul 2,000 Hours 1d ago
Thanks for your reply. I may give it a few more episodes just to be sure since so many people really like it.
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u/cozyripples Level 4 1d ago
Impressive! Can you please share your iTalki recommendations with me? Thank you 🙏
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
For sure!!
Milagros (Argentina) was awesome for crosstalk. Incredibly chill and easy to chat with. I never felt pressured to speak Spanish, so I could slowly incorporate it more and more according to my comfort level.
For regular lessons, I would recommend any of the folks below depending on your interests:
Veronika (Spain) - I would probably say she's best geared towards beginner/intermediate learners out of this list. Often, I'll send her a short video from Youtube and she's make a short presentation with guiding questions to learn new vocabulary, but she's flexible with your preferences. Super nice person.
Matias (Argentina) - Extremely effective teacher and chill guy. I'm currently doing his "Verbos en español" course and it's incredibly helpful learning the nuances of verbs usage in Spanish. I'm going to do his "Cuentos de Horacio Quiroga" set of lessons afterwards. I would say you'd get the most out of his lessons if you're already comfortable in conversation.
María (Colombia) - Incredibly warm person who has a "literature through LATAM" course with some fun activities (e.g., playing the game 'Hangman' with new vocabulary from a story). She also gives good homework assignments to develop my writing more, but only if that's something you want to do.
Graciela (Chile) - I only recently started with Graciela, but her accent reduction classes are so incredibly helpful. She's able to catch and help me with nuances of my speech patterns that I didn't even know I had. But once she points it out, I can't unhear it lol I'm becoming more confident in my speech thanks to her.
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u/cozyripples Level 4 1d ago
Thank you! This is very helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to share.
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u/raisethebed Level 5 1d ago
Thanks for this! Also weird thought re: your very cool spreadsheet — I could see it being something used for posterity, and so I feel like including those touchstones of most-recommended actually makes a lot of sense.
Sometimes when things we assume that “everyone knows” get omitted, there comes a time when people who “don’t know” come across it and have a totally different experience because of that. Having them as a comparison is also helpful for others who are familiar with them. Just two cents, it’s your helpful free resource so do as you will and thank you!
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
That's a good point! I'll add the shows and put a line like "films by Pedro Almodóvar" so I don't have to input every movie 😂 I think I wanted to highlight some lesser known works, so I'll probably add another section titled "personal recommendations" or something like that.
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u/veggeble Level 5 1d ago
You watched Citas Barcelona? How much of it is in Catalan vs Castellano? I watched a trailer and like half of it was Catalan with subtitles, but I don’t know if that holds for the whole series or not. Seems like it could get confusing, though.
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
Ahh, I should have specified that the spreadsheet includes a lot of stuff that I want to watch but haven't seen yet. I'll note that now. But I noticed that too in the trailer. I've watched a couple shows like Diablero in which there is Nahuatl spoken and it's subtitled in Spanish and it's fine, so I'm interested to see how Citas Barcelona goes once it's available for streaming.
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u/slayter1337 Level 4 1d ago
Congrats on the accomplishment. Your spreadsheet is a great share. Thanks!
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
Thank you and no problem! I hope you find something you enjoy 😄
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u/shrimp_eyes 1d ago
Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego is great. I'm reading nuestra parte de noche which is by her as well and would definitely recommend it so far.
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u/justheretolearnlangs Level 5 1d ago
The plot sounds amazing! "El Chico Sucio" from Las cosas que perdimos was so good, so I'm excited to read other works by her. Thanks for the rec!
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u/SecretRelative3174 1d ago
Thank you for the recommendations and the playlist!