250 Hour Update

Hello, Everyone. This is an update about my personal experience going from level 3 at 150 hours to 250 hours. When I first started watching the intermediate videos, they were too hard for me to understand. Since they were so difficult and I couldn't understand. Instead of immediately going into the intermediate levels like the roadmap suggests I instead continued to watch videos for another 50 hours at the beginner levels. I heard someone used this before, and I tried it, and It helped, but still, the intermediate levels were difficult. However when I hit 200 hours I started to watch intermediate videos. I watch 2 hours a day (that's my goals) I would watch the intermediate videos for the first hour of the day and then I would watch the beginner videos on the second hour.

I still do this because I like to get new and harder input each day, but I also like to be able to get easy input because Pablo says that it actually helps more to watch easier-to-understand videos, which will help your overall understanding. Anyway, I noticed though that when I hit around 230 to 240 hours my understanding of a lot of the intermediate videos was a lot easier. I can watch intermediate videos for 2 hours straight now with little issues. My brain hurts after but I can actually understand the videos.

There are going to be times when you're like "this is so hard, and I do not understand anything." Just go watch the easier videos for about 5 days, come back to the hard videos, and Like magic, you will understand more than before.

If you feel like the input is not going into your mind, I promise that it is and you just need to continue to get more input. Also, somewhere between 190 to 250 hours, I noticed I have stopped trying to translate in my head. I know we are not supposed to do this, and it's hard not to. At some point, I just had to tell myself to shut off trying to translate and just watch the video and have fun with it. Don't try to understand the video. Your brain does wonders. It decodes the message with enough input.

Trying to learn a language isn't a race. Its going to take many days and months and years for your mind to understand the language so don't beat yourself up if you feel like you're not progressing. The progress is a slow process but for myself it is a rewarding process.

This is my experience. Thanks for reading my post.