If so, please tell me about your journey (what media and resources you used, process, how long before you reached fluency (if you’re there), tips, etc)
Thank you!
Naya, using movies and telenovelas has been a major piece of my achieving fluency in Spanish, but certainly is not the only thing I have done. I have also had plenty of lessons and language exchanges because speaking requires practice.
I think both Netflix and Hulu are good tools, as well as DVDs with subtitles in both languages, but especially Hulu because many of the telenovelas there have the closed captioning in Spanish-- the subtitles say exactly what they are saying in Spanish. Many of the Netflix shows and other DVDs have different words in the subtitles than they are saying in the shows.
I have a technique I like to use with teachers/tutors/language partners where I analyze the dialog of a movie that has both English and Spanish subtitles available (using only the video, no sound.) The technique can be done on your own as well, but it is nice to have someone to help you generate options and give you immediate feedback. I do the part with English subtitles first, trying to decide how I could say it in Spanish. (This is the part where a native Spanish speaker often volunteers a lot of possibilities that are more natural for them and explains to me why some expressions are better in that context than others.) Then I go look at the Spanish subtitles. A lot can be learned this way, although it is important to recognize that the professional subtitles are not the only ¨right answers,¨ often are not necessarily the best answer, and on rare occasions can even have true errors.
Earlier in my learning I always used Spanish subtitles when watching shows and learned a lot of vocabulary in that way. Now, except for when analyzing a movie as described above, I usually do not use subtitles.



