Hi Wendy, no need to apologize, I really appreciate you for reading and leaving a thoughtful response!

Pimsleur does contradict what I said a bit, but you hit the nail on the head when you said "a bit." The biggest dangers with speaking early is that you put yourself on the road for really bad pronunciation that will be hard to correct later, and you might develop a bad habit of superimposing the gramatical structures and rhythms of your native lanhuage onto the target language. I think you are less likely to fall into these traps because you grew up in California and have heard a lot of Spanish. So the danger of bad pronunciation and rhythm is not as strong in your case. Secondly, since you are repeating, the dnager of importing translations from English into Spanish that don't really work (e.g. "Estas derecha" instead of "tienes razón"). A J. Marvin Brown purist might say that it's still best to wait to speak until it starts coming out of you naturally, and if you were learning Japanese I might agree, but I think you're fine. It's worth noting that from what I've heard from people who have successfuly learned languages, they still need to correct their pronunciation when they start speaking, because their mouth isn't used to the sounds of the language. The difference is that when they start speaking, they know the language so well that they can hear it when they say something that is wrong. Their mouth isn't used to the language, but their ears are experts. Self-correction becomes a relatively straightforward thing at that point and they spend about a week ironing out their pronunciation, which becomes very good very quickly.

Sometimes I forget really basic words too! I think the key thing to remember is that "learning" a word is a very slow process. If I needed to say "Chocolate chip cookie" in English, I would have no trouble retrieving that phrase. It's a phrase that I've heard a billion times and has countless connections in my mind (e.g. sweets, sugar, butter, gooey, baking, my kitchen, etc.) But if I had to say "parer," I would be in trouble. To me that word is just "the word that caused me to lose Wordle the other day." I had looked it up at the time, so I "know" what it means, but it's pretty faint in my mind. So there's a spectrum between "knowing" a word in the sense of barely being able to recognize it on the one hand, and having it completely mastered on the other. Every word that we learn passes through this continuum, And the only way to go from "parer" to "chocolate chip cookie" is to hear it hundreds of times in context through sentences that deliver actual meaning to you.

I think what you mentioned about listening to Radio Bilingue and getting the gist is really important. That's kind of like the tipping point where comprehensible input becomesbearable and can even become enjoyable. I think the hardest thing about comprehensible input is that most existing sources of input are too advanced for someone starting form zero.

But that brings me to my biggest piece of advice for your specific case: Listen to the podcasts, even if you don't have time to look up words. If you are getting the gist, you WILL improve.

Here's my rule for looking up words (which I stole from a polyglot on YouTube): You aren't allowed to press pause to lookup words and phrases. If you keep hearing a word that you don't know and you think you would understand what you are listening to much better if you knew it, look it up after the episode is over. This has a few advantages. First of all, if you keep noticing the same word, you are probably "ready" to learn it. If you can actually remember it after the episode was over, it probably is an important word that your brain is struggling to decode. Finally, you don't interrupt your input time. The downside of this approach is that sometimes you will say "I definitely need to look up "aprovechar" (or whatever) later," and you will forget. You'll remember that there was a word you wanted to look up, but you won't be able to remember what it was. I can almost guarantee that you will be annoyed by this (I always am). All I can say here is to remind yourself that if the word is worth learning, you'll definitely come across it again.

I'm with you in the sense that I'm not a huge fan of Duolingo's ads but I also don't want to pay to get rid of the ads. But I do really like the stories. I've found one "trick" is to only do the bare minimum to open up the next section. The level one of each unit exposes you to all the new vocabulary, but the type of questions they ask aren't as intense. It's closer to learning from input than to traditional methods, even if purists would still turn their nose up at it.

You're welcome for the article, thanks so much for reading and responding. I have no doubt that you are on your way to becming a fluent spanish speaker!