What to practise when Duolingo stops being enough

You finish a Spanish lesson comfortably, then struggle to describe your weekend. That gap is worth investigating. You do different things in the lesson and in the conversation.

If lessons have become easy but conversation has not, change what you practise. Start with the part of the conversation you have trouble with.

Look beyond the streak

A streak is a record of continued activity. From it you cannot tell whether you can follow a conversation, write an email or explain a problem. You have to check those abilities through the tasks themselves.

Choose something specific. Could you explain why you need to change a booking? Tell someone what you did yesterday? Follow a short recording without its transcript? Try it, then notice where you stop. Perhaps you recognise the words when you see them but cannot produce them. Perhaps the vocabulary is familiar and the speed of speech is the problem.

Use that observation to choose your next exercise. For a missing word you need different practice than for a sentence you can read but cannot follow in speech.

Check what you have to produce

You need different things to select a word from supplied options and to produce it from memory. You can learn something from both. If choosing is easy but finding the word yourself is difficult, make room for practice in which you supply it.

For example, try writing Ayer fui al parque con mis hijos from its meaning before looking at the Spanish. Then describe something you actually did yesterday. In the first task you practise a constrained answer. In the second you choose your own content and wording.

In Duolingo there are several exercise types. Look at your own sessions: how much of the answer must you produce, and how much is supplied? Then compare that task with the conversation you want to have.

What an app can show you

Duolingo publishes research on reading, listening and speaking outcomes. When comparing apps, look for results on the skill you want to improve and learners at a similar starting level.

In Vozelu, producing Spanish from memory is at the centre of vocabulary practice, with reviews scheduled from your answers. That is a difference in how you practise. We have not run a study comparing learning outcomes with Duolingo.

Choose practice for the difficulty you found

If you lose words when you need them, practise producing them from their meanings and in short sentences. Return to them after a delay. If speech is difficult to follow, listen to a short passage, check its transcript and listen again. If you can answer isolated questions but struggle to speak at length, practise describing an event and responding to follow-up questions.

Choose reading and audio you can broadly understand. Difficult material is useful when you can work out what is happening and learn from the gaps. Material in which you are guessing throughout is a poor default for daily practice.

In Vozelu, you write Spanish answers before seeing the correction, return to words in later reviews, and use them in reading and listening. In dialogues you say your lines out loud or type them. In grammar lessons you read about the forms you come across. How those parts fit together is on our method page.

You can try a short session and judge the difference in the task for yourself.