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Recipes

A collection of worked scenarios for common goals. Each recipe walks through the actual taps in the app — not a generic suggestion. Mix and match the steps as your needs change.

Recipe 1 — Studying a new tense (Pretérito Imperfecto)

You've decided to add the imperfect past tense to your Spanish. Here's a focused two-week plan that takes it from "never seen it" to "automatic for regular verbs and the three irregulars".

Day 1 — Read the rules

  1. From the home screen, tap Verb Grammar Lessons (the orange card).
  2. Scroll to the Pretérito Imperfecto module and tap to expand it.
  3. Tap the first row — Introduction to this section — and read the module introduction. Note the endings tables for -ar and -er/-ir verbs and the three irregular verbs (ser, ir, ver).
  4. Tap Pretérito Imperfecto: Regular Verbs to open the first lesson. Read the explanation, scan the Study Aids reference table at the top, and skim the verb list. Don't take a test yet.

Days 2–4 — Drill the regular pattern

  1. Back in the lesson, tap into the Practice phase.
  2. Run the Conjugation Drill on the lesson's verbs. Keep going until you can produce the -aba / -ía endings without thinking.
  3. After each session, mark the lesson done if you've cleared the threshold. The next lesson unlocks.

Days 5–7 — Tackle the irregulars

  1. Open Pretérito Imperfecto: ser, ir & ver — the only three irregulars in this tense.
  2. Drill them until era / eras / era / éramos / erais / eran, iba / ibas / iba / íbamos / ibais / iban, and veía / veías / … roll off without effort. These three verbs are responsible for almost every imperfect mistake learners make in real Spanish.

Days 8–14 — Lock it in with mixed practice

  1. Open Self Study → Verbs → Setup → Select Tenses.
  2. Tap None at the top to clear, then enable only Pretérito Imperfecto (and Presente if you want to revise it alongside).
  3. Run the Conjugation Drill with a wider verb pool — set the Select Verbs filter to A1 + A2, Very Common so you cover a broader set than the lesson did.
  4. Aim for two short sessions a day. After a week of this, the imperfect should feel as routine as the present.

When you're done

Open My Progress → Accuracy → By tense — you should see Pretérito Imperfecto sitting near the top of your hit-rate list. If it's still under 80%, run another few mixed sessions. If it's over 90%, you're solid; add another tense (the Pretérito Indefinido module is a natural next step).

Recipe 2 — Travel vocabulary for a trip

You're going to Madrid in three weeks and want to land with usable Spanish — survival vocabulary, basic phrases, and the present tense of the verbs you'll actually use.

Week 1 — Pin down the vocabulary scope

  1. Self Study → Nouns → Setup → Select Nouns. On the Criteria tab, set CEFR Level to A1 + A2, Frequency to Very Common, and Topic to Travel + Food + Home + Body.
  2. Self Study → Phrases → Setup → Select Phrases. Same CEFR / Frequency. For Topic, pick Greetings + Travel.
  3. Self Study → Verbs → Setup → Select Verbs. Filter to A1 + A2, Very Common verbs only.
  4. Self Study → Verbs → Setup → Select Tenses. Disable everything except Presente and Pretérito Indefinido (you'll need both in conversation).

Weeks 1–3 — Daily 15-minute sessions

A balanced daily routine:

  • 5 minutes — Nouns → Test → Meaning Test.
  • 5 minutes — Verbs → Test → Conjugation Drill.
  • 5 minutes — Phrases → Test → Phrase Meanings (focus on greetings and common chunks).

The adaptive engine will surface your weak words; don't try to override it.

Last few days — Sharpen the rough edges

  • Add Phrases → Topic: Food to your selection (ordering, allergies, paying).
  • Open My Progress → Word Performance and look at the bottom of the list. If a word keeps showing up there, tap it to open its detail view and the example sentences will lock it in.

Recipe 3 — Por vs para (drilling a confusable pair)

The classic Spanish trap. Use a personal topic to corral the relevant words and drill them as a unit.

  1. Open the detail view for the word por (find it in Words → Browse Words or the search).
  2. Tap the + in the Topics row and create a personal topic called por-para.
  3. Open para's detail view and tag it with the same por-para topic.
  4. Add any other prepositions you find tricky (hasta, desde, durante) to the same tag.
  5. Self Study → Words → Setup → Select Words. Filter by the por-para personal topic (it appears in the Topic list with a small person icon).
  6. Run Word Meanings flashcards. Switch the direction to Native → Spanish — producing the right preposition from a meaning is harder than recognising it from the Spanish form, and harder is what you need.

For a richer drill, do the same with example sentences: the detail view shows three example sentences per word, and reading those alongside the flashcard drill consolidates the contrast.

Recipe 4 — Locking in noun gender

If el problema and la mano still catch you out, you need a focused gender drill. The Noun Groups feature makes this fast.

  1. Self Study → Nouns → Setup → Select Nouns and switch to the Noun Groups tab.
  2. Tick the groups you want to drill:
    • Gender traps (mano, foto, día, problema, …)
    • Greek -ema / -ama / -oma (problema, tema, sistema, idioma, programa, …)
    • Stressed a + feminine (el agua / las aguas)
  3. Untick Regular so your pool is just the tricky cases.
  4. Run Pick the Correct Article until you're scoring 95%+. This is a binary tap drill — you'll cover the whole set fast.
  5. Once the article drill feels automatic, swap to Meaning Test with the same selection. Producing the meaning while remembering the article is a slightly harder skill that consolidates everything.

When you can hit consistent 95% on the gender traps, swap back to the Criteria tab and broaden your selection. The patterns will now hold for new vocabulary too.

Recipe 5 — Preparing for a lesson with your teacher

You have a Spanish lesson coming up and want to revise before it.

  1. Open My Progress → Word Performance. The top of the list is what you've been struggling with — those are the words to bring up with your teacher.
  2. From that list, tap each word to open its detail view. Read the example sentences and try to use the word in a sentence aloud.
  3. If the lesson focuses on a specific tense, open Self Study → Verbs → Select Tenses and disable everything except that tense for a short focused warm-up.
  4. Open My Progress and tap Share (top right) to export a PDF of your progress report. Bring it to the lesson — your teacher can see exactly where you're strong and where you're weak.

Building your own recipe

The pattern in every recipe above is the same:

  1. Decide your scope — what tenses, what topics, what CEFR level, what specific words.
  2. Narrow the selection via Select Verbs / Select Nouns / Select Tenses / Select Phrases / Select Words.
  3. Pick the right drill for the skill you're building (recognition vs production, meaning vs gender, regular pattern vs irregular).
  4. Check My Progress weekly to see whether the scope still matches your goals. Broaden when you're consistently above 90%; tighten when you're below 70%.

That's the whole loop. Everything else in the app is in service of making each of those four steps cheap to do.