What To Do After Finishing Checkpoint 4 of Duolingo Spanish
Congratulations, you made it to the fourth checkpoint of Duolingo! When I had finished checkpoint 2 of Duo, I found it very hard to find appropriate resources. Most were either too difficult or too easy. Plus, I noticed when I could only understand 20% of a sentence, my brain just kinda shut down and gave up. I wanted to find resources that were perfect for my level of Spanish.
Please check out my other posts about Duolingo’s Spanish checkpoints here.
Since March, I have been practicing Spanish for an hour a day with a native speaker with BaseLang. It can be expensive, but I knew that I really wanted to learn Spanish and it has been 100% worth it for me, especially since I can book a lesson any time (even in the next hour) and my progress is tracked and my next lesson can pick up where the other one left off, even with a different teacher.
If that’s not in the budget, I also recommend iTalki. It’s not as flexible as BaseLang, but you can find hour-long lessons for under $10 from a native Spanish speaker.
Either way: the key to learning to speak Spanish is to SPEAK SPANISH! Speaking with native speakers almost daily has given me the confidence to talk simply at restaurants or getting to know someone. This helps with pronunciation, personalizing vocab (according to your interests, job, etc.), and fluency.
A few things covered before Checkpoint 4:
- Imperatives
- Stem-Changing First Person Singular
- Preterite (past tense)
- Imperfect (past tense)
- Por vs Para
- Progressive
- Indirect Objects
Specific Resources for Above Skills
I ran through this 40 question quiz a couple times (you get instant answers for each question and don’t have to do them all at once!
SpanishDict – Irregular Preterite Quiz
This quiz covers 40 variations of stem-changing, irregular verbs. Practice, practice, practice!
SpanishDict – Preterite vs Imperfect Quiz
Sometimes vosotros is added, I just skip those 😉
SpanishDict – Present Progressive Quiz
Practice the present progressive with this SpanishDict quiz!
Present Progressive Explanation (Spanish Learning Lab)
This resource is great for explaining the present progressive better!
Quick Tips for Por vs Para (SpanishDict)
Yes, I love SpanishDict! This article is broken up and has tons of examples.
My Favorite Resources
Preterite Tense Videos
- Spanish Stories (at the grocery store)
- Spanish Playground’s Videos (great videos! I think their videos are a little too slow now, but they’re still great at 1.5x speed)
Lyrics Training
This is a fun app to aid with listening through your favorite songs. Each song has 4 levels (beginner to advanced).
Lirica
Lirica has a great Youtube channel with songs that have English and Spanish lyrics. Their app takes songs and dissects them line by line with meaning, pronunciation, and vocabulary. The app doesn’t have as many songs as Lyrics Training, but it’s well worth your time.
HelloTalk
I love this free language learning app for a few reasons. You can ask questions or write a short paragraph in Spanish and get a response in under a minute. You can also have conversations to practice your Spanish and help someone practice their English. Usually for these, I do 10 minutes Spanish/10 minutes English.
Ladies: I’ve found the best results from other women around my age, versus some older guys that think it’s a dating app 😉 (I haven’t experienced anything bad and the app makes any weirdos easy to report)
These super-simple podcasts (with text) have classic fairytales in slow Spanish.
The Sound of Music in Spanish (Disney Plus)
I LOVE The Sound of Music and LOVED the Spanish dubbing. I’m particular about dubbing, since sometimes it’s so cheesy. The version was fantastic, easy to understand, felt authentic, and the music was amazing. This is by far the best-dubbed movie I’ve seen, even better than some of the classic Disney in my opinion.
YouTube Channels
This Youtube channel has slow-speaking, visual clues that are perfect for this level.
I love Maria’s channel since she interviews people in a natural way, but the Spanish is slowed down and easy to understand.
Ana is adorable and hilarious. Whether you’re wanting to learn a certain skill or talk about COVID, there are tons of great videos on here.
