Writing is one of my favorite ways to actively study German. It is great for vocabulary building and grammar practice, and in the absence of speaking opportunities, it is the only way to get practice with production skills. But beyond simply being a great way to practice on its own, writing is a key component of how I use flashcards and spaced repetition to learn German. In this post, I break down how to use writing practice to get more out of spaced repetition systems like Anki.

Learning to write in a new laguage can be intimidating, especially if you’re learning alone. Like speaking, writing is a productive skill which makes it impossible to learn passively. Reading will improve your writing, to be sure. But if you want to write, you need to write!

Is Duolingo bad? You’ve probably heard a lot of criticisms of this popular app if you’ve been hanging around language learning communities online. Duolingo gets a lot of flack, and there’s good reason for that. Nobody is going to reach fluency in a foreign language just by using a game app, and a lot of Duolingo users seem to think they can. Still, I think many critics miss an important point: Duolingo scratches the phone itch. And that’s no small thing.