u/Famous-Run1920

We all know language learning is a long and hard process. Especially so at the stage where progress has stalled and you still aren’t fully fluent. For myself, this has meant struggling with two things especially: vocabulary and listening comprehension.

Languages have a ton of words. The most common words make up a large portion of words in use but once you’ve learned those you are faced with a never-ending list of new ones. Even in our native languages, we don’t know every word so it makes sense that this is especially challenging in a new language. Regional dialects and slang add even more words you need to learn.

Listening comprehension is really hard. Personally, I’ve always been stronger at reading than listening when learning a new language, likely due to a combination of new unfamiliar sounds and being able to take your time when reading. 

Duolingo and other apps are really good for staying consistent when first starting but at a certain point they have diminishing returns. This is where the best value starts to instead come from input (immersion and exposure from real conversations or from watching content online).

For the latter, I made an app for myself, Practy, that addresses the two issues above. It lets you watch Youtube, Netflix, Hbo Max and Disney+ content with interactive subtitles. You can quickly toggle on/off translations or even subtitles to try watching just based on audio. As you encounter words you see definitions instantly (instead of having to arduously look them up) and you can save them to your own personal vocab list and practice them later (or export to Anki). This lets you both consume input at your own level and efficiently study new words. I hope you find it helpful and I wish you all the best in your language learning journey!