I used DuoLingo two or three years ago to try to learn Spanish. I knew a little of the basic grammar from high school and some words. By the time I got to less

I used DuoLingo two or three years ago to try to learn Spanish. I knew a little of the basic grammar from high school and some words. By the time I got to lesson 20, I was completely loss. I also got sick of the gamification and just the grind of it. I just stopped. That and I realized the continuous click buttons got tiresome. Then, earlier this year my wife and I decided that we wanted to start spending at least a couple of months every year in Costa Rica starting next year and maybe alternate between there and other Spanish speaking countries in us time zones. This time, I had ChatGPT and a Trello board I put together of concepts and categories of words I wanted to learn based on the CEFR level A1 list. I would create various drills, ask ChatGPT to explain concepts, etc. I became more focused on production - mostly writing. ChatGPT is a good teacher to get through the list of topics of my known gaps. I even asked it to summarize the most important current event at an A1 level and ask me questions. As far as speaking, I used Apple’s voice to text and not the better one built into ChatGPT. It’s pretty good with my English native southern twang so I figured any mistranscription in Spanish was caused by my bad pronunciation. The one built into ChatGPT is better. But that’s actually a bad thing when trying to pronuncie words correctly. After a few months of ChatGPT, I did recently go vac to DuoLingo. I do the first exercise in a unit, then see if I can skip the rest (which it does let you do). If I don’t know vocabulary or a concept, I go back to ChatGPT for drills. Being able to listen in Spanish in real time at an A1 level is the next step. I can use ChatGPT for that first and then watching kids tv shows in Spanish