Best Vocabulary Hacks (and Why Apps Alone Aren’t Enough)

People often tell me or share on social media how many hours they’ve spent on language apps—only to follow that up with the same frustration: “I still can’t actually use Spanish in conversation.”

There are several reasons for this, which have to do with how grammar and vocabulary are practiced. In this post I’ll focus on vocabulary practice. 

App-based learning rarely provides the purposeful, spaced repetition new words need in order to stick. Vocabulary is often introduced through isolated (and sometimes nonsensical) sentences that lack any meaningful context. While gamification can be motivating, it doesn’t always promote the kind of deep cognitive engagement that leads to a large bank of vocabulary that students can recall on their own and use readily to converse.

Passive vs. active vocabulary

When you learn a language, you’re building two different vocabulary banks: passive and active.

Passive vocabulary includes words you recognize when you see or hear them. Active vocabulary includes the words you can recall and use spontaneously in open conversation. Recognizing a word is relatively easy; producing it on the fly is much harder—and it requires a very different kind of practice than tapping multiple-choice answers on a screen.

The strategies below focus on helping vocabulary move from passive recognition into active use. I’ll give an example of how I put the strategies into practice with my students. 

1. Spaced Repetition: There’s no such thing as “one and done”

Don’t expect to learn a word, use it once, and remember it forever. Vocabulary needs to be revisited repeatedly over time—and in different contexts.

The hack:
Build a vocabulary list of words most relevant to you. Then practice those words in a variety of contexts repeatedly over time.

Why it works:
This kind of practice forces active recall—pulling information from your brain and applying it in new situations again and again. Each retrieval strengthens the memory and makes the word easier to access in the future.

What this looks like in the Spanish on the Patio classes and membership:
In addition to weekly lessons with practice activities with core vocabulary, members use new vocabulary on their personalized lists in journal prompts and discussion posts in the forum. By the time they come to a conversation hour, those words are already familiar and ready to use.

2. Contextualized Learning: Use the language to create meaningful messages

Memorizing isolated words from a list is inefficient and ineffective. Learning words in phrases—or better yet, in short, meaningful texts—provides context that encourages deeper processing.

Even better? When the context is personally relevant. The more relevant a word is to your own life, the more quickly it moves into your active vocabulary.

The hack:
Don’t just learn trabajador (hard-working). Learn:
Mi hermana Susana es muy trabajadora. (My sister Susana is very hard-working.)

Why it works:
You’re not just learning a definition—you’re learning how the word behaves, how it fits into a sentence, and what it means in a real situation. And you are associating it with a real life person. 

What this looks like in our membership:
Vocabulary is always practiced in authentic contexts vs. a list of random and disconnected sentences. In their journals, forum discussions and conversation hours, learners use new words to talk about their own lives and describe people they know.

3. Input Richness: Reading while listening

“Input” refers to the language you receive —what you read and hear. Babies can’t learn to speak without months of listening to their parents chatting away, and adult learners also need large amounts of meaningful input to be able to produce a foreign language. This means more than listening and repeating vocabulary words on a list – that’s about practicing pronunciation. Remember we want our practice to be repetitive, spaced out and contextualized. 

For adults, simply listening to a native speaker chatting at normal speed can be too difficult.  Reading is more accessible and can be a powerful tool for input. However research shows that reading while listening is even more effective for building vocabulary and grammar awareness than reading alone. And it provides that scaffolding necessary to being able to understand native speakers out in the real world!

The hack:
Listen to Spanish audiobooks or podcasts while following along with the transcript. Watch shows with subtitles in Spanish not English. Use lyric sheets to sing along to Spanish songs.

Why it works:
You get multiple exposures to vocabulary in different but authentic contexts, which helps move words from short-term to long-term memory. You also improve listening comprehension and become familiar with different accents. All of this is necessary to be able to converse. 

What this looks like in our membership:
Members receive short readings with audio recordings, along with a list of specially curated songs, films, and podcasts (all with transcripts) that highlight the vocabulary and structures we’re practicing. All that input provides the context for the talks we have in the community forum and conversation hours. 

4. Semantic Mapping, Word Associations and Connecting to what you already know. 

Many beginners try to expand their vocabulary by memorizing long lists of words organized by topic. This can quickly become overwhelming—and it rarely leads to lasting retention.

The hack:
Connect new words to existing concepts. Group synonyms and antonyms, link new verbs to places where you do those actions, the seasons when you prefer to do them, and the people with whom you do them. And use images whenever possible.

Why it works:
Visually organizing words around a topic and linking them to words you already know helps build context, promotes deeper processing and strengthens long-term recall of the words.

What this looks like in our membership:
When learning vocabulary to describe friends or family, members make contextualized flashcards for the task. They use a photo of a friend or relative and choose 5–10 words to describe that person on a personalized type of flashcard. 

They then use those words to write a short description while practicing a grammar structure highlighted in that module. In the example below the focus is using the verb Ser with descriptive adjectives to describe family members:

• Mi hermana Susana no es floja. Es muy trabajadora.  (My sister Susana isn’t lazy. She’s very hard-working.) 

• Pero no es divertida. Es seria y un poco aburrida. (But she’s not very fun. She’s serious and a little boring.)

In the following module, when we start to learn the verb gustar to describe what people like to do in their free-time, students can go back and add examples to these personal, contextualized flash cards.

The big takeaway

Learning vocabulary isn’t about exposure alone—it’s about how you interact with new words. When practice is spaced, contextualized, meaningful, and personal, vocabulary stops feeling random and slippery. The words start to stick and you become better equipped to recall them and… converse.

My online membership for beginning (and low intermediate) Spanish learners is designed around exactly that kind of purposeful practice: short, manageable lessons, repeated exposure to vocabulary relevant to your life, and opportunities to use the language in meaningful, personal ways. 

If you’re ready to move beyond gamified practice and start speaking Spanish with real people in a fun and supportive community, join the waitlist for the Spanish on the Patio membership. 

The doors are opening in February!