Finished Duolingo? What to Do Next to Get Past A2
Duolingo gets you started, but most learners stall around A2. What actually moves you to intermediate: grammar you understand, a bigger vocabulary and lots of reading at your level.
Keep a little daily practice, but change what you practise. To get past the beginner stage you need three things a streak doesn't give you on its own: grammar you actually understand, a few thousand words instead of a few hundred, and hours of reading and listening at your level. The fastest route is graded reading first, then real books with a translation alongside.
Why progress stalls around A2
Most learners who stop after a year of a beginner app aren't lazy. They hit the intermediate plateau. At A1 and A2 every week brings something visibly new: a new tense, fifty new words. After that, the gains are slower and harder to see, and short multiple-choice exercises stop stretching you.
The numbers explain why. Researchers Hu and Nation (2000) found that readers need to know about 98% of the words in a text to read fiction comfortably without help. Paul Nation later estimated (2006) that reaching 98% in written English takes around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. A beginner course covers a small fraction of that. You won't get the rest from lessons alone: you get it from reading and listening, a lot.
What to do next
1. Fill in the grammar properly
Game-style apps teach grammar by pattern. That works for the basics, but at intermediate level you need the rules themselves: why Russian changes word endings, when Spanish uses the subjunctive, how German word order works. Learn each point from a clear explanation with tables and examples, then practise it straight away.
FluenTech's free grammar lessons do this for Russian, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Turkish, each with a short quiz at the end.
2. Grow your vocabulary by topic
Learn words in groups (food, travel, work, feelings) with audio, and review them before you forget them. Spaced repetition does the timing for you. Aim for steady numbers, such as 10 to 20 new words a day, rather than big bursts.
3. Read a lot of easy text
This is the step most learners skip, and it's the one that matters most. Read short texts where you already know most of the words, and read many of them. You'll meet the same words again and again in different sentences, and that's how they stick. Comprehension questions at the end tell you whether you really understood.
Start with short graded texts, like the free Spanish, Russian, French, German, Italian and Turkish reading pages, each with a translation you can show or hide.
4. Move on to real books, with help
Once short texts feel easy, read real literature with a translation under each line. You'll understand the story from the start and pick up the language in the original as you go. Short works are the best place to begin: Dostoevsky's White Nights or Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
5. Keep speaking and listening alongside
Reading builds the vocabulary, but you also need your ears and mouth. Listen to songs and podcasts at your level, say sentences out loud, and talk to people when you can. An AI chatbot is good for this too: ask it to explain a sentence or to chat with you in simple language.
Where FluenTech fits
FluenTech's apps are built for exactly this stretch: the step from beginner to reading real books. Each course has grammar lessons with quizzes, topic vocabulary with audio and spaced repetition, graded reading from A1 to B2 with comprehension questions, songs with lyrics, and complete classic books with a translation under every line. There are apps for Russian, English, German, Turkish, Spanish, French and Italian, free to download on iPhone and Android.
You don't have to drop Duolingo to use it. Many learners keep a short daily streak and add one reading session a day. That reading session is what gets you past A2.
Questions
Can you reach B1 with Duolingo alone?
Some learners do, but it's slow. Duolingo's short exercises are good for building a habit and the basics. For B1 you also need longer reading and listening, and grammar explained in depth.
How long does it take to go from A2 to B1?
It depends on the language and how much you study. Cambridge English puts it at roughly 200 guided learning hours per level, and languages far from your own, such as Russian or Turkish for English speakers, take longer.
What should I read first in a new language?
Short texts written for your level, then short real works with a translation alongside. Pick something you'd enjoy in your own language, because you'll read more of it.