How to combine the new Duolingo (with crowns) with spaced repetition?

Question

Duolingo was updated so that the main user interface no longer shows how well Duolingo thinks the user knows the different skills. Furthermore, there is no encouragement (in terms of skills turning golden) for practicing weak skills.

These features were replaced by skill levels (crowns), which one can earn by exercising the skills. At higher level skills the exercises get more difficult, or at least there is more translating into the learned language and less into the language one is learning from.

How can one combine the new Duolingo system with spaced repetition?

Answer 1

Duolingo still retains the information about word and skill strength, even if it is not (easily) accessible to users. There are basically three ways of having spaced repetition with the current incarnation of Duolingo. I consider the first to be the most useful, the last the least.

1. The external website duome.eu (previously duolingo.eu) shows the strength of skills. The precise address is https://www.duome.eu/USER/progress , where one should replace USER with one's own username. One can see which skills are weak, and then use the standard Duolingo interface to select a weakest skill and practice it. The practice will be towards the next crown level, unless one already has five crowns in the skill. There is no guarantee that a single lesson will improve the strength of the skill (as it does not target the weak words, but rather whatever is in the next lesson of that skill), but a few sessions will certainly do so. Further, this will advance the skill towards the next crown level, thereby providing external motivation and hopefully harder questions.

2. Use the "practice" button on the Duolingo website. This seems to work in the same way as the general "strengthen" button on the old website - it tends to take the easiest decayed skill and give a lesson drawing from there, but sometimes also mixes random sentences with weak words from different lessons. In the modern interface this provides no feedback. In particular, there is no advancement towards crown levels and no skill will turn gold.

3. After a skill has been advanced to five crowns / skill levels, one can practice it further. This seems to work as spaced repetition with respect to the words that are part of that particular skill. This is a solution of limited utility, as the skills are of limited breadth and getting them to five crowns requires a fair deal of effort.

Also, in the crowns FAQ (link in the question) it states that Duolingo is considering how to integrate spaced repetition with the present model.