Smart Blend now adapts to each learner — skipping words you've mastered and matching selection to your level. But "adaptive" is only as good as the signals you give it. Here is the whole setup, honestly, including the parts that need a week to warm up.
Step 1: Answer the level question like you'd answer a friend#
At signup (or when you switch target languages) LingoBlend asks: how much of the language do you know? Four answers, no jargon:
| Pick this | If |
|---|---|
| Just starting | You're within your first weeks; you know greetings and scraps |
| I know the basics | You survive predictable situations: ordering, directions, small talk |
| I can hold conversations | You express opinions and follow everyday speech, with gaps |
| I'm comfortable reading | You read real texts and mostly meet unknown words in the long tail |
Two tips. First, round down: a slightly-too-easy blend still teaches (and reads pleasantly); a too-hard one front-loads frustration. Second, don't agonize — this answer only steers until your review history exists, and then your measured vocabulary takes over in both directions. If it ever feels mistuned, it's editable per language in Personal Details.
Step 2: Blend something you genuinely want to read#
Not a textbook passage — an article you'd read anyway. Paste it (or a URL) and start at 20–30%. At that range, the engine picks useful vocabulary just past your level, spreads it evenly, and handles idioms as whole expressions, so what you meet is worth meeting.
While you read, tap and save. This is the highest-value habit in the entire app: every saved word both enters your review queue and becomes a mastery signal for future blends. Save the form you encountered or its dictionary form — either way the vocabulary graph's inflection index files it correctly, so despierta and despertar build one record, not two.
Step 3: Let the games do the measuring#
Mastery isn't declared, it's demonstrated — through the five spaced-repetition games. A word graduates toward "mastered" as you answer it correctly across growing intervals; it gets flagged "struggling" when you keep missing it. Ten minutes a day is genuinely enough, and the payoff compounds in your reading: mastered words stop consuming blend slots, due words start appearing inside your texts — a review disguised as reading — and struggling words get extra contextual encounters.
Expect the warm-up to take one to two weeks of normal use. That's not a limitation to work around; it's the system being honest about what it has measured versus what it's guessing.
Step 4: Use the slider as two different tools#
Below ~50%, you're in acquisition mode: every translated word is chosen to teach you something. Push toward 70–90% and you enter immersion mode, where the logic deliberately shifts — your mastered vocabulary gets reused as comfortable filler so the page actually reaches the density you asked for, while the learning-valuable words still take priority. Same slider, two intents; the engine follows yours.
A good weekly rhythm: most reading at 25–35%, one longer session at 60%+, and re-blend an old favorite text at a higher percentage than you first read it — the clearest possible view of your own progress.
Step 5 (optional): Capture words everywhere, not just in blends#
Everything in one dictionary means everything feeds personalization: the Chrome extension on desktop, share-to-LingoBlend on your phone, photo OCR for menus and signs, and word packs to seed a topic fast. A word saved from a webpage on Tuesday changes how Thursday's article blends.