If you "hover" your cursor over the word it will give you a suggested translation.

Note this is somewhat accurate but not always 100% true, as words can have multiple meanings (such as "plane" for example which can mean either to level something or an airplane, or "mint" which can be either an herb or a place that coins money). Also, Duolingo's algorithm interprets you hovering over a word as an indication that it is an unknown/weak word for you, so the more often you do this, the faster your skills weaken and the tree turns from gold to other colors.

When you encounter these lessons, click on the word(s) you don't know, and it should show the meaning. If it doesn't, try restarting the lesson.

There are no difficulty settings like easy, intermediate, hard/expert on DuoLingo.

You could pre-learn the words on http://www.memrise.com with their 6 step flower planting method.

New words on DuoLingo "should" be highlighted in orange so you can click on a hint.

However, it may not work for all (newer) exercise types which they introduced lately... (bug: wrong review exercise type is played at the learning stage).
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Use the "Lessons" userstyle with the Stylish plugin, which might bring you orange/red highlighting of new words (for simple translations) and the layout of the "old left-right design" back: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/24634938/Lessons-Userstyle-to-get-some-things-of-the-old-look-back

I read about a bug not doing so in tiramisues's thread about that they tried to fix it for those users, where it was not working anymore.

I believe I know what your talking about, on some of the later lessons it gives you the "spell blank in Spanish" in the beginning without going over it first, so far I have not found a solution.

Are you using a smartphone? You need to use a laptop or regular computer as they have to omit so much to fit it on the small screens. Hold the cursor over the word, see if the meaning shows. I do this all the time. Using a tablet or phone is the WORST way to learn. Bonne chance!

When I joined we were assigned "hearts" every day, when you failed a question you lost a "heart", when you ran out of hearts you were done for the day. I liked it.

I quickly learned to have Duolingo and http://www.spanishdict.com/ toggled on my browser.

Much of elementary Spanish you can guess, when you can't, toggle it.

Spanishdict will show you what you have to learn.

I still use it and still thank Duolingo for showing me what I have to learn.

> Do we just get it wrong every time until we learn what it is during the lesson?

For the Web/PC version of the site, at least, that's true in the later lessons; I don't know about hand-held devices. It works quite well, just so long as you relax and don't worry about getting things wrong the first (or second, or third, etc.) time. Go through the lesson a few times, rather than just once. Don't even bother peaking w/ the mouse. Just learn by repetition. You'll probably find that your completed lessons stay golden longer, too, and with all that repetition of correct sentences you'll remember everything for a longer time.