When using Duolingo – I feel like I’m learning how to read Japanese writing more than learning to speak it and remember the words. Any other good learning apps out there?

27 comments

1. If you have the money, I would highly recommend Pimsleur for speaking.

2. Pretty sure the duolingo app on mobile devices has speaking exercises too.

   But generally, software that listens to you speak is not very accurate at actually measuring how well you speak. We can’t really substitute for human ears yet.

   For speaking, unless you’re actually interacting with someone fluent in Japanese, you may as well just speak to yourself, record yourself and then compare to native speech to see how you sound.

3. Mango! You learn grammar, vocabulary, culture, and hiragana. And if you have a library card, chances are you can get it for free.

4. WankKani or renshuu

5. Yeah, same. I only use Duolingo to help me read, with romanji and furigana hints off. It does help if you do not use the premade word buttons or keyboard and speak the answers instead. I do this on mobile. In general, as embarrassing and awkward as it may be, you have to force yourself to read out loud and I also recommend recording yourself so you can spot check your accent. We sound worse that we think 🙂

   Nothing beats a real face to face tutor to help you learn how to speak, because of the stress and panic attack it forces, and the person is paid to tolerate us. You can book an hour lesson a day for very little on Itaki or Preply

6. The best Japanese apps on the market, still, and by far, are Human Japanese and Human Japanese Intermediate. They are affordable and progress at a great pace. By the end of Human Japanese Intermediate you’ll have a firm grasp on Japanese grammar up to around the mid N4 level, with tons of vocabulary and a bunch of Kanji under your belt.

   After that, you’d be perfectly empowered to move on to Satori reader where you can get tons of reading and shadowing (speaking) practice.

7. Just a tip, I’ve been using duolingo, I always use the keyboard not the word bank & then 50% of the time I’ll type and 50% I’ll use speech to text to practice the pronounciation, definitely helps a lot more!

8. Use google’s gboard. It has multilingual support, which means you can use the japanese keyboard to write the sentences instead of using those bubbles.
   I started using it a month ago and you get used to it pretty fast. You also get kanji suggestions (a lot like the english keyboards).

   Also try to use the keyboard’s transcribe feature to get used to speaking, though its not perfect, but it is pretty impressive how accurate it is (even gets the kanji characters right, most of the times).

   Gboard also has a draw feature that will let you draw any character and based on that give you the most closest matching suggestion.

   Aside from that make a list of all the kanji you learn (preferably digitally so you can look them up if you ever want to revise, along with an example sentence. the duolingo website gives you a list of words that you have learned), And also practice drawing them in a notebook (try to get the stroke order right)

   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

   The above app is great for looking up kanji characters, it provides their meaning, uses, breakup, stroke order, etc (You can use the draw feature to lookup the kanji)

   The above points is what I personally use, I dont get much time to alot to japanese study, so for now at least I am solely using duo.

   Hope this helps a little bit.

   Here’s the link to the keyboard app

   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.latin

9. My experience with Duolingo is similar to yours. It has helped me understand in both oral and written forms, or better, interpretive and presentational language, but for interpersonal communication, it is not quite there, even, it isn’t there at all.

   There are a few speaking exercises, but very few compared to French, Spanish, Italian, and even Russian, which are other languages I have checked out on Duo.

   Like you, with the furigana and romaji off, I have learned to understand a lot of oral and written forms of the language, in kanji and kana both.

   And then there are the stories, which are humourous, but lack any real cultural content or context. The stories could take place anywhere, or in any language. Even the character names are not reflective of Japanese cultural realities. Mind you, I would not want the stories to promote cultural generalizations or misappropriations. This is why it is even better to connect with authentic resources (ie, text, video, audio, pictures, etc. which are produced by the culture, for the culture, by native speakers of the target language).

   Duo has a place, but it is very limited for the long term. I am looking forward to the day when I have enough proficiency to benefit a great deal from what content is offered by Satori Reader, for example. I know that I can benefit from it even now, but I want to be more confident in my abilities to benefit from more of their content.

   Another resource that I do use, and highly recommend, is an eZine published by a couple who live in Florida. Clay and Yumi own a site they have named The Japan Shop at https://www.thejapanshop.com . Their magazine is called Makoto. It is a monthly publication, with a paper version available on Amazon. The periodical includes a variety of readings, cultural content, fiction and non-fiction, with support for Vocab and grammar, and audio files. They have also started offering Anki files for many of their publications, for in addition to Makoto, they also have a lot of other eBooks, including readers, language practice activities, and much more. They work hard to offer a lot of material. Makoto subscriptions are available with levels of extra materials available. Makoto is augmented with weekly podcasts for beginners and upper beginners, and weekly focus on sentence patterns for the same levels. Obviously, the focus is on beginners to almost intermediates for now, but in time, they may offer support for intermediate to advanced levels as well.

   Just my opinion here, but I think Makoto is well worthwhile at $100 a year for the Plus level, or Shogun level as they call it, when they offer so much. There is also a lifetime subscription for $250, two and a half year’s worth. Also, in my opinion, the natural next step is Satori Reader. That is my plan, but it suits me, and each one of us should make the choice that makes most sense for us.

   Still, I am also using Genki as my base textbook, and I watch TV shows, videos, and more.

   The bottom line, Duolingo has something to offer, but it is limited in a lot of ways, so if one wants to move forward in proficiency, it won’t happen with Duolingo alone, in my estimation. I think you are right to be looking for next steps. There are a number of good options offered in the preceding comments, and I am sure in the one’s to come.

   Best wishes to each one of us as we pursue our dream of reaching proficiency in this amazing language! Keep pushing against dementia everyone.

   美奈さん、頑張て❗️

10. Renshuu is new but definitely more powerful than Duolingo for the Japanese language. It might have some flaws just from being new and indie developed but definitely check it out.

11. While there’s certainly other apps that might help you more (I liked Renshuu a lot), I don’t know that any of them will really overcome the issue of “I don’t really process the actual meanings of the words more than being able to successfully match the symbols”.

    I think you may be better served by having to apply the stuff you’re memorized to real Japanese. This sounds like “go do immersion”, and it sorta-kinda is, but really, anything that gets you to see words in various contexts, especially ones that you can understand and that are meaningful to you, will make you internalize them, rather than memorizing them as an answer to an exercise. This is a rambling way of saying: use other study methods and/or immersion time in addition to whatever language learning app you’re using.

12. You can get good at reading, listening to, writing, or speaking a new language while remaining poor at the others. Make sure you’re practicing all of them. If you never speak Japanese, you’ll never get good at speaking Japanese. Apps and Audio can help with this to some point, but eventually you’ll want to actually speak to another person, be it through tutoring, classes, or making friends.

13. Here’s the suite of tools I’ve come across 🙂

    [Jisho dictionary](https://jisho.org/search/shirabe)… indispensable!

    [Anki](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/644800276)

    [LangCorrect](https://langcorrect.com)

    [TaeKim’s guide](https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/)

    [Bailey Snyder’s conjugation](https://baileysnyder.com/jconj/)

    [PBS](https://www.pbs.org/show/irasshai/)… lol

14. I would suggest Memrise. It’s similar to Duolingo, but it’s more advanced so it picks up difficulty quickly, and it teaches you common sentences you will use when conversing.

15. I know Busuu, there are lessons and at the end of them there is an activity that involves normal day conversations and can be done written or spoken and native people can correct them

    I don’t know if people still use it but it’s free

16. I used the “Japanese!“ app to learn hiragana and katakana (makes you draw the characters numerous times, really drills it in). Now I use Wanikani for kanji and vocabulary, combined with Genki for grammar and vocabulary (subscribed to Tokini Andy’s course bc I can be a bad self teacher, highly recommend)

17. Back in my day we only used Anki and we liked it that way! All yall rascals

18. I have a similar experience- it’s too easy to read the kanji and the hiragana so I end up knowing what the phrase says without remembering how it sounds.

19. If you install SwiftKey keyboard on your phone, you can actually use the dictate feature on Android, which means you can speak to get written Japanese as output. It’s great to practice speech within Duolingo. Best of all, you can check yourself by reading what was outputted and verifying it.

20. 1. get Anki
    2. get insanely good at kanji
    3. your brain grows muscles
    4. your muscles grow muscles
    5. you now speak fluent Uzbek
    6. you are literal GOD

21. Id argue you shouldnt try to repeat back without something to check against, because your hearing may be off.

    You could try to make anki sentence cards with pitch accent graphs.

22. I’m new as heck but for $20 a month, a small price for education, you can also take Pimsleur courses for speaking. I do both and feel pretty good..

23. Anki sentence cards.

24. You don’t learn interpersonal communication through any app some things require actual human interaction

25. to me it’s the opposite

26. [LingoDeer ](https://www.lingodeer.com/learn-languages/jp/en/learn-japanese-online) has story exercises where you listen first and then repeat back the phrases, and you have to do it well enough for it to accept it as correct. Perhaps that would be useful?

27. I’ve been liking Kanji Teacher recently. It it like flashcards, except it gives you answer choices to choose. It comes with kana, kanji, and vocabulary, sorted by levels.

    Would not use it as a primary source of studying, but only for vocabulary and kanji supplements.