Lingodeer isn’t free… well past the first couple of lessons. From that I didn’t particularly find it different than Duolingo.
Regardless of the app you use though I don’t think either will help you take the N5.
Apps like Duolingo and Lingodeer, and the JLPT have different goals and different criteria.
IE: the apps goal is to make you conversational and be able to navigate through specific situations.
Whereas the JLPT isn’t particularly concerned with your conversational ability but what they think you should know to be at specific levels.
To put this in even clearer perspective. I can follow TV shows. TV shows, and books, and games… w/e… even ones aimed at REALLY LITTLE KIDS have some N1 vocabulary and grammar.
Because N1 doesn’t = hard or niche… though a lot of the words in that category can seem that way.
As such my Japanese knowledge is spread all over the JLPT spectrum… HOWEVER there’s also a lot of vocab and grammar that I don’t regularly come across or use that’s as low as N3 (and even some N4). Meaning despite my abilities and how much I understand I don’t think I could pass the N3.
So if you want to take the N5 this winter I’d find some JLPT specific learning material.
Whats your goal? If you want to get up and coming to learn some Japanese quickly then Duolingo is quite nice.
If you want to take N5 in winter then LingoDeer for sure no competition. Especially if you have a time limit to it.
Also if you want to learn on LingoDeer do **not** use it like duolingo. Duo expects you to sort of “feel out” the grammer. For example you’ll get a word like book and another like table and another to understand its on top of (book on top of table) and you have to “feel” that out. So you largely can guess how to put it together.
Lingodeer you have to understand the grammer (how on-top vs below vs besides) and then it will swap out book with cup, computer, vase etc. Being able to swap out book to cup is easy (as its just simple vocab) what they’re testing you on is you understand the grammer with the vocab (on-top, below, besides) which is how you’ll see JLPT tests are sort of like.
I don’t think either app will prepare you for the JLPT. You’re going to have to buckle down and use some more traditional materials to make meaningful progress. Sure, you can find a lot of stuff to learn on the internet for free, but why risk having holes in your knowledge when you can pay Â¥1500 for an N5 grammar book and then download some Anki decks?
A good start, in my opinion, is the digital textbook Human Japanese. It does the most in depth job of explaining grammar for a beginner. It isn’t made specifically to prepare you for N5, but it will give you a great foundational knowledge. Following that, the apps are good for repetition/review (and I think LingoDeer is much better than Duolingo). If you want something that will prepare you for the N5, the Genki textbook is pretty standard, though from my point of view, I found its grammar explanations to be severely lacking compared to Human Japanese. It was more like HJ prepared me to understand Genki better.
I know you asked specifically about the apps, but they aren’t going to be as good as a textbook for preparing you for a standardized test. That said, LingoDeer is probably the better option.
None. Just use an anki deck for vocab like tango n5 deck which is highly reccoemnded and for grammarnuse genki or tae kim
5 comments
Lingodeer isn’t free… well past the first couple of lessons. From that I didn’t particularly find it different than Duolingo.
Regardless of the app you use though I don’t think either will help you take the N5.
Apps like Duolingo and Lingodeer, and the JLPT have different goals and different criteria.
IE: the apps goal is to make you conversational and be able to navigate through specific situations.
Whereas the JLPT isn’t particularly concerned with your conversational ability but what they think you should know to be at specific levels.
To put this in even clearer perspective. I can follow TV shows. TV shows, and books, and games… w/e… even ones aimed at REALLY LITTLE KIDS have some N1 vocabulary and grammar.
Because N1 doesn’t = hard or niche… though a lot of the words in that category can seem that way.
As such my Japanese knowledge is spread all over the JLPT spectrum… HOWEVER there’s also a lot of vocab and grammar that I don’t regularly come across or use that’s as low as N3 (and even some N4). Meaning despite my abilities and how much I understand I don’t think I could pass the N3.
So if you want to take the N5 this winter I’d find some JLPT specific learning material.
Whats your goal? If you want to get up and coming to learn some Japanese quickly then Duolingo is quite nice.
If you want to take N5 in winter then LingoDeer for sure no competition. Especially if you have a time limit to it.
Also if you want to learn on LingoDeer do **not** use it like duolingo. Duo expects you to sort of “feel out” the grammer. For example you’ll get a word like book and another like table and another to understand its on top of (book on top of table) and you have to “feel” that out. So you largely can guess how to put it together.
Lingodeer you have to understand the grammer (how on-top vs below vs besides) and then it will swap out book with cup, computer, vase etc. Being able to swap out book to cup is easy (as its just simple vocab) what they’re testing you on is you understand the grammer with the vocab (on-top, below, besides) which is how you’ll see JLPT tests are sort of like.
I don’t think either app will prepare you for the JLPT. You’re going to have to buckle down and use some more traditional materials to make meaningful progress. Sure, you can find a lot of stuff to learn on the internet for free, but why risk having holes in your knowledge when you can pay Â¥1500 for an N5 grammar book and then download some Anki decks?
A good start, in my opinion, is the digital textbook Human Japanese. It does the most in depth job of explaining grammar for a beginner. It isn’t made specifically to prepare you for N5, but it will give you a great foundational knowledge. Following that, the apps are good for repetition/review (and I think LingoDeer is much better than Duolingo). If you want something that will prepare you for the N5, the Genki textbook is pretty standard, though from my point of view, I found its grammar explanations to be severely lacking compared to Human Japanese. It was more like HJ prepared me to understand Genki better.
I know you asked specifically about the apps, but they aren’t going to be as good as a textbook for preparing you for a standardized test. That said, LingoDeer is probably the better option.
None. Just use an anki deck for vocab like tango n5 deck which is highly reccoemnded and for grammarnuse genki or tae kim