It’s a fun little course to do on the side, written in an engaging tone and with lots of pretty (stock) pictures of Japan. It’s not going to hurt you in any way, but after doing a few quick and breezy 5-10 min modules from an app, you just cannot expect to have learned as much as somebody who hits Anki + a grammar guide for several hours and then does immersion. As with most apps, if this is your only study resource then don’t expect it to get you far.
if you are serious you should do more methodology learning like for starters get to a level where you are being able to read hiragana and katakana letters. Than you might want to go through the Genki books along with Tango for vocab. If you want you can also dive deep into RTK first and than go through Genki and Tango or other vocab books the get better grasp of the kanji you learn from RTK.
I’ve never heard of it, but I wanted to mention that the name is hilarious. Given it’s apparently for newcomers, it’ll probably be pronounced accidentally to ブス (rude colloquialism for “ugly woman”). Even for actual Japanese speakers, I feel like the name is similar enough that it’s just courting disaster. It would be like naming your new English-learning software “Bijj”.
Please look at the “Starter’s Guide” here to see some of the better options.
This Japanese language teacher has a pretty brutal review of Busuu. One issue was that the audio seemed to be from a robot (albiet a better robot than Duolingo used). Beginners should be using native audio tracks to properly train listening and speaking skills from day one, IMHO.
its awesome in the beginning, but then there are some very confusing jumps. I dont think its great for learning vocab, anki is sooooo much better then it. I am switching from Busuu to Anki+Genki right now just because it seems to be more enjoyable and less frustrating.
5 comments
It’s a fun little course to do on the side, written in an engaging tone and with lots of pretty (stock) pictures of Japan. It’s not going to hurt you in any way, but after doing a few quick and breezy 5-10 min modules from an app, you just cannot expect to have learned as much as somebody who hits Anki + a grammar guide for several hours and then does immersion. As with most apps, if this is your only study resource then don’t expect it to get you far.
if you are serious you should do more methodology learning like for starters get to a level where you are being able to read hiragana and katakana letters. Than you might want to go through the Genki books along with Tango for vocab. If you want you can also dive deep into RTK first and than go through Genki and Tango or other vocab books the get better grasp of the kanji you learn from RTK.
I’ve never heard of it, but I wanted to mention that the name is hilarious. Given it’s apparently for newcomers, it’ll probably be pronounced accidentally to ブス (rude colloquialism for “ugly woman”). Even for actual Japanese speakers, I feel like the name is similar enough that it’s just courting disaster. It would be like naming your new English-learning software “Bijj”.
Please look at the “Starter’s Guide” here to see some of the better options.
This Japanese language teacher has a pretty brutal review of Busuu. One issue was that the audio seemed to be from a robot (albiet a better robot than Duolingo used). Beginners should be using native audio tracks to properly train listening and speaking skills from day one, IMHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC4AGGcjbHg
its awesome in the beginning, but then there are some very confusing jumps. I dont think its great for learning vocab, anki is sooooo much better then it. I am switching from Busuu to Anki+Genki right now just because it seems to be more enjoyable and less frustrating.