Best App for language learning

General discussion about learning languages
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rdearman
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Best App for language learning

Postby rdearman » Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:58 pm

I don't want to start a flame war. But I do want to ask people to compare and contrast the different apps available for languages. Not too long ago I did a review of Clozemaster after someone did a full thoughtful review of Duolingo (which I cannot find). I did find a fairly negative thread about Duolingo(disclaimer, I have never used Duolingo). I know there are other apps Anki, Tandem, HelloChinese, etc. I was wondering about a compare and contrast thread. For example:

I like X because it opens your brain and pours the language in, but you end up with a scar. I haven't tried Y, because it injects the language via intravenous drip, and I don't like needles. For me, the best one was Z because it just shoots radio waves into your brain while you sleep.

Anyone every used two different apps which do basically the same thing? What are the pros and cons of each, and which do you recommend?
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby Cavesa » Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:33 pm

Well, I'd agree a big part of the problem is putting tons of totally different kinds of apps into one category. It's like asking "what is the best book for language learning". It depends on what kind of it. Comparing similar apps makes more sense

A good app is in my opinion one, that fulfills what it promises well, and adds some value to a more varied learning toolbox. I find it totally naive and wrong and straw-man calling, when people judge (or accuse others of judging) an app on stupid criteria like "it doesn't lead to fluency".

Duo is trash in my opinion, because it doesn't do well what it was originally meant to do. It is not a good beginner course (with a few exceptions like the Norwegian), it is very slow, superficial, and more recent changes have turned it into a much more stupider game, with lower and lower % of the valuable exercises (mainly translation typing) and higher and higher % of the dumb exercises (picture multiple choice and similar nonsense). I cannot find it anymore, but one member of Duo community actually counted it and posted it on their forums, proving that the worst was the highest level, which was dumbed down instead of being a challenging review with active recall. Even the creator of Duo admitted it in an interview, that they prefer Duo to be more addictive than efficient, because a large part of their public are americans playing it instead of Candy Crush, not really interested in language learning. So, that's the issue. The gamification taken too far, too bad language trees (worsened quality since the "professional" trees were introduced) and so on. It is not a good tool for reviewing intermediates (harder to just pick and review something now), for those using Duo and some other tool (because half the tree covers the first two or three units of a usual coursebook, making it hard to progress at a similar pace), and even for serious beginners (because Duo's exercises are meant to please the most casual learners and not challenge them at all, not to really help).

A preferable alternative to Duo (therefore in the category of apps trying to be full coursebooks, without being a coursebook):

Lingodeer: their east asian courses are serious, the curriculum doesn't have a too steep learning curve, but still covers more or less the same things as the popular coursebooks for the east asian languages. It is serious, focused on explanations and exercises, and progress. It is much worse for the european languages though, because you don't need to go that slowly in them, and the too small vocabulary is not an advantage but rather a source of boredom. In general, it can be a good tool. And it has real human audio, that is good too. There is a separately paid app Lingodeer+, that should have some srs or something, and I honestly don't like that too much, as I'd expect one tool to have both grammar and vocab.
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Speakly: the desktop version is very good, well thought out, the 4000 words are well chosen, the example sentences are great! It is a tool, that will supplement your cefr oriented coursebooks very well and bring something valuable to you. The minidialogues are awesome! The grammar section is trash but fortunately not needed (it's there just to check it from the list), but there are useful grammar notes to individual example sentences. Motivation by unlocking new dialogues, new recommended songs, and new longer listening exercises, that is gamification done very right. The main problem are technical issues right now, but those were promised to be solved in a few weeks. The app is liked by some users, I personally dislike that it requires noise (too many listening and speaking exercises, impossible to skip, no silent mode), which makes the app unusable to me in any situation, in which I'd consider using an app. Also, the non-English base languages seem to be well done, that's another plus.

A much worse alternative imho: Lingvist. Nice platform, worse content. 4000 words based on a frequency list of unknown origin (they didn't want to say, whether it is more newspaper based, spoken corpus, or what. It matters.), with far too many anglicisms instead of the really commonly used words, and sometimes secondary and not too common meanings taught instead of the more common ones (for example, I have yet to hear any native speaker in real life or media to say "poster" as "send by post"). My main impression was: a tool made by good IT people that know nothing about language learning or teaching and therefore just dumbly copied some random list without much thinking. But it could still serve probably, just don't rely on it too much.

Clozemaster: another cloze deletion app. Very good as even the free version is not too limiting. The courses are the biggest on the market, based on the Tatoeba example database. Tons of language combinations. The main problem: too many mistakes in too many courses. But some are totally ok. I think it is the app with the most value to a non paying user. And even the prices are probably the best from the group.

Memrise: not sure whether it belongs. It is a typing heavy SRS like the others, which is great, but most courses are not cloze deletions, but single words. The official courses are trash imho (I am not in favour of memorising a random phrasebook copy, with some bad habits included, and a lot of sloppiness). But there are real jewels in the user course section. The app was changed various times. Right now, I think it is very good for use on the go, with a few catches: try not to look at the offered letters too much, type normally, they are too much of a hint. And you can review only the user courses previously added on the website. The search function in the app offers only the official ones.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby kanewai » Wed Jul 07, 2021 2:37 am

Ditto to what Cavesa said. Taking it further:

Memrise (official) vs Memrise (user-created) - The official Memrise courses are slick and enjoyable, but their actual content can be maddening. I often find "translations" that only make sense in a particular context. So for instance, in the Turkish course you will find the term (biz) ... -iz, with the given translation of "we're." I can't imagine that is helpful without the student understanding how agglutination works, or knowing that -iz is the suffix that goes on the verb root. I found similar issues with their Arabic course.

The user-created courses often have better content, but often I find that only the first couple segments are well done, and that the latter segments will be riddled with errors. It's as if the creators put a lot of effort into the course at the beginning, but rushed through the end.

Memrise vs Lingvist - Lingvist has the better platform, but an odd choice of vocabulary. I found I got bored with it very quickly.

Memrise vs DuoLingo - At least Memrise tries to create intelligent content. I don't think DuoLingo even bothers anymore.

- I have never been able to use an app to learn a new language, and have downloaded and deleted dozens over the years. For me their best use is for vocabulary building, or for refreshing a language that has gotten rusty.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby Xenops » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:12 am

I'll just comment on the ones I've used more than a few times:

Duolingo
I use this app the most for French and Norwegian--the former I managed a 71 day streak, the latter 210 day streak. On the latter I have just entered the 6/12 level. They introduced cartoon characters, which at best you can "neutralize" by changing the settings on your phone, at worst they are hyperactive under normal settings. For some reason the company acknowledges that people don't like them, but they refuse to get rid of them.

The French course has generic questions: "you eat an orange" "I eat an apple", etc. The Norwegian course, especially later on, makes use of a lot of pop-cultural references. "I am the banana", "how does the boy speak with snakes?" "we wear pink on Wednesdays" are just a few. How I use this course: I come to work early and sit in the cafeteria. I pull out my phone, notebook and pen. I then write every sentence. Typing in the app takes too long, and I like to have a record of new words anyway. This has been my main source of grammar practice because, let's face it, there isn't any Practice Makes Perfect Norwegian.

Kanji Drop
It's Tetris...But with radicals and kanji, what more could you want?! Getting started is the hardest, because you only know by trial and error which blocks make a word/kanji. The developer is responsive to email as well.

LingoDeer
I mainly tried it with Japanese, with brief moments in Korean, German and Russian. Honestly, it feels clunky. It's hard to test out of units, and I found each individual lesson super long--probably 2 or 3x the time it takes for a Duolingo lesson. The Japanese 1 level starts and continues really slowly. If you start with level 2, then new material is introduced way too quickly. In general, the pacing of the material throws me off.

Write Hebrew/Greek/Arabic etc
An app for each of the easier scripts. Really basic apps--you practice, you take a quiz, and try to beat your previous time. But you get audio for each of the letters, and you draw the shapes on your phone.

Anki
I wrote about how I format my cards (on one of my previous logs I think), and I still use the cloze format plus audio, picture and translation. Lately I've been using it for learning vocab with shared kanji.

Memrise
The main method I've used to drill Norwegian vocab. I learn from user-created courses, not the official ones. Some users even kindly made courses to go with textbooks.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby einzelne » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:48 pm

I guess it's obvious but still: Kindle app, or any other reader with a pop-up dictionary. Actually, it's a silent, unrecognized revolution and I can only regret that I didn't have it when I was a teenager or in my student years.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby sirgregory » Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:50 pm

einzelne wrote:I guess it's obvious but still: Kindle app, or any other reader with a pop-up dictionary. Actually, it's a silent, unrecognized revolution and I can only regret that I didn't have it when I was a teenager or in my student years.


My iPad does this and it's quite nice. In general, I think reading is an area where computer-assistance could add value.

I know there are other reading apps like LingQ that have additional features beyond just the integrated dictionary, but I haven't actually tried them and can't comment on the implementation.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby mentecuerpo » Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:31 pm

I like Busuu, Mango Languge, Babbel, Speakly, Clozemaster, Rocket Language, Glossika, lingq, yabla (my favorite for sure), learn languge with netflix, learn languge with Youtube, Youtube videos.

I have no energy to write reviews, sorry.

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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:52 pm

I recently did 90 days with HelloChinese. It’s a serious course and a solid app. I like that you can choose traditional or simplified characters, with or without pinyin. All of the audio is recordings of a real native speaker, not TTS. I gave it up because Chinese was just a temporary diversion for me, not because of any issues with the app. (Chinesy had distracting animations that made it unusable for me.)
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby Lisa » Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:09 pm

From the first few posts, I'll note that it seems like the "best" will depend on the target language (quality may vary), and personally, I know that your personal current skill composition will make a difference in the value of an app.

I cannot overstate how good kwiziq was for me in spanish (false beginner in grammar, with decent size vocab from anki and reading). But the french version (where I was an actual beginner) was terrible - I couldn't find the basic grammar or vocab I was supposed to learn.

Duo was actually helpful as a false beginner in German since it helped me see what I knew/didn't know, but otherwise (after I got to what I didn't know) it was mostly a waste of time and very tedious. However, (I think) it's great for A0, when you know nothing of the language, to get your first few words and sounds together. I've done a few rounds on several languages and it was fun to dabble.
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Re: Best App for language learning

Postby Lisa » Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:18 pm

... and; some people learn well from graphics/images/icons, and some of us are better with text. I know the former exist since people are able to use macs :-) but I (possibly a small minority) look at the icon with bafflement if there's no text label - even for apps I use every day for years. So the best app may depend on that individual learning characteristic.

A number of the books about getting fluent quickly advise never to learn the text, find a graphic instead and learn that; but it just doesn't work for me. I sampled Rosetta stone for false-beginner Spanish, but it was Not At All Successful; since then I have avoided anything that expects to to learn word-image pairs without text.
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