Best Digital Programs of 2019

[kanewai]

Update three: My original thought was that I could collect a list of the forum's favorite apps of the year & then make a poll. That turned out to be harder than I thought - there's too much diversity in what we study, and it's too hard to find the line between what is and isn't an application.

It was still super useful for myself to attempt to make a list (I needed to shake-up my routine), and I found the recommendations here infinitely more useful than some of the "best of ... " lists I've seen floating around the internet. I've updated the chart to include any digital application or program that got even a soft "like" in the forums this year, and highlighted the ones that have received specific recommendations. I'll keep updating the chart as long as the thread stays active.

platform3.JPG

Notes
Next update I'll include some languages that have associated favorites, and maybe take some out that don't.

For discussion
What apps did you use in 2019?
What were the strengths and weaknesses of the app?
If you paid for it, was it worth the upgrade?
Are you looking at or interested in any other apps?

And: what, for you, are the best apps of 2019?

[kanewai]

My own thoughts:

What apps did you use in 2019?
LingVist Spanish, Memrise Arabic Russian, Turkish, and others; Living Language Arabic

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the app?
Memrise was good for practicing vocabulary at a beginner level, and it's probably best for languages that you are starting out on. I like the look and the set up, and it's fun to use. It's too basic for languages if you're at an intermediate level, and is frustrating for completely new languages. It doesn't teach grammar well.

LingVist is good for vocabulary drilling at an intermediate level; the sentences are more complex and real-world than I've found on other systems. I think it would be hard to use at a purely beginner level. They used to have a lot of additional audio and reading material, but those seem to have been discontinued. Now it's just SRS.

The Living Language app has games that match the lessons in the book. It isn't as useful as a stand-alone application.

Any thoughts on using the free vs paid versions?
LingVist - The paid version gets you voice-recognition software, which seems to work well. For me it makes the drills more efficient and interesting, and I'm more likely complete my target of 50 words a day. It also unlocks course "focus" packs if you want specific vocabulary (such as for food, or soccer, or travel). I haven't used them yet. The upgrade is worthwhile if you plan on using the course regularly.

Memrise also gets you voice recognition. I have trouble with it, but Arabic pronunciation is harder than Spanish, so it might just be me. The paid version doesn't add a whole lot, but if you can get it on sale it's worth checking out.

Are you looking at or interested in any other apps?
I just learned about Kwiziq today, and I'll be playing around with the free version to see how much I like it.
I'm debating getting a lifetime subscription to Babbel. I don't need it now, but they have some languages I might study in the future and I remember finding Babbel more useful than Memrise, DuoLingo, and other apps in the past.

[Xenops]

But but...Where's Scottish Gaelic? Basque? Finnish? Navajo? Hawaiian?

Just kidding (mostly).

What apps did you use in 2019?
LingoDeer, Duolingo, WriteIt!, KanjiDrop, Memrise strictly for SRS, Kwizig

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the app?
LingoDeer--actually tells you about grammar. The lower levels of French, German, and Japanese are good--the gradation to new material is manageable. Love how they introduce Hangul in Korean. Russian isn't their best course. For weaknesses, the lessons are too long--probably 2-3 Duo lessons in one. The second level of Japanese moves way too fast through the material and doesn't explain well.
Duolingo--French is the course I'm most consistent in. The Japanese, Greek and Hebrew courses are awful. The Turkish course can be frustrating, but for some reason I keep trying. Since I'm also learning Scottish Gaelic on my own, I find the Duo version fine. What Duo does really well (and LingoDeer should take note of) is that the lessons are short and feels like a game.
WriteIt!--has at least Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Cyrillic. Quizzes you on the letter name audibly, visually and how to write it with your finger.
KanjiDrop--My favorite app this year. Kanji and kanji radicals form new kanji Tetris-style. What's not to like? Japanese audio is quieter than the English audio, but oh well.
Kwizig--they have French and Spanish. If I get serious about French, I would certainly use it to pin-point issues. Free version doesn't offer a whole lot.

If you paid for it, was it worth the upgrade?
The only one I paid for was a year of LingoDeer, since the samples are limited on the free version. I bought it to give it a fair shot, and to support the developers, because I really like the concept they are going for...But I don't enjoy using it. It feels like a drag.

Are you looking at or interested in any other apps?
Always on the look-out for exceptional apps that specialize in a small number of languages. I tend to be less enthused about apps that try to cover every single language.

[Cavesa]

What apps did you use in 2019?
Quite a lot: Kwiziq, Speakly (loved both), Lingodeer (liked)
A bit: Duolingo (abandoned), Anki, Decks.Memrise (very good, unlike the official memrise), Clozemaster (liked it), Readlang

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the app?
In general, I prefer apps that do one or a few things right, than those that try to be everything. Very briefly about each of the apps:

Kwiziq:
+awesome and addictive grammar drills, very practical library of explanations, very good forum purely focused on the individual examples, where the teacher team answers! Tons of content, at it grows.
-they are now branching out to other kinds of activities (vocab drills, reading exercises,...) and not all of them are that great. Still no new language, just Spanish and French.

Speakly
+Very good vocab oriented app, the 4000 words are not just a stupid random list, the content is of much better quality than for example Linvist (the same amount of words, but better chosen, with correct examples. Lingvist is good at app making, Speakly is quite good at app making and great at content making) Fill the gap drills are great. The supplementary activities, like mini dialogues, are awesome. Some very good and rare language combinations (such as Finnish!), presents sentences usually with a negative or question sentence, with notes, etc.
-there is an attempt on an overview of grammar, but it is extremely useless for any kind of systematic learning (which wouldn't be a problem, if only it didn't look as if that's what it was meant to do)

Duolingo
After the recent changes, I think it is less and less efficient and much more geared towards making people just click as many times as possible, to view as many ads as possible. The new "professional" courses are simply not what I'd expect from professionals, they are extremely slow (at the recommended pace, you'd get to A2 in four or five years, that was my last estimate before lots of info for counting this was removed), unevenly paced, with some weird problems with some examples, and with missing alternatives. The site is now more about points than ever, and the harder (=more valuable) exercises are being diminished, making the stupid ones the majority.

Decks.Memrise
+tons of great content, no need to introduce, and there will be an app, if there isn't one already. The team reconsidered some of their decisions based on pressure from the community.

Lingodeer
+Very professional. my complaints about some of the aspects are more about what is or isn't there,but the content present is well made, with attention to detail, excellent for the asian languages(I tried Japanese),more types of exercises and in general more useful ones than on Duo
-too slow for the European languages (tried German), there should be more content (each lesson should also have some extra vocabulary, to made the drills more fun and useful), their review looks like SRS but isn't one, too much focus on adding european languages that are already everywhere on the internet and that Lingodeer doesn't excel at, instead of adding more and more of those people crave and can't find much stuff for. Some weird marketing things (which I dare to attribute to honest mistakes and not bad intentions), such as advertising a sale, which is no longer on, or unclear connection to their separate Lingodeer Plus app, which is paid again even by the people already having paid for Lingodeer.

There is no need to introduce Anki, Readlang or Clozemaster

If you paid for it, was it worth the upgrade?
Paid for
-Kwiziq:worth it, but I certainly cannot afford to pay for both languages separately the full price
-Speakly: worth it, but again, each language separately is too expensive. I think it is much more worth it than its competitor lingvist
-Anki:paid years ago, I still profit from it

Are you looking at or interested in any other apps?

Yes. I am still waiting for a ready made vocab app (perhaps an extension of Speakly, or in the same style, with examples etc.), which would teach not 3000, but 30000 words. Or finally a platform, that would buy the rights to official decks accompanying popular coursebooks, so that the learners wouldn't need to make them ourselves, and there would be guaranteed quality. I don't have time to make long decks myself, and I've always been too lazy for that. Yes, some publishers try to make their own sites, some even with elements of SRS, but they usually really mess up. And I definitely wouldn't pay for access to a separate platform for every publisher.

As there are apps offering language tutoring, I really find them lacking, when it comes to writing. I would love either a new platform, or an extension of an existing site, which would offer professional feedback to writing. Because Lingora or Italki Notebook are fine for a beginner or intermediate learner, but you really won't get the right correction of your B2-C2 texts (not only grammar or ortograph mistakes, but also style, register, a bit of creative writing, job oriented writing,...), and you actually won't get those even from most teachers you meet irl. So, a site specialising in this is really missing on the market, in my opinion.

A Kwiziq extension or alternative for German and other languages.

A pronunciation oriented app. Not in the sense of speech recognition (even though everybody trying an app on this will probably think of it), or like Forvo. But rather a digital alternative to books like Phonétique Progressive, presenting all the sounds of the language with enough examples you can repeat after, and the other features (connecting words, sentence melody,etc). Why? Not only I think this introduction to the pronunciation gets heavily underestimated these days and most courses neglect it, or treat it just superficially. I think a digital platform would make it more attractive (but it would need to be more Kwiziq style than Duo style), but also more practical. Just last week, we encountered a problem. My bf was convinced to already start Phonétique Progressive, he was even able to get beyond the fact it's a paper book. But it comes with a stupid CD, no downloadable or easily clickable online audio recording. We have contemporary laptops and forgot to add my external dvd reader to our baggages when moving. So the whole thing is useless right now. Imagine such pronunciation courses would be on a Kwiziq like platform, with a visualisation of how many features are there left to learn (to avoid the "but X is impossible and too irregular" ideas), with easily clickable audio examples (no need for searching that the exercise 3 on page 215 is number 8 on CD2) and drills.

[garyb]

DuoLingo: Yes, it's overrated and it's not the best, but it's useful for extra practice and filling in a few minutes when I don't have time to commit to a lesson from a proper course. I've used it on-and-off for Greek, Portuguese, and German, and found all of them acceptable. I just wish they'd clean up the interface by removing or at least simplifying the meaningless gamification clutter.

LingoDeer: I saw it mentioned a few times in this thread so decided to give it a quick try. It just seems like a less complete DuoLingo clone. I tried a test for German and it was painfully repetitive: a whole round of questions like I am the son, I am a son, no I am a daughter, no I am the father... I've heard it's better than Duo for Asian languages though.

Kwiziq: Good for what it does. Shame to hear that they're trying to branch out and add new features instead of focusing on what they do well and adding more languages, but maybe they'll do a good job of it. The free allowance is quite enough for me since again it's just an accessory to get more practice on certain grammar points and I couldn't see myself spending hours on it unless maybe I was studying for an exam, but it might be worth it for somebody who really needs to focus on grammar because it's their weak point or they've learnt by immersion and speak fluently but incorrectly or they're studying for a test.

Assimil e-method: Horrible, buggy, badly-designed, gives the company a bad name. Never again! Just get the books.

Clozemaster: I've always hated its interface, and I've given it another try just now and it just feels more cluttered than ever. Their multiple choice mode is too easy (there's only one choice that makes any sense) while the free-text mode is too ambiguous. Like Duo I feel they'd benefit from less gamification, but it seems specifically designed for people who like the "game" experience. I do think it could be a useful tool, something to fill the gap between traditional exercises and unguided input and an SRS without the hassle of managing your own decks or having to choose from a confusing list of pre-made ones à la Memrise, and it's quite popular here so perhaps I should give it a fairer chance.

Anki: It does what it does, and it helps keep my languages alive during the times I don't manage any other study or input.

Overall I'm a bit of an old-school learner and prefer traditional courses and books, but I certainly think there's a place for apps that do one thing well and there is definitely plenty potential to use technology better for language learning. I'm actually doing a bit of coding in my spare time and am thinking about working on an app or two aimed towards helping intermediate-to-advanced learners. I'm of course aware that most ideas like this never come to fruition, so don't get your hopes up, but it's something I'd like to work on and I'm reading threads like this for inspiration.

[lingua]

What apps did you use in 2019? Memrise, Decks, Clozemaster, Duolingo

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the app?

Memrise/Decks: I've used Memrise for several years and paid for it until the Decks debacle. I preferred to wait it out prior to spending more money. I mostly make my own courses (first in Memrise and now in Decks) so any complaints I have about them will have to be directed back to myself. The strength is the ability to customize my own course and make corrections when I've made an error. I make courses based on the textbooks I am using or in some cases vocabulary related to a particular subject. More recently I'm doing verb conjugations by type which is very helpful in remembering to use while speaking. I don't see any weaknesses outside of errors found in other user made courses that can't be corrected. I've recently started using the German and European Portuguese Memrise courses. I've only gotten through the first couple of levels in the first course and they're OK for learning words but the lack of grammar is a weakness. Yesterday I spent some time to learn the difference between ser and estar on another site since seeing the two forms without explanation via Memrise left me confused. I also like the "learn with natives" which has different voices on video. I prefer to use the desktop web version as the app for the iPad was way too gamified.

Clozemaster: I like Clozemaster because it's not overly gamified. I use text mode for Italian though there are times I have to switch to multiple choice for a specific sentence because there are several words that would fit. For my beginning languages I'm still using multiple choice but will eventually switch to text when I have more vocabulary. For the more popular languages I like the feature that allows you to focus on one grammar point such as prepositions, pronouns, verb forms, etc. The downside is even if you try to ignore some sentences they still show up in this area. I didn't want the (mostly) obsolete Italian egli, ella, esse, etc form to pop-up but it still did even after setting them all to ignore.

Duolingo: I hated Duolingo for Italian and never used it until I read about the beta Latin. The sound for Latin is clear and easy to understand. The negative is it takes so long to get through with all the constant popups regarding lingots, wagering, etc plus it's way too gamified and the constant pop-ups to upgrade became annoying after a while. I just started using it for Portuguese and German. The sound for Portuguese is terrible and often the last word is cut off. I haven't experienced any issues with the German sound. As it turns out I just did some German and it was cutting the last word off too. I will say that the grammar notes about Latin on Duolingo made more sense to me than any other Latin source I've used. Some things started to finally click.

If you paid for it, was it worth the upgrade? If I'm going to use something long term I am willing to pay for it because sites need to make money or they will no longer exist. So I paid for Clozemaster and Memrise nearly from the beginning (until letting Memrise lapse last spring). I did take advantage of the $30 deal for Memrise a few days ago since I was willing to give their courses a try for my new languages. I also paid for one year of Duolingo since I was planning to do three languages. If I had only been doing the short Latin course it wouldn't have been worth it but for three it probably will be. However, I won't be renewing which means I need to make every effort to complete the three languages within a year. Compared to how much other app sites charge I think Duolingo is a little steep.

Are you looking at or interested in any other apps? I may try LingoDeer for German at some point. There is also a site called Learn European Portuguese that has lessons and podcasts. It's expensive at €15 per month but it could be worthwhile for an intermediate or advanced student and when I'm at that level I'll consider it.

Until I joined this forum I wasn't aware of any of these apps and studied the old fashioned way with textbooks, specialized grammar books and a lot of writing which I still feel is an important component to learning a language. In general, the apps seem to be helpful in building vocabulary but they also encourage less engaged learning and when you're tired after a days work it's too easy to use them as a crutch.

[lavengro]

Duolingo - Italian and German currently; Turkish during the early part of 2019

Memrise – Italian (official Memrise seven level course)

Memrise/Decks - Japanese (Heisig RTK and a hiragana course currently), and American Sign Language deck based on Lifeprint.com materials

Yabla - Italian

I regularly pay for memberships with Duolingo and Memrise and am presently a monthly subscriber to Yabla as I like to support worthy enterprises and language learning generally and for the progress tests in Duolingo and the extended features in Memrise. And 'cause I heard that money is the root of all evil, so I try not to have much of it just lying around near me getting up to miscellaneous evil scheming.

Though not mentioned in your table of programs or languages, for any ASL learners looking for fingerspelling recognition practice, I would highly recommend asl.ms as an excellent digital language (feature) learning program.

[kanewai]

But but...Where's Scottish Gaelic? Basque? Finnish? Navajo? Hawaiian?

I have them on the master list! The chart got too unwieldy when I added all the languages that only show up on one or two platforms. I'll update the chart as I learn of more platforms, and I think I'll pare it down to around 21 languages. Or, split it in two. I don't think we can embed tables here, so it'll be screenshots for the time being.

[kanewai]

Updated with a lot of new platforms. The definition of what I thought of as a "digital language course" turned out to be blurrier than I realized, so I just threw everything in there. I also pared down the list to the fifteen most popular languages. I'm still trying to keep a master list, but that is turning out to be really cumbersome (i.e., I already messed it up & it will take awhile to clean it up. Maybe one day).

platforms.JPG

[eido]

There's probably as many language learning apps out there as there are languages and dialects...

This year (and part of last) I spent quite a chunk of change trying out new products in an attempt to get settled in a routine and with a method that would help me stick to a few languages and the habit of studying them.

Here are some apps that I can remember trying:

• 90 Day Korean: I reviewed this one in the Korean resources thread on this forum. I don't know if they've updated their schtick since November 2018 when I tried their product, but back then it was a basic, bare-bones approach that catered to k-pop and k-drama fans and didn't teach anything of real meaning or use. I asked for a refund on this product a couple days after I bought the Black Friday package. Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED
• Korean Digital Academy: I don't know if this is an app, per se, but it is a service... I paid for six months of it, an extra cycle by accident. I knew from the get-go that the content wouldn't be great, but I still opted in to see if my hunch was correct. This series of courses, too, as of around February 2019, was sparse and didn't offer depth or breadth, which is what I was looking for in my materials. The one good thing about this was that when I forgot to cancel my subscription, the customer service team was very prompt and courteous, offering my money back when I noted that I was displeased with the product and didn't want to continue using it. Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED
• LinguaLift: You can learn several languages using this platform, but I chose Japanese. I bought this as one of the Christmas presents to myself (in December 2018), after repeatedly telling myself "no" for over six months, because I knew the content wouldn't be up to (my) par. And after purchasing access to it, I was confirmed correct. This was probably the purchase I most regretted of all the seeming mistakes I made in judgment throughout the year. The SRS system was messed up terribly. I had forgotten my kana prior to signing up, so I tried to use their software to re-learn it, and I thought their SRS was sophisticated enough to handle it, but I kept getting the same seven kana (from both syllabaries) each cycle I went through using it. And it would often repeat the same example words over and over when I finally got to the stage I was able to (kinda) read. Little to no thought was put into how the system would actually test a human of decent intelligence, and it pissed me off. When I mentioned this to the "tutor" they assigned me (a first step before I contacted tech support, though I knew going through that avenue probably wouldn't get me anywhere), he responded with: "Oh, don't worry about the SRS. Just get through the content." That's funny--isn't this program you've got here one of the selling points you advertise in your marketing? And besides, the actual stuff they covered in terms of language theory wasn't up to snuff, at least for me. They sometimes made the same mistake of assuming that the consumer of the information was too stupid to understand it, and thus it was simplified immensely in some places. Other times, they went hard on linguistic terminology and its discussion, which has the opposite effect of alienating a lot of people, since I imagine most people are there to learn how to read manga or how to speak to their grandmother--not the fine details of pitch accenting. They claimed you could get up to B2 or so using solely their material, but with the quality of it... I highly doubt that. I used this product on and off from late December 2018 to sometime in February 2019. Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED
• WaniKani: This is an SRS for learning Japanese kanji and vocabulary. Another 2018 Christmas present. I haven't used it extensively enough to know its ins and outs, but for the amount of time I've used it, I say it works well enough for what it's designed for, which is teaching you how to conceptualize kanji from the bottom up--radicals to full characters, and then to words. They update the SRS quite a bit, I feel... minor tweaks here and there. But overall it's pretty vicious, timing your reviews for nearly every hour of every day until your ability to recognize the data achieves true mastery. This is one of those supplementary tools that you don't really need, but could probably easily become addicted to given the right circumstances. Verdict: Not Necessary, But Hell, It's Pretty
• YoYo Chinese: One of the most popular sites to learn Chinese on... I was impressed with the production quality of most of their materials. The woman who appears as host in most of their videos has had a career well, hosting--and it shows in the way she's able to present stuff most of the time without a condescending air and how she tries to keep the atmosphere light and appropriate for learning. However, I'd say, from my dalliances with the beginner material, that some things are simplified in a weird way. The presentation of the concepts is appropriately taken down a few levels, since the course is written for people who haven't tried to learn a tonal language before, or hell, a language at all. And the mnemonics offered up reflect that simplification of the material. In some cases, those silly ways of referring to and remembering the types and uses for tones helped me understand them. But most of the time I just felt like I wanted a woman to talk to me instead of my mom As for the technical aspects of the site... It's very clean and user-friendly. Some people have complimented the way the tests and quizzes are designed. I say they're about average. Maybe they set the benchmark for how services like these can challenge their students to study, but they certainly don't vault over it. I don't think it's bad, especially for someone that really needs their hand held, or hasn't figured out how to learn (a language) yet. I purchased the package in May this year. Verdict: S'alright
• Domino Chinese: This is probably my favorite service, because I only pay $2 a month for it! The content quality is a bit on the lower side, but the host's personality and presentation of it all is what you pay for. It's a fun supplemental or beginner resource. Verdict: Expectations Matter

This isn't a comprehensive list, but since I didn't see many resources for (East) Asian languages, I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring