日本語 – Duolingo for Japanese? Pros, Cons, and How to use it effectively
Duolingo is one of if not the most famous language learning app, or website. Some people really love Duolingo and other really hate it. Whatever camp you are in on the subject is fine. Everyone has things that work or don’t work for them. I already know Japanese but, I was curious to see how the Japanese course was and went through it to review. Here is what I found.
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Pros and Cons of Duolingo for Japanese
Me personally, I don’t really love Duolingo nor do I really hate it. I like it as a nice starting app to get used to the language. It really helps to ingrain some of the basic patterns or structure of a language. After awhile though it starts to get tedious and boring to me.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/Pros
Duolingo exposes you to reading, listening, typing all at the same time without having to think about it. Also, if you go through the entire Duolingo course you will get a good grasp of the basic structure of Japanese making it easier to generate sentences from your head.
Cons
The downside is Duolingo will take a long time to go through the entire course and even though you will feel like skipping to get to new content Duolingo won’t let you. Also do not expect to finish Duolingo to give you a large vocabulary or increase your comprehension of the language when you hear others speak.
Suggestions on How and When to use Duolingo
If you do decide to use Duolingo to learn Japanese, I have a few suggestions and things to remember.
- Duolingo is only an Introduction into the Language
- Duolingo is for using what you know, not Learning it
- Test out of Lessons and Skip as much as Possible
- It is Ok to Cheat
- Don’t Feel Bad about Quitting
Duolingo is only an Introduction into the Language
If you are a beginner there are few other methods that can help build up a good foundation naturally for a language like Duolingo can. Use it as a way to learn some basic words and grammar structures. Do not study expecting that Duolingo will teach you Japanese. It won’t. You will still need to listen to native resources and read native Japanese texts to move beyond the beginner. Duolingo will make it easier to memorize basic grammar structure though. This will make reading Japanese easier.
Duolingo for using what you Know, not Learning it
There is a difference between “knowing” Japanese, and “speaking” it. If you spend hours to learn grammar rules you will eventually know them. However, when you try to speak it is a different story. There will be a delay from your brain to your mouth. With repetition, Duolingo will reduce this delay little by little until it is gone.
Test out of Lessons and Skip as much as Possible
Try to unlock new learning material as quickly as you can by testing out of courses as quickly as you can. Also, don’t feel obligated to take all the extra vocabulary lessons. There are better ways to learn vocabulary. The point is to get as many of the grammar lessons unlocked as quickly as possible. Later you can repeat the lessons you feel you need more practice.
It is ok to Cheat
I personally like to have choices on what and when I study things. Duolingo makes this hard. So, in order to have more freedom it is ok to cheat. This is in order to open all the lessons up as quickly as you can. There is no benefit to you as a learning having lessons locked. I am sure Duolingo would not agree, as they have leaderboards and what not though. But, in order to get lessons open you can copy and paste into Google translate to find the answer to what you don’t know. So you don’t have to waste your time repeating the same lessons over and over just because you run out of hearts. After you have everything open you can always go back to brush up on what you may not know.
Don’t feel bad about quitting
This is not a school and the scores don’t matter. There will be a point where you will feel like you have a good grasp of basic Japanese sentence structure. At this point learning more will feel like diminishing returns. You can stop and move onto something else if you prefer. This is the point where Duolingo starts becoming less useful to you and it makes more sense to focus on learning vocabulary, reading or something else.
If you want to learn more Japanese I reviewed a dictionary of grammar series which I personally recommend and use myself.
