Textbook is harder to motivate for though imo. Most people would have to use a textbook at home in their spare time too. I do Japanese at work, so it is just easier to do it on computer or phone.
Anyway the key is doing a little bit every day. And even if you use “inferior” products every day you will
eventually get good.
Of course, I wasn’t trying to imply that using the apps is inherently bad, but for me they sort of became time-wasters where I convinced myself I was learning much more than I was, simply based on the fact that I was spending time.
Everyone learns in different ways, and I don’t want to devalue things that help others, just because I had different experiences from them…
That being said though, when talking about “study materials” or “methods” I’m not really talking about messing around on apps at work, I’m talking about taking time to work on studying specifically… and doing that is, without argument going to give better results (we shouldn’t even be comparing the two things really).
Oh I don’t “mess around” at work. I am always doing something Japanese all day at work (I work security and there is a lot of downtime).
Dude when I say “screw around at work” I was referring to myself. (hence the bolded “for me”)… no need to get so defensive, I’m not trying to start anything.
I have a similar impression after using it for a couple of days, but it does have a problem with consistency, some of the sentence examples are quite strange and not something one uses on a daily basis, and any feedback provided by users directly to the question dies down shortly after the question is added and is never addressed 
.
On the upside, actual Japanese native speakers provide feedback so one can learn quite a lot from the responses to questions.
The bolded “for me” is two paragraphs up though. I did not know that it applied for your entire post.
I’m not being defensive btw I was just a little confused whether that last paragraph applied to me but all good.
I’m about halfway through unit 3 of Duolingo’s Japanese course, after a year and a few months. I picked up a book on Japanese after 2-3 months of Duolingo’s “we explain nothing” approach, which was helpful, and picked up WK after about 8 months, which has been excellent. WK and Duolingo are now dovetailing in ways that are very reinforcing (e.g. DL taught me the word for “hospital”, as part of a section on how to handle being sick, then right after that WK taught me “sickness” and “institution” and I could feel smart about putting them together…). I appreciate the grammar that DL manages to weave in, so that you learn how things should sound and how the various formations go. It helped with learning the difference between tanoshimi and tanoshimu, for example, that DL shows tanoshimi always is followed by ni, to look forward to. WK of course doesn’t give much context, or even how the verbs/adjectives look in various conjugated forms, though it gets you through vocabulary very efficiently.
But with the goof-ups in the recent voice additions in DL, I would have been lost without already having been taught the on’yomi and kun’yomi differences from WK. Whether I could have handled that a year ago as a complete beginner, I don’t know.
For me Duolingo was a nice start and made Japanese feel “doable.” I also liked it better than Rosetta. Rosetta had nice recordings of native speakers, but didn’t really explain anything to you. You had to figure things out yourself.
However, for Duolingo, I eventually found it to be a slow grind and it just wasn’t giving me what I needed. Certainly, if you’ve got time to spare (and don’t want to give up you streak lol) and are using it for the vocabulary then it’s probably harmless other than leaching from your Japanese learning time.
I have to say, as far as Japanese language programs/apps, I’ve really enjoyed Human Japanese (beginner and intermediate) and the additional supplements for it on Satori Reader. HJ has great explanations for grammar points. And it’s pretty cheap.
Happy New Year!
Human Japanese is pretty awesome. I am still on the first one but I can see my reading is improving.
The grammar explanations are fantastic!
I think that is actually on purpose.
Have you noticed that, except for the quite tiny “tips”, there isn’t any “descriptive teaching”?
Those “match the image” exercises is how vocabulary is actually the exposed. Not only for the correct answer, but you also get information on other words that will allow you to get the right answer on other questions.
I haven’t noticed, but the repetition with matching, as long as it’s not too obvious, is actually helpful 
To put it simply, time spent on duolingo could be better spent in graded immersion.
Shockingly, I’ve found it useful to a certain degree but much later on from being a beginner. After knowing all the kanji I know now and all the basic mechanics of how the Japanese language works now, Duolingo helps give me sentences that reinforce the rules I know of the language with a decent variety of sentences. I’d say it seems more useful once you know a good amount of Japanese than earlier on. That being said, I wouldn’t doubt that there’s better resources at my point but it was a nice reinforcement tool.
Duolingo is fine. It doesn’t teach you Japanese, but it’s a fun way to practice reading and constructing sentences and using written vocabulary. It’s not so great for learning Kanji. Use WaniKani for that. And it’s not so good for explaining grammar. I’m using the Genki textbooks for that. But it’s fun practice you can do every day. Practice definitely helps build reading fluency over time.
Came up with this weird idea to do Duolingo English course in Japanese. Will post back with results.
@yamitenshi at first glance this looks far more helpful than doing the JP course in English 
I like where this is going:
… and fail. Apparently my English is so bad that I have to start from level 1 after doing the placement test 
Something something low bar
I just came on here to get a good laugh. I thought the knowledge that Duolingo is just false self gratification was well known across the wanikani lands!
hmmm… well I used Duolingo originally for my French thinking I would be able to maintain my fluency. I tested out of something like…80% of the material and still didn’t find it at all challenging. Compared to Clozemaster I really didn’t learn anything and Clozemaster isn’t that great either, but it’s good for my Korean since all I can do is read Hangul right now. If it’s between studying with Duolingo and Bunpro for Japanese, I think Bunpro reinforces a heck of a lot more concepts than Duolingo. It really forces my brain to think on so many more levels. I don’t just try to remember the grammar particle, but how to type out the entire sentence as well. Compared to Bunpro…how useful is Duolingo? And have you tried any of those Kanji games? I have one called 漢字検定 that helps with grammar, spelling, etc. I find that it challenges me to make all sorts of new combinations with the kanji I learned with wanikani. I finally have the time to start up with that again. Have you taken the JLPT tests?
Duolingo and other language learning apps are just one of alot of traps for beginners. Doesn’t really teach you much and is a complete waste of time.
The only somewhat good thing about duolingo is the kana-learning thingy. The rest is a complete waste.
Apples and oranges. I’m not a fan of Duolingo by any means, but… if you’re looking to pick up some words, or some kanji, or anything but grammar (and even for grammar, Bunpro doesn’t train you on recognition) Duolingo is gonna be a better tool than Bunpro, even if it’s not particularly good.
