Even getting something wrong gives you a pleasant little sound.Īlso, the quality of the voice recording and Japanese pronunciation is top-notch.

This is something you'll notice in really good games, but not so much in Japanese study apps. The sounds actually make the app feel better. The illustrations are very nice and the sound design is even better: you can play audio for everything easily and the sound effects offer satisfying feedback. These sections explain things like grammar points, particles, and sentence structure, as well as basic warnings for context and usage (polite vs impolite, for example). So if you're having trouble learning the meaning from context (which many apps want you to do nowadays) you don't have to search too far to find your answer (hopefully). When you return to the category and select 'Learning Tips,' LingoDeer goes into all the detail a small textbook would. The actual teaching happens outside of the lessons. You learn new information in small sets, usually two or three to start, and then start immediately putting your knowledge to practice. A new piece of information is usually introduced with pictures containing captions with kana, kanji, and romaji and then taught with basic matching. The lessons contain small chunks of what I'll call 'learning' and larger chunks of review and practice. These basically gives you the option to skip learning kana if you're already familiar. The Learn Tab presents two options: Alphabet and Nationality. You begin in one of three tabs: Learn, Review, and Me. The app starts by asking what language you'd like to learn and what daily goal you want to set: I did test all three, but I'm going to focus on the Japanese content, because I assume that's what you're all here for.

You can switch between all three at will, so you can study one or all of them at once.

LingoDeer has three language options: Korean, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin). But thanks to LingoDeer's narrower focus, it creates a much more streamlined experience. In fact, the app has a similar feel to both in terms of teaching methods and app functionality. LingoDeer is like Duolingo or Memrise with a CJK focus (that's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).

NEW JAPANESE LEARNING RESOURCES: SEPTEMBER 2017.

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