I’m really excited to bring you guys another app review today!
Lingodeer is a brand new app that is designed by actual language teachers/native speakers for specifically learning the three main East Asian languages: Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. And it’s totally free! If you haven’t heard of them before, you can check them out here: https://www.lingodeer.com/
I’ve actually been wanting to review this app for a while, but the iOS version wasn’t available until just the other day (and I only own Apple devices!).
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this review, the (iOS version) app is currently build 1.0, so any of the following may or may not change going forward as updates are applied.
Unlike for my review of the Duolingo Korean course, I did not complete the entire available skill tree that Lingodeer’s app offers. I found going through the lessons that there wasn’t any need to complete the tree in the vain hopes that the course might magically get better. Lingodeer is very good right out of the gate.
Your first stop on the app is the “alphabet” section, as it should be. Like Duolingo, Lingodeer unfortunately uses a form of romanization to teach the letters (see my Duolingo review for an explanation about why that’s bad) but that’s where the similarities stop. Lingodeer presents the Hangul letters in an order that actually makes sense, and in a way where learners can understand they are actually using letters to build sounds and eventually, words. Also, stroke order! That was a delightful and welcome surprise, which will come in handy for users actually wanting to learn to write the letters properly.
Heading into the first set of lessons (the “Nationality” section of the above screenshot) the user is greeted with a list of the lessons contained in the section, and to the left side, a menu labeled “Learning Tips”. When I selected the first lesson, I was initially disappointed to see that the romanization followed me but I quickly found that there is a setting the user can toggle to switch between Hangul and romanization, Hangul only, and romanization only.
Jumping right into the lesson, the user begins learning words and grammar that are pertinent for beginners to know, which is again, something Duolingo fails at. Additionally, all the audio is voiced by a native Korean speaker, and the quality is very clear and easy to understand.
The exercises in the lessons are fairly standard for apps of this nature (match a picture to a word/sound, unscramble sentences, listen to a bit of audio and enter the answer, choose the word/grammar bit that doesn’t belong, etc) and are on the whole unremarkable. However there was a conspicuous lack of explanations about why the grammar works the way it does, why the lesson kept trying to drill -은/는 into my brain with no indication about why it was important… Until I accidentally brushed part of the screen with one of my fingers on my way to the “next” button and a small window popped up to explain the word and grammar I had unintentionally poked at! There is no indication on any of the exercises or lesson screens that the user can press the words or grammar points for tips, instead of just blindly clicking through the lesson and guessing.
Upon completing the first two lessons, I decided to check out the “Learning Tips” menu from the lesson selection screen, and found the in depth answers for all my previous questions and more were contained there. I feel like the app and users would benefit from somehow marking very clearly that this is the location to find all that information, instead of hiding it behind an ambiguous “tips” label, especially when the tips in the lessons themselves exist (invisible though they are). In my opinion this section should be required reading, especially as this app is directed towards total beginners, however even something like “grammar explanations” would be a big step up from “tips”. Putting an indicator somewhere on the lesson screen to draw attention to the fact tips are available there too would be a good idea as well.
The app also contains a review section, where the user can practice and review both vocabulary and grammar that they have covered in completed lessons, which negates the need for a separate SRS app at the very beginning stages of learning (though I do recommend it at higher levels).
And a bonus that does not pertain to the Korean section of the app itself: I encountered a bug while using the app and sent off a support email. I received a very prompt and polite response regarding it, and assurances they were working on fixing the issue. :) Lovely people over there at Lingodeer.
That all said, there are a couple things I don’t like about the app and it’s claims. First and foremost, there is no option to test out of skills or individual lessons. The app is designed for absolute beginners with no prior knowledge, yes, but being unable to test out of parts of the skill tree is discouraging for not-exactly-absolute-beginner users. Instead of having to spend the time to complete a whole bunch of lessons to get to one or two they might need, not-quite-newbies are better off just looking up the information online for a quicker answer.
Second, the listing on the app store claims that by using the app you will be at the “intermediate” level of knowledge, and the official website claims that if you complete all the lessons you will speak your target language. I find both of these claims laughable–the contents of the lessons will get the user to a mid-high beginner at best (late A2 on the CEFR scale) and the app doesn’t have any speaking exercises at all. Speaking recall can be very difficult if the learner is not actively practicing it. Remember: No one app, book series, website, or lesson set will be enough to get you anywhere near fluency alone.
But ultimately, the Lingodeer app is a very, very big step in the right direction and is everything Duolingo should have been but wasn’t. I would definitely recommend using Lingodeer along side a good set of grammar textbooks or when taking a class.
Check out the official Lingodeer site for links to the app/play store to give it a download! https://www.lingodeer.com/
Do you have another app or Korean learning source you want me to review? Send me an ask!
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