If you need a bit more structure to your German learning, a good place to start would be an online German learning app. I would never suggest that an app can make you fluent in German. The apps on this list should be used with other materials in order to make a complete language curriculum. That being said, I believe they each have their place in your German learning journey.
Table of Contents
LingQ
LingQ is a very cool website where you can import a text or audio and turn it into a German lesson. There are tons of premade lessons already in the system and more are being added every day. Simply start the lesson and you will see the text with words you don’t know highlighted in blue and words you have seen before, but not learned completely in yellow. For my full review of LingQ click here.
*LingQ links are affiliate links.
Duolingo
You have surely heard of this one, but you probably aren’t using it properly. Duolingo is great for an introduction to a long list of topics and ideas in a ton of foreign languages. Assuming Duolingo will teach you everything you need to know about a language, however, is naïve.
Do a level of Duolingo in order to introduce yourself to a topic. Then go somewhere else on the web for more information about that topic. The information and examples given on Duolingo are nowhere near complete. They give you a place to practice what you know and learn the basics before diving deeper. Long story short, use Duolingo, but use other things too or you will never make much progress. You can find Herr Antrim’s full review of Duolingo here.
Quizlet
Every serious language learner needs a place to store a list of words they want to learn and a way to review those words. Quizlet does both and does it beautifully. At its base form, Quizlet is a flashcard app, but it goes a step further and gives you review games and quizzes. I like Quizlet so much that I created the flashcards to go with my e-book there.
Learn with Oliver
This site is one of the best ways to make lists and flashcards out of the vocabulary you come across while reading German articles and news online. You can import an entire article or just a word or two. The words and phrases you want to learn are then put into flashcards similar to Quizlet and when you are ready to review them, the site will test you over your knowledge in the same way Quizlet does. Learn with Oliver is a unique take on learning languages through reading. Here is my full review of Learn with Oliver.
