I’d tried this app quite a while ago and hadn’t really appreciated it. I used Duolingo for a while, practising every day for at least half an hour often much longer. Duolingo did suit my learning style but once I’d completed that course and reviewed my learning a couple of times I moved to this. Busuu is way more complete in terms of the grammar and general instruction on the structure of the language, I’m now really enjoying the lessons. Comparing the two apps both are very good and which one you choose will largely depend on your learning style or where you’re ’at’ in terms of development. However, it has to be said this is the more comprehensive learning tool. One last point, I’ve seen in direct comparison reviews with Duolingo that Busuu is sometimes marked down for not having voice recognition built in. I’d disregard that criticism as the voice recognition on Duolingo doesn’t really work that well and it will mark you correctly more often than not even when you’ve only repeated one or two words of a multi word phrase. You might have to wait a little while with Busuu to get a comment about your pronunciation but it is being done by native speakers so is more useful and accurate.

I commented some months ago about the Busuu iPad app not showing corrections to exercises in green (see below for why that matters). In spite of several app updates they haven’t fixed the bug. The advice from Busuu themselves is that the desktop version of Busuu will clearly show corrected text in green but the app won’t. I am a great fan of Busuu but am mystified why after months and months they have not fixed the app bug. It makes a big difference to language learners and makes users’ efforts to help less effective.Previous review: Generally this app is excellent but the latest update introduced a few bugs for iPad users. First when someone corrects your work the changes are no longer always highlighted in green. This makes any alterations much less obvious and you have to compare your version word for word against the corrected version. The green highlighting works for some people but not for others! Secondly when you check someone’s work Busuu changed the text box you write in to a ticker tape. In the old box you could see everything and correct any typos. In the new version moving round the ticker tape line is trickier. So errors can slip past you because they aren’t visible on the screen. Still good for learning languages but I hope they can return to the previously reliable functionality soon. It’s irritating at the moment!

Update: I’m done with this app. I really can’t be dealing with Busuu’s mistakes when it affects the ability to learn. Random words are not accepted as correct in the review sections, 新聞 is wrong but しんぶん is correct? 大判の新聞 is incorrect, おおばんのしんぶん is also incorrect as only おおばん の しんぶん with the spaces included is accepted as a correct answer. The conversations are still completely written in hiragana with no option to read kanji. How is anyone meant to progress learning their Japanese if the app just becomes a mess once you move past A1. This is a good app for learning language but a few persistent errors make its frustrating to use. Doing my word reviews there are often mistakes between what is spoken/written and what You get a correct answer for. It’s really annoying to have to remember which sentences I have to listen to 彼らは but change it to 彼は simply because Busuu is mixed up. Another example is some grammar when you’ll hear 午後に新聞 being said and making sense, however it seems to only accept 午後新聞. LingoDeer gives the user the option to contest answers and say ‘my answer was correct’, a feature that is very useful but also I never need to use. The more time I spend on Busuu, the more frequent these issues crop up. It’d also be nice on the review section to see both the English and Japanese translation or at least have some settings to set personal preferences, especially when they’re charging £80 a year.

I used to absolutely rave about this app and how it helps you interact with the study materials, the fact that you can get real feedback from native speakers is brilliant and I like the general set up. What is disappointing? Is that as time goes on the review materials and structure of the lessons gets increasingly repetitive… but not in a way that helps you retain the information. for example it will show you a new phrase or a sentence structure and then get you to repeat it three times back to back before moving onto something completely different and not revisiting that same structure. Intermittent repetition would be so much better! Also, there’s no way to practice and review kanji/writing. even the saved review materials seem to repeat in clusters rather than randomised to give you a true test. as time goes on, it seems more and more like I’m just parenting the material as opposed to having to actually think about it myself. which means that I don’t actually retain any of it and have to review the same lessons time and time again.Are used to love how this was speaking and listening focused but as time goes on, I’m finding that I’m spending more and more time trying to decipher the kanji and text (which there is no fast way to revise) and less time actually figuring out what and how I should say things