LingoDeer Review: language learning app for Duolingo haters

LingoDeer is a popular app among learners of Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin, but they’ve been so wildly successful that they’ve expanded to several others! What made it so successful? This LingoDeer review will tackle just that.

Continue reading this LingoDeer review to learn everything you need to know about this super popular language app!

LingoDeer languages

As mentioned, while LingoDeer is known for Asian languages, learners of other languages shouldn’t necessarily skip it. LingoDeer offers:

Considering LingoDeer offers all these languages when they’ve only been in business since 2017, it really looks like the sky’s the limit!

Like Duolingo’s French and Spanish trees are generally the most robust, assume LingoDeer’s Asian languages are, too.

LingoDeer lessons

Once you’re here, LingoDeer is pretty simple: select the language you want to learn, and get learning!

Once you select the course, you’ll get a screen kind of reminiscent of the Duolingo tree. Then, like Duolingo, each lesson of the course is broken up into a handful of quick, easy-to-swallow mini-lessons.

You’ll start with the first lesson of the group, as Lingodeer won’t let you go straight to a particular lesson before completing the prior ones. You can always jump ahead to different checkpoints (as long as you successfully test into them), and you do have the option to switch lesson groups, a la pre-learning path Duolingo.

Nonetheless, I do like how the lessons tell you exactly what you’ll be learning, right down to the specific words you’ll be practicing. This way, you’re not stuck learning words and phrases that aren’t relevant to you.

And the actual strategy behind LingoDeer’s lessons? I really like what they’ve done with it.

Learning a language with LingoDeer

Based on the lesson above, LingoDeer’s focus is on comprehension; generally, the activities are either listening or reading comprehension, with a sprinkle of grammar tossed in. The vocab is largely image-based as well (though not entirely), which is excellent.

My favorite part of this LingoDeer lesson?

If you’re not sure about the answer, it’ll tell you…but you have to use your listening comprehension to do it.

And it’s not just robot voices, either. You can see in the above lesson that I got the question wrong because I was focused more on listening than what I knew to be “correct”; so although the correct answer was “estas”, a normal Spanish speaker will drop the “s” in a regular conversation. Best get used to it now!

While you’re learning the lesson, you can take a look at the mini grammar lesson as needed, and/or get some real-life practice with a conversation.

These reading and speaking exercises connect the more “theoretical” book knowledge to more active conversational knowledge, so you can see how they piece together a conversation (and you can contribute to that conversation, as well).

And let’s talk about the look and feel of the LingoDeer app.

First of all, it’s beautiful! It’s very smooth and is genuinely enjoyable to play around with. There are cute little sound effects, and the animations are really nice. The colors are super palatable as well. Even so, almost all of these features are totally editable! Go into the settings of any lesson to:

• turn the sound effects or animations on/off,
• change the background color, and
• speed up/slow down the audio

Generally speaking, these lessons provide A+ exercise to all of the language muscles. It’s not a conversation, but LingoDeer provides you with a good baseline to start off with some confidence to jump into using the language in a variety of other ways.

I do wish one of the options in the settings were to turn the translations on/off, though. Especially at an intermediate level, I’d like to be pushed a bit, and not have any little handicaps like that forced on me.

While you may not be speaking (yet), you are being pushed to actively recall the words and grammar that you’ve been working with. So yes, while there may be a bit of multiple-choice here and there, you still have a ton of opportunity to really learn the language in a way that preps your brain for actual language use.

It’s your average speech recognition: you’re given a phrase, you’re led to repeat the phrase, and you tap on the bottom to finish and move on. What you don’t see in this screenshot, though, (for the sake of a readable review) is that at the upper left-hand corner of this screen is the word “Easy”. This is just one of the ways that Lingodeer allows you to take control of your language learning in this section!

LingoDeer review: prices

Surprisingly, LingoDeer’s prices aren’t the most obvious. I’ll chalk it up to a website-usability thing though, because a LingoDeer membership is certainly worth the price, in my professional opinion.

According to LingoDeer support, free LingoDeer users get alphabets, the first unit, Test Outs, Flashcards, and Reviews. Everything else is priced really reasonably, though!

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? If you’re thinking “wow, that’s a really ugly page considering how pretty the LingoDeer app is”, you are thinking what I’m thinking. Doesn’t make a single difference to the actual experience or effectiveness of the LingoDeer app, it’s just kind of weird.

LingoDeer review: who should try it

Okay, so this LingoDeer review has proved to me that I love this app. I’ll be honest. I have a few issues with it, but they aren’t make-or-break issues. The flexibility? The push for active recall? The whole experience? Beautiful.

But there’s still an important question to answer: who is LingoDeer NOT right for?

If you want to talk to a human, LingoDeer isn’t right for you. Like, if you need the personal connection of a language tutor or language exchange partner, there are other places to find that. LingoDeer will definitely get you started, but you’ll need to stretch your wings eventually.

If you want to be able to practice your language creatively, LingoDeer ain’t it. LingoDeer will give you plenty of phrases, words, and dialogues to use, but if you’re likely to feel stifled by that and would rather respond to a prompt, look somewhere else.

Other than that, this LingoDeer review has shown me an excellent, well-rounded language app that’ll flex your brain muscles in all the right ways!

Wanna give LingoDeer a whirl? Click here to get started!