Advice on learning German bitte!

[SuperSocks]

I'd like to learn German! My parents are bilingual but didn't teach me yep, I'm still salty about that. I'd like to know what the heck they're talking about! The trouble is I have absolutely no time or energy to go to evening classes so I need to learn at home.

I'm on Duolingo which is a nice introduction I think, but I need to back it up! I was wondering if there are any similar apps, that are free, that you guys can recommend? Dulingo is a bit stressful as it has you repeat 'Meine Mutter ist sehr nett' or 'Die pizza ist kalt' and the like 15 thousand times but then leaps ahead with complex sentences which I'm just not ready for! It would be good if there was a button you could click to say 'I'm confident on this now' and another which would be 'I'd like to practice this more' or whatever.

Anyway, aside from Duolingo I'm looking for other apps and stuff which could be helpful. I like being able to practice pronunciation - is there some sort of app I can talk to that will ask me questions and 'hear' me/correct me, that I can use while walking? I get bored very very easily so I'm looking for something as fun and interactive as possible!

I would recommend doing absolutely tons of listening, preferably at a level that's a tiny bit of a stretch for you, but not too hard. Listening is the best thing for your pronunciation. I'm a languages teacher (French and German) and am learning Spanish. I'm at about A Level standard now, but obviously it's easier for me as I speak other languages already and French and Spanish are a bit similar.

Anyway... I'd recommend finding beginners' German podcasts and YouTube channels. Duolingo is ok (it does 'listen' to you speak, doesn't it? If you have that option enabled?), but it can only take you so far.

I thought that I want to move on/I want to practice this was what the levels were for in Duolingo? Anyway I got stuck with it because I would just forget to practice for months and it would reset everything and make me repeat "ich habe ein Apfel" for hours before letting me move on which was annoying. I wish you could just mark stuff as I already know this and I'm definitely not going to forget it so move the fuck on.

Ahem. anyway. It sounds like what you actually want is a language buddy, you can do that remotely, either for money or you find someone that wants to improve their English and you swap. One day you converse in German and they correct you, the next day you converse in English and you correct them. You can kind this kind of thing online.

You'll never get what you want from a computer program because they just aren't that good at voice recognition yet. They are only just really starting to understand us properly in our native language let alone them trying to figure out what we're failing to say in a foreign one!

I like Easy Learning German on YouTube- they have videos with German and English subtitles. I also listen to their Podcasts. I also follow a few German learning pages on Instagram, lots of short videos to help you learn vocabulary.

I recommend 2 things:

1. as a PP said, do a tandem with a German person online who needs to brush up their English. There are apps for finding people or you can just look on classifieds websites. Make sure the person is correcting you when you make big mistakes and keep a book for noting down new words and phrases. I learned a lot this way.

2. watch some German kids' TV such as Die Maus or Sendung mit der Elefant in German, with German subtitles. The shows are designed for children at various levels of language ability so are very clearly enunciated and it's easy to work out what's going on. If you watch the same show a few times you'll pick up new words and phrases each time. You can also try watching a film you know like the back of your hand but in German, again with subtitles. Apparently the reason Swedes all speak such flawless English is that they watch all original versions of English-language TV/movies.