Renshuu is great and probably my favorite app/website for learning Japanese. Kawaii Nihongo and Kawaii dungeon are good and completely free, but it only covers beginning Japanese. I think Memrise can also be good for learning beginner vocabulary. Mango is free if your library offers it, but it doesn't teach kanji at all, so you would need to pair it with another app. For reading, I would recommend Yomu Yomu or Beelinguapp. They are not completely free, but offer some free stories of various levels. A lot of people would recommend Anki and I think it's good if you like flashcards, but you need to remember to keep up with it because the cards can add up quickly. You can use HellloTalk to talk to native speakers. For listening, I would just use Youtube and/or an app that offers podcasts to find videos/podcasts in Japanese. Hope this helped!
Depends. Do you want thorough or quick ? If you want Quick, duolingo is okay but it doesn't help you out with the alphabet, you only memorise words and you don't get a lot of explanations on the different alphabets or a lot of writing practice. If thorough, stick with renshuu, it's great
The best app for speaking skills... I don't know any, to be honest. The best for speaking is actually speaking with humans. Until you found an opportunity to do that, talking to yourself is strange but very helpful. You are forced to find words, apply grammar and actually speak.
For that you could try different levels of speaking to yourself:
- Speak the words you learn while quizzing
- Read sentences in quizzes
(Both these things usually have audio so that you can check what it should sound like)
- Write your own texts
(It's slower than speaking but contains most of the problems you face when trying to speak (find words, apply grammar))
- Addon: Read your own texts out loud
- Talk about your day or thoughts to an imaginary friend
I'm also curious, if there are useful apps by now for that. Maybe someone else knows one.
I'm pretty opinionated, but I strongly agree with the above - speaking doesn't belong in an app. I *wish* it was possible to do so, and I'd absolutely look into a way to put it in renshuu if I felt it was possible, but as an educator, I just don't think it works, and wouldn't want anyone to think that "renshuu teaches me speaking" when the actual tools/methods didn't work.
The best free to use apps I know are Hello Talk and VR Chat. But again those are apps where you'll have to put in actual effort to speak, as you usually speak with other people. But they're easy to use and you'll always find native on there.
You can find podcasts or YouTube videos that are made for Japanese learners, specifically the ones that do slow conversations, and then you can shadow them, aka, mimic/parrot from them a bit. And I seem to recall one particular app that's kinda like Ogle, but not the old Ogle that made it a risk to use, but it's focused on matching folks learning a particular language, not just Japanese alone, and you can have conversations with other learners. Don't quote me on that, however, but I think Jouzu Jules or another content creator did a video on the best places to learn specifically the talking and listening skills.
Heck, if Michael or another volunteer could set up a Discord event where they can check out some of the VR chat rooms, kinda like a virtual field trip, that'd be pretty awesome; if not joining a Discord community that help other learners through casual conversations. (I know Discord is free, depending on what or how you want to use it's basic features or added bells and whistles, but I know nothing about VR chats.)
There's a subreddit called r/WriteStreakJP where you can practice writing and get feedback. There's also plenty of Discord servers and VRChat worlds for practicing Japanese. Be careful, of course.
Writing skills and speaking skills should transfer between each other, but not fully. Writing won't help you're pronunciation or your ability to respond in real time, but it can help train your word choice and ability to be understood. No matter what you do, you need to communicate with other people, though. Avoid using chatbots.
I know an app for speaking and it helps a lot,it corrects you,it helps,but the bad news is.... it's for chinese (its superchinese if anyone's interested)
i recommend tandem and satori reader & human japanese. (i can't say if tandem is better or worse than any other language partner app, because it's the only one ive tried.)
(its superchinese if anyone's interested)