I really like Duolingo’s approach to language learning (even though I know it’s not actually that effective) but considering the privacy nightmare that Duolingo is, plus the continuous enshittificafion of the app, I’d love to use a more privacy friendly and less ad ridden alternative.
Any suggestions would be appreciated :)
Not privacy focused but read on if you want my thoughts on Duo vs Busuu. I used Duolingo back in the day but they chased me away with their complete 180 on ads (they used to advertise as no ads ever!). Duolingo was great for learning vocab but terrible for grammar in my opinion (at least eng-> german and eng-> spanish).
After bailing I didn’t use anything for awhile but I picked up Busuu a few years ago shortly after it was purchased by Chegg. They have a premium and an ad supported tier and the ad tier is terrible, it makes you have to close out at the end of each lesson to proceed past an annoying screen trying to get you to upgrade. The premium is advertised at about $70 a year but it comes down to around $50 for good sales. The monthly is a bit pricey ($10 or $12 or something).
Anyways, I really like Busuu for learning grammar. They have a flash card section for vocab that’s excellent as well but the grammar is where I saw huge improvements. The grammar is introduced in the lessons then given a strength that degrades over time until you practice it again. It tells you where your skills are weak so you can focus on a particular grammar element.
I also really like that they include regional differences in word use and regional expressions.
They recently introduced an AI speaking feature but I haven’t opted into it because I’m not comfortable with them processing my voice data. I haven’t read the privacy policy. This means skipping 1-2 lessons each unit which isn’t a big deal to me.
Hope this info is helpful to someone!