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I originally completed the first German tree almost exactly one year ago and decided in the last few months to make an effort to revisit the tree, seeing the new lessons/topics and attempt to regild everything. Like the last time I posted my shiny golden tree, I thought I'd do a small write-up of sorts just in case anybody would be interested in hearing what I think, along with some suggestions that could help other learners.

So since November I have actually been able to move to Germany! I came with the intention of staying for around a year, and with the primary intention of improving my German and joining a language course (I went for an integration course as it was a lot cheaper, I will be finished with B1 level soon but I feel in some regards a bit more advanced than this, with reading for example). So now I have had the experience of a real language course, I feel better placed to comment on Duo's effectiveness. People often say on here something along the lines of 'Duolingo will be able to take you somewhere around the A2 level, if you supplement yourself with other resources'. This of course largely depends on those other resources, but I find it very hard to believe it is anything more than high A1 level, possibly low A2 level in some things. The best thing Duo can do is improve your reading skills. I visited Germany before moving here for 3 weeks, and I was very surprised to see that I could understand most signs, newspaper headlines, restaurant signs, etc etc. but when I tried to listen to people on the street or tram, I was utterly clueless. Also, in terms of speaking, I was also extremely short. This is something that can only be improved outside of Duolingo, but I know this is easier said than done because I admittedly never sought this out alongside my own learning. Writing is a bit of a mixed skill, because when I was using Duolingo the first time, I noticed that I would be fine at writing the sentences on the website itself, but when it came to writing my own sentences, I found that I lacked the grammatical knowledge to help construct sentences. I think Duolingo could do a little bit more in that respect. Overall however, despite sounding like I am slating it a bit, I think Duolingo is a fantastic introductory resource, but must be used alongside other things!

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention.. The god damn abstract objects! No matter how much practice and memorisation I do with them words, I simply cannot remember them for more than a few hours at a time. They were by far the hardest part of the tree both last year and this year!

Okay I think I'm doing rambling for now. I know there are many resources around reddit, but here are a lit of my personal favourites that I used quite a lot. My personal favourite things are;
http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar.html This website in general is incredible, but in particular the grammar worksheets are fantastic. They explain the topic in very simple terms (in English) and then tend to ease you in with simple exercises building up to harder exercises. It also has many 'answer sheets' so you can check your own work. It can be frustrating when you attempt the worksheets without knowing if you are correct or not, but I found that even practicising after reading the help was still a hugely useful exercise. You can attempt the sheets with just a notebook, but I found it best to physically print the sheets - but that's just me.

www.memrise.com I'm sure everyone knows this website as it is heavily recommended. It is excellent for vocabulary. Another option you could use is Anki. I personally found it a bit fiddly but I know a lot of people swear by it.

'Learn German with Stories' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-German-Stories-Berlin-Beginners/dp/1492399493/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462113831&sr=8-1&keywords=berlin+cafe+stories) - This is incredible if you own a Kindle with a built in dictionary function. These books are written in extremely simple German, and are a great introduction to reading things fully in German. I think for this first book, anyone that is close to finishing the tree would have a good time with it. There are some words you won't understand, but once you look them up, or even work out what they mean by context, they become part of your vocabulary!

German music/film. This can be difficult as they are often quick, but just listening to things in the target language of German can be a huge help. If anyone would like any recommendations I can try my best.

http://slowgerman.com/ Another resource for listening comprehension is this website. It is essentially German news podcasts, but spoken slowly, and if I remember correctly, the handy app even gives you a transcript so you can follow along.



There are a few more things I could possibly recommend but I think that's enough for now, I am aware that this post is becoming long! If there are any other questions, don't hesitate to ask as I'd like to help, and sorry if this post is a bit of an unorganised mess!

Yes! As for books these one's have really helped me:

• Everything Learning German This one is super great for grammar. It has exercises at the end of each lesson so you can practice too :)
  
• Collins Complete German This one is probbbbably my favorite. I love it, it has a guide for pretty much everything you need to know in the grammar, it explains everything well, and it has verb tables so you can study the conjugation. It has some vocabulary in the back too.
  
• Graded German Reader This one is also really awesome. You can find a used one for 10 bucks on amazon, just the new ones are really expensive because I don't think they are made anymore. This starts with simple reading passages and gradually gets more difficult while adding new words- but it's at a perfect pace so you don't get overwhelmed, and you will probably be able to completely understand.
  
• Cafe in Berlin Another german short story book. This one is great too.
  
• German Pre-Intermediate Reader Another reader- this one incorporates the top 1000 words in German.
  
  I know I have more but these are my favorites! As for movies/shows.. when I watch like youtube videos (try 'easy german') or kids shows I tend to watch them without subtitles. If I'm watching an adult movie/show I pretty much have to use subtitles otherwise I can't pick up anything. I usually put the subtitles in German though, because I read better than I listen!
  
  Let me know if I can help you with anything else :)

There probably ought to be a list in the right-hand bar, since people ask this question so often. I have a rather long list of things to do to supplement Duolingo, but the most important is probably a grammar book. Schaum's is good for Spanish, and it does have exercises.

The other really important one is flashcards. I love Anki. It's free, and I have a strategy to use Anki with Duolingo.

For reading practice, I suggest using Duolingo's own Immersion facility. Read the sentences and then see how others translated them. That's useful even if you're not ready to try any translations yourself yet. Try newspaper articles. El País online is free and very good. News stories (as opposed to editorials) are usually written in easier Spanish.

I'd stay away from children's books, although young-adult books can be great.

So the biggest issues you will encounter is that the tree doesn't teach a lot of the genitive case, which you see more commonly in written German than in spoken German. Here's a good reference to get you over the hump: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/Nouns/genitive.html

Some German grammarians will tell you that the Genitive is going away, which is why it's not spoken much, but in an older book like The Metamorphosis, you will see it.


Secondly, in German, especially older German, you will see a lot of written Simple Past tense (das Präteritum) which is again not that common anymore, as most Germans speak the Present Perfect instead (das Perfekt). Dartmouth to the rescue again with an article on each linked above.

Finally, as I noted above, the Metamorphosis is an older book, so some of the language might appear dated, though looking through the book at Project Gutenberg I'm seeing that I understand a fair bit. My recommendation would be to start the tree, and then look at a few of the good books that are available for German learners. I really like the books from André Klein, such as "Mord am Morgen" which are crimis (crime stories) and they're written in such a way that you can understand them with a beginner's level of German, they include slang, and definitions for odd or unusual words you might not have seen before. There's a whole series of them, and they're available as ebooks for cheap. Here's a link to the first book: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-German-through-Storytelling-intermediate-ebook/dp/B007QT2EVQ

I definitely think you should give it a go because Duo will give you a huge leg up in learning German over all, and reading it, so you can't lose, and eventually you'll get to the point where you can read the book and many more great works of German literature in their original language.

Cheers!

Well I've been using Duolingo alongside learning French at school (the teachers aren't great) so it's hard to say. I can definitely understand the gist of some news articles but I have to look up tons of vocab on sites like France24. This site is a great place to start reading news because it's aimed at French children so it's simpler - I can understand about 80% of it.

As for speaking, I don't think Duolingo is particularly useful. I'm sure you could have a very basic conversation about some of the topics taught, but it would peter out pretty quickly.

Duolingo has introduced me to grammar concepts and tenses that I won't be learning at school for a few years so that's been one of the best things about the course. Although, the notes basically stop the further down the tree you get, so this book has been enormously helpful.

Yes absolutely. I think ideally it would be cool if there was a BCS Duolingo course for the first 1/4th of the tree, just to get the basics and exposure to the differences between BCS, then you can pick which one you want to advance with later on after understanding the basics. Pretty much exactly like the BCS Textbook teaches it. I think this would draw more widespread attraction to BCS learning, and would eliminate some confusion for people traveling to holiday to Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia. I would guess that most people don't know just how similar the languages are.

https://www.amazon.de/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Textbook-Exercises/dp/0299236544

Example Page of BCS Textbook

With that being said, I am extremely excited about this course. I've been hoping for a Croatian one for a LONG time, and been working my way through my BCS textbooks in my spare time. Super pumped!

And count me in for Alpha Testing!

Hallo Django! I just added you too. I started maybe five weeks ago, so I'm a little ahead... but what the hell, more the merrier I guess. I'll probably slow things down a little on duolingo though... started getting more into reading. Which, by the way, if you're interested in... you should super check this out. It's amazingly well put together, better than any other graded readers I've found for any other language I've checked out. I found a copy used for $20, super worth it, and it's seemed to make duolingo a lot easier. It doesn't perfectly line up (a lot of duolingo's vocabulary is specialized) but... eh. Helped me out a bunch.

Schaum's Outline of German Grammar is good.

Also, English Grammar for Students of German

And as RadiiRadish has said, Memrise is fantastic for vocabulary. I haven't been to German is easy! so I can't attest to it's merits.

Here is a pretty good site with likely familiar fairy tales in German.

Get Germanized is a fun youtube channel that teaches vocabulary, culture, etc. I know it's not reading material, but fun no less.

The way I see it duolingo itself is supplemental material, I haven't used the Irish version but speaking from experience with German this is one of the best courses you can get for self study. This is a nice series too, but not as comprehensive as the first one.

I've been waiting as well. It's the one language, along with Swedish, that I've had an interest in. If you want to try and learn some on your own, I'd suggest Memrise.com along with their app. I've also heard this book is fantastic and I plan on getting it soon. Hope this helps!

Practice makes perfect series on Amazon

I'm doing Spanish like in your screenshot. Each book focuses on a different topic like

Verb Tenses, Pronouns, Complete Grammar, and Conversation https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0071841857/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486045354&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=spanish+verb+tenses&dpPl=1&dpID=51BrJxLBTVL&ref=plSrch

Those are all I have so far

I do yes, thanks though. There's one grammar reference book in English too, but it seems a bit academic for a beginner. There's also some books in Catalan for beginners (1, 2, 3, 4), not really sure how that works.

I'm waiting to hear from a Professor about whether I can take a Catalan course this year. If it's a yes I'll be able to take it alongside Spanish for three years and at the end of my degree should be at B2/C1. If not, rats!

I enjoyed this series but I did have other ones to supplement the Barron's ones. As much as I am 100% a digital boy, buying these guides really is about just reading a few pages from each chapter from each book and see which style speaks to you (no pun intended)

Bon courage à vous!

Is this the one you are using? If you can recommend any dual language books, that would also be great.

If you are serious about learning Russian then I wholeheartedly recommend this textbook. It is very good at explaining some of the grammar that appears later on that is very hard to get your head around.

I primarily use German Grammar Drills and Hammer's German Grammar and Usage. Also look up Practice Makes Perfect series on German.

This book was very helpful in learning some of the stranger parts of German grammar and conjugation: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Learning-German-Book-understand/dp/159869989X/

I think watching dubbed/subbed videos in German would be extremely helpful! I have heard of Yabla (https://www.yabla.com/) but I was trying to put off the subscription-based things until I really wanted to push myself to the next level. I will look into the Clozemaster site though.

This book seems to be very popular:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071435034/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn632jHi2Wo&t

Here is something that may help.

Non-mobile: this series

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?

I use this - https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Italian-Grammar-Language-Guides/dp/048620779X.
It worked wonders and it isn't expensive compared t other language books

Es ist eine krimiserie. (detective series) Das E-book ist kostengünstig. (ive given up on conjuating kostengünstig today, my brain has forgotten how...) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-German-through-Storytelling-intermediate-ebook/dp/B007QT2EVQ

Speaking as in holding a conversation, or speaking as in pronouncing the words correctly?

If it is about pronunciation:

Russian is quite good in that it is mostly say-it-as-you-see-it. In English we have lots of letter combinations to remember, like "Sch", "th" and even "ough", which are rare in Russian. In English we also change the vowel sound by putting an "e" at the end of the word, like "run" and "rune".

The worst thing about Russian is the vowel stress. In each word, you have to stress the correct vowel. Stressing the wrong vowel can sometimes change the meaning of the word. It brings with it a whole word of annoying rules, such as an unstressed "o" has an "a" sound.

Duolingo doesn't help with any of these fundamentals (worst of all not even telling us where the stress falls). I used Penguin Russian Course to help learn the alphabet and exception rules, but others have talked about using Youtube videos.

Once you have those fundamentals, it should become increasingly say-it-as-you-see-it.