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Why Language Learning Apps Don’t Replace a Tutor

Language-learning apps are everywhere. They promise fast progress, daily streaks, and fluency in just a few minutes a day. They’re incredibly popular – these apps were collectively downloaded hundreds of millions of times in recent years (Duolingo alone saw over 16 million installations in one period). For many learners, they feel like the perfect solution: affordable, convenient, and available at any time.

And yet, year after year, we meet learners who say the same thing:

“I’ve been using an app for months… but I still can’t really speak German.”

This isn’t because they’ve failed. It’s because apps and tutors do very different things – and only one of them can guide you to genuine, confident language use.





What Language Apps Are Good At

To be clear, language-learning apps are not useless. When used correctly (as supplements), they can be very helpful. Apps excel at a few specific tasks:

  • Introducing basic vocabulary: Apps are great for teaching you simple words and phrases with flashcards, pictures, and translations. They often make vocabulary learning feel like a game. For example, one language coach notes that apps work well for “✅ Vocabulary building during commutes” – you can pick up new words on your phone while riding the bus.

  • Encouraging short, regular practice: Their bite-sized lessons and constant reminders keep you engaged daily. Many apps use streaks and daily goals to nudge you into practising every day. This regular exposure (even if just 5-10 minutes) helps keep the language fresh in your mind.

  • Helping absolute beginners overcome fear: If you’re totally new to a language, an app provides a safe, low-pressure intro. There’s no human listening to your mistakes, so it can feel less intimidating. The game-like format reduces the fear of “saying something wrong” and can build initial confidence to continue. Apps work particularly well for complete beginners (A1 level) who need to get started without overthinking.

  • Reinforcing material you’ve already learned: Apps are handy for review. For instance, if you’ve covered a grammar topic or vocabulary list in class, using an app’s exercises on the same topic can reinforce your memory through repetition. Some educators mention using apps for quick “✅ grammar drill practice when you have 10 spare minutes” – a quick refresher of things you’ve learned elsewhere.

They work best for learners who are in the early stages or who need light practice between real lessons. If you’re a complete beginner, an app can get you past the very basics (like learning a few greetings) and reduce the initial fear. If you’re already taking classes, an app can fill the small gaps between lessons – e.g. doing a few exercises while waiting in line, just to keep your brain engaged. In short, apps are excellent tools in a larger learning toolkit (but as we’ll see, they are not a replacement for the toolkit itself). Read our review of the top 10 language learning apps for more information.


The Illusion of Progress

One of the biggest problems with language apps is that they can create a false sense of achievement. The streak counts, points, levels, and badge collections feel motivating – they give you instant gratification and a sense of “winning.” But they don’t necessarily measure real language ability:

  • An app won’t tell you if you truly understand the grammar or just memorised a pattern.

  • It can’t tell if you can produce language independently (since most app exercises are recognizing or arranging given words).

  • It can’t test whether you’d cope in a real conversation, with an unexpected question or a fast-speaking native speaker.

It’s very common to “finish” large sections of an app – even complete all the levels – and still find that in a real situation, you struggle to form basic sentences without the app’s prompts. Many learners guess answers correctly on the app without understanding why the answer is what it is, or they tap through exercises on autopilot. Then, when faced with a live person speaking to them, they panic. The app never trained them for that. As a result, people might feel, “But I did all these lessons… why can’t I speak?!” – the progress was partly an illusion.

Gamification is a double-edged sword in this respect. It keeps you engaged, but it can also mislead you about your true level. Over time, chasing the next streak or level can replace actual learning goals. As one observer put it, after a while, “it becomes more about scoring points… and getting through the next level than it really is about learning and retaining the material. In other words, the game starts to overshadow the learning. You might be more focused on not breaking your streak than on reviewing yesterday’s mistakes or practicing difficult skills.

For example, a blogger on Languages Around the Globe admitted that he had finished numerous courses on a popular app and accumulated a “sheer mountain” of vocabulary points – according to the app’s stats, you’d think he was practically fluent. But when he tried to actually speak, “I’ve forgotten pretty much everything the moment I go to speak… you’d think I’d be practically fluent by now. I’m not.”latg.org. This kind of story is surprisingly common. The app gave a sense of progress (points, words learned), but those didn’t translate into real-world ability.

Real progress in a language isn’t about ticking off levels or completing a cute cartoon “tree” of lessons. It’s measured by your ability to think in the language, to choose words and grammar on your own, and to hold a conversation. Unfortunately, apps aren’t built to assess those deeper skills, so it’s very easy to mistake a long streak or a high score for actual proficiency. Don’t be fooled: if your goal is to truly use the language, you’ll need more than what the app’s gamified achievements tell you.


Language Is Not Multiple Choice

Most language apps rely heavily on easy-to-grade exercise formats: multiple-choice questions, matching exercises, fill-in-the-blank with a word bank, etc. These formats make it simple for a computer to mark you right or wrong. However, they also have a major pedagogical limitation: they train recognition, not recall or free production.

In real life, no one gives you four possible sentences and says, “Pick the correct one.” 😅 You have to come up with the sentence yourself. You must decide what you want to say, recall the vocabulary you need, and put the words together in a grammatically correct way – without any options floating in front of you. That’s a completely different mental process from tapping one of multiple-choice answers that an app provides.

Research in education backs this up. Studies have found that active recall (having to generate an answer from memory) is a much stronger way to learn than recognition-based learning. In fact, when examining web-based learning, researchers noted that “multiple-choice [questions] … tend to reinforce recognition, not recall,” and that recall-based practice leads to better transfer of knowledge. In plain terms: if you always learn by recognising the answer (like picking it from a list), you will struggle to recall and produce that knowledge when you need it in a real situation. This is exactly the trap many app users fall into – they can recognise words or correct answers in the app, but they can’t produce a correct sentence when prompted in person.

Multiple-choice and word-bank exercises also allow a lot of guesswork and process-of-elimination strategies that don’t exist in authentic communication. You might get a question right by eliminating the obviously wrong options, or by recognising a cognate word, etc., without truly understanding the sentence. The app might congratulate you for a correct answer, but did you really know it, or did you guess? In a real conversation, you can’t lean on those tricks – you either know how to say it, or you don’t.

A tutor, by contrast, will train your recall and production. They’ll ask you open-ended questions (“How was your weekend?”) where you have to formulate an answer. They might show you a picture and say, “Describe what’s happening,” forcing you to produce language without multiple-choice hints. This kind of practice – thinking of what to say from scratch – is essential to becoming fluent. Apps, for the most part, don’t provide it. They prefer closed-ended tasks that a machine can mark easily. So while you might breeze through those app exercises, remember: language is not a multiple-choice quiz. It’s a skill of speaking and writing – and that means producing the language, not just recognising it.


Grammar Needs Explanation, Not Guesswork

 German grammar, in particular, is not intuitive – it’s a complex system of rules and patterns that take time to grasp. German has four cases for nouns (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) which affect article/endings, separable verbs that split in the sentence, strict word order rules (e.g. the verb often comes second in main clauses but at the end in subordinate clauses), various past tenses, adjective endings that change with case/gender – the list goes on. It’s not the kind of thing you just “pick up” by trial and error quickly, nor by intuition if your native language is, say, English (which has no cases).

Yet many apps oversimplify or avoid in-depth grammar explanation. They have to – detailed grammar instruction is hard to do in a gamified, bite-sized format. Often, apps introduce a grammar pattern by examples and hope you infer the rule, or they give a one-line hint like “this is past tense of X” without much clarification. They tend to avoid lengthy explanations for fear of boring or overwhelming users. The result is that learners end up guessing a lot. They might notice “Hmm, this sentence had der, but now it’s den – maybe something changed?” but not be sure what or why. The app might not clearly explain cases at that point; it might just expect you to pick it up after seeing enough examples, or it might not test you on harder grammar at all in early stages.

The danger here is that you can go through many lessons getting answers right by instinct or pattern recognition, but with a shaky understanding of the underlying grammar. When you later need to construct a sentence on your own, the lack of understanding becomes apparent – you’ll make mistakes like using the wrong case or word order, because you never fully understood the rule.

A human tutor can teach grammar in a way an app cannot. A tutor will explain the rule in clear terms, using your native language if needed or drawing parallels to something you know. They can answer your “why does this happen?” questions – something an app typically can’t do. For example, one review of Duolingo noted that while the app might introduce certain grammar items, it “never explains why certain prepositions need to be used rather than others, [or] the difference between the four cases in German, [or] German sentence structure, etc.” – whereas a good tutor will explain those rules in a way that makes them stick. Apps often avoid deep grammar explanations; a tutor will dive right into them and ensure you actually get it.

Moreover, a tutor can adapt their explanation to how you think. If you’re a very analytical learner, the tutor might draw charts or give you a logical breakdown of a grammar point. If you’re more of an intuitive learner, the tutor might come up with analogies or use simpler language to explain the concept. They also immediately see if you misunderstood something. (If you’re consistently making a certain grammar error, an app might just mark it wrong each time without explanation; a tutor will notice the pattern and say, “Aha, I see the confusion – let’s clarify this point.”)

With grammar, understanding beats memorisation or guessing. You don’t want to just parrot phrases – you want to know why the phrase is constructed that way, so you can construct new ones yourself. That insight comes much more efficiently from human teaching. An app might give you exposure to grammar (which does help, in combination with other learning), but real mastery of complex grammar often requires someone to clearly explain the rules, answer your questions, and provide examples until you have that “Aha!” moment. In German especially, proper explanation is key – without it, many learners hit a wall when the app’s cute exercises progress to thornier grammar that hasn’t been truly unpacked for them.


No Personal Feedback = No Real Improvement

Perhaps the most serious limitation of apps is this: they cannot give you personalised feedback on your output. If you get something wrong in an app, what happens? Usually, a red X appears, maybe the correct answer is shown, and you move on. The app doesn’t tell you why it was wrong. It doesn’t converse with you to see how you arrived at that mistake. It can’t diagnose a pronunciation problem (beyond maybe “we couldn’t understand you” in a speaking exercise), and it definitely can’t tell if your sentence, while grammatically “correct”, sounds bizarre to native speakers.

Feedback is absolutely crucial in language learning. It’s how we improve. When you speak or write, and a knowledgeable person gives you pointers – “We wouldn’t say it that way, we’d say…,” or “I see what you were going for, but you need the dative case here because…” – that’s where real learning happens. Without feedback, you might keep making the same mistakes over and over, unknowingly. Those mistakes can become habits, and once a bad habit is ingrained, it’s much harder to unlearn.

Language teachers often emphasise that errors are a natural part of learning, but corrective feedback is what helps you refine those errors into proper usage. According to one pedagogical review, “constructive feedback is essential for helping learners understand their errors and improve their language skills,” and ongoing feedback helps learners correct mistakes and build proficiency over time. An app cannot really provide constructive feedback – it just marks things right or wrong. It won’t say: “Ah, I see you used the wrong verb ending – remember, with ‘du’ you need the -st ending.” It won’t encourage you by saying: “Great effort, but you mispronounced this word – let’s try it again more like ‘tschüss’ with a long ‘ü’ sound.” A tutor will do exactly those things. They not only tell you what is wrong, but why, and how to fix it.

Moreover, a tutor can distinguish different kinds of mistakes in a way an app can’t. If you say a sentence slightly incorrectly, there’s a big difference between a small slip (maybe you know the right word but mis-spoke in the moment) vs. a fundamental misunderstanding. A human teacher can usually tell from context or by asking you. An app cannot – it just marks “wrong.” Likewise, a tutor knows the difference between a grammatically wrong sentence and a grammatically correct sentence that simply no native would ever say. Apps often accept somewhat unnatural but technically literal translations. Only a human can tell you, “We understand you, but we’d phrase it differently in real life.”

In short, without personal feedback, you’re flying blind. The app might let you think a sentence you constructed is perfectly fine (if it happens to not trigger the marking algorithm’s wrong answer flag), when in reality no human says it that way. Or it might indicate something’s wrong but you won’t know exactly what you did wrong or how to do it better next time. That’s where a tutor is indispensable. They serve as a mirror and a guide – catching your errors, explaining them, and keeping you on track so you don’t cement the wrong habits. This kind of tailored feedback loop is virtually impossible to automate fully, even with advances in AI (at least as of now).

Bottom line: to really improve beyond a plateau, you need feedback from a person. Apps can drill you on things, but they can’t truly coach you. A good tutor, however, is constantly assessing your output and giving you the tips and corrections that push you forward – something no generic app can replicate.


Speaking Cannot Be Automated

Most people learning a language ultimately want to speak it – to have real conversations, whether for travel, work, or personal connections. This is an area where apps struggle the most. Human conversation is dynamic and unpredictable, whereas apps are pre-programmed and scripted.

Many apps include some basic speaking components. For example, they might have you repeat a phrase and will use speech recognition to tell you if you generally said it right. Or they have listening exercises and maybe even some AI chatbot practice (a few apps are starting to integrate simple chatbots or pre-written dialogues). But these are no substitute for a real conversational partner.

Here’s what an app can’t do in terms of speaking practice:

  • It can’t engage in a free-flowing conversation with you. Real conversations go in unexpected directions. If you talk to a tutor or language exchange partner, you might start on one topic and then branch off based on each other’s questions and remarks. An app will stick to its script or limited range. It won’t truly chat.

  • It can’t teach you to handle unpredictability. In real life, people might respond in ways or with words you didn’t anticipate. You then have to adapt on the fly. Even advanced speech-recognition apps only handle specific prompts. They can’t emulate the full chaos of real interaction. As an education blog from EF notes, even with the latest tech, apps “can’t teach you to react to the unpredictability of real-life situations beyond those simulated in the digital lessons”. In contrast, when you practice speaking with a human, you constantly face little unpredictabilities (they ask something you weren’t ready for, you search for a word, etc.) – and you learn to navigate them.

  • It can’t give you real conversational pressure. Part of learning to speak is overcoming the mental pressure of “Oh no, I have to reply now and it must make sense!” An app might simulate a conversation, but you probably know it’s just a program; there’s no social pressure or desire to truly communicate something meaningful. Talking with a tutor, there’s a genuine back-and-forth. You’re really communicating (even if in a learning context), which is a whole different feeling and skill. It prepares you for actual conversations out in the world.

  • It doesn’t push you to clarify or expand on your thoughts. If you give a one-word or very basic answer, an app usually just moves on. A tutor, however, might prod you: “Can you tell me more? Why do you like that? Can you describe it in more detail?” That pushes you to stretch your speaking ability. You learn to speak in full sentences, to link ideas, to express more complex thoughts. An app won’t insist that you explain yourself or ask you follow-up questions out of genuine curiosity. A human will.

  • It can’t teach you the nuances of real spoken communication – like natural intonation, rhythm, body language, cultural cues in conversation, or even the latest slang or colloquial expressions. Language is a living thing, tied deeply to culture. Apps often teach a polite, generic version of a language that may be out of step with how people actually talk informally. They definitely don’t keep up with new slang or idioms. As one language blog put it, “Apps can’t teach you the latest colloquialisms or slang. Nor will [they] demonstrate the correct inflexions and delivery needed to give [phrases] the intended meaning. Human interaction will expose you to those things – a tutor can share current, real-life language usage and humor, and correct your tone if you say something in a way that sounds unintentionally rude or odd.

In summary, speaking is a human skill that really requires human practice. It’s like learning to play tennis – you can do drills on a wall (which is like practising with an app), but eventually you need a live partner to really play the game. Apps are not conversation partners. Even if they use voice technology, you know it’s artificial and limited. To build true conversational fluency, you need the experience of real dialogue: thinking of something to say, saying it to someone, understanding their reply, and so on. A tutor provides exactly that interactive experience in a controlled, supportive way. They’ll hold real conversations with you, appropriate to your level, and help you through them. Over time, this is what transforms your ability to speak with confidence. No automated system has been able to replicate the richness of human conversation yet – and until one does, a tutor remains the best way to practice speaking for real.


One Size Does Not Fit All

Another limitation of apps: they offer a one-size-fits-all curriculum. When you use an app, you’re generally following the same path every other user follows. But every learner is unique – in goals, strengths/weaknesses, and pace.

Consider this: Why are you learning German (or any language)? An app doesn’t know. You might be learning for fun, someone else for a job, another person for an exam, another because they’re moving to the country. These scenarios would ideally require different focuses. If you’re moving to Germany, you might need more speaking practice on everyday situations and listening comprehension for fast speech. If you’re preparing for a certification exam, you might need to focus on writing essays or specific grammar topics. An app typically can’t detect or adjust to these needs – it will teach you a bit of everything according to its general sequence.

Similarly, each learner has different gaps and learning speeds. Maybe you have a great memory for words but struggle with grammar, so you need extra grammar practice. Or vice versa. Maybe pronunciation is your weak spot, or maybe you’re fine there but can’t understand when people talk back to you. An app mostly treats all skills evenly and moves you along in a set order. It won’t spend extra time on your personal weak area; it can’t know what that is beyond whether you tap wrong on its exercises (and even then, it often just repeats the same exercise, which may not address the root cause of your difficulty).

Pacing is another issue. Some people progress quickly and get bored with an app’s slow unlock system; others get overwhelmed when an app moves to new material and they haven’t fully absorbed the previous. An app usually can’t sense if you’re truly ready to move on or not – it just follows its predefined spaced repetition or levelling algorithm. A tutor, however, can immediately sense if you need more practice on a concept or if you’re finding something too easy and are ready to jump ahead.

A tutor offers personalisation in all these respects. They can tailor content: for example, a tutor might design a lesson around business email etiquette for a student who needs German for work, or around ordering food and making small talk for a student travelling to Germany. Two learners at the “same level” in general (say A2) might have completely different priorities – one needs past tense practice for storytelling, another needs vocabulary for university life. A good tutor adjusts to each. As one language coach aptly said, “Apps focus on the learning patterns of the mass. Humans have the capacity [to adjust] based on your interests, struggles, and goals.” In her example, she notes a human teacher recognises that “my student who loves cooking needs food vocabulary first, while my business client needs formal email phrases” – something no algorithm would automatically figure out.

Not only content, but also teaching style and explanation style can be personalised by a tutor. If you’re not grasping something the way it’s explained in the textbook, a tutor can rephrase it or use a different approach that clicks for you. An app usually presents things one way; if that doesn’t work for you, tough luck – the app can’t see your confused face and try a new explanation.

Finally, a tutor can adjust the focus of lessons dynamically. Say you had trouble with a listening exercise last week – the tutor can bring more listening practice this week. Or if they notice you keep forgetting a particular word, they’ll reuse it in class more often to reinforce it. This kind of responsive adjustment is what “teaching to the student” is all about. Apps, in contrast, follow a generic roadmap designed for an “average” user. But there is no average user – everyone’s different.

In summary, with an app, you are constrained to a one-size-fits-all learning path, whereas with a tutor, one size fits you. The course is tailored to your size, so to speak. And that means you progress more efficiently (skipping what you don’t need, diving deeper into what you do need) and you achieve your personal language goals, not just whatever the app thinks all users should achieve.


Motivation Is Not the Same as Accountability

Learning a language to fluency takes time and sustained effort – often months or years. Staying motivated and on track is a major challenge. Here, the difference between app-based learning and tutor-guided learning becomes very clear: apps provide motivation; tutors provide accountability and genuine encouragement.

Apps motivate users through gamification and convenience. The idea is: make it fun, make it easy, and people will keep coming back. To an extent, this works. The dopamine hit of meeting your daily goal or keeping a streak alive can indeed push you to open the app each day. But this type of motivation can be fleeting. Missing a day and breaking a streak, for instance, can make some people just quit (“oh well, I lost it, so I guess I’ll stop now”). The app will send you notifications like “Hey, you’ll lose your 7-day streak, practice now!” but that’s about it – a little automated guilt trip or a cutesy reminder from the mascot.

A tutor, however, brings something deeper: human expectation and encouragement. When you have a teacher or tutor, you have a personal relationship. That inherently creates a sense of responsibility. If you don’t show up or don’t do any practice, you’re not just letting yourself down – you feel like you’re letting them down, or at least you have to face them and admit you didn’t practice. Sometimes that’s incredibly motivating: knowing that “my tutor is going to ask if I reviewed those verbs” can push you to actually do it, the same way having a workout partner can push you to show up at the gym. It’s not about fear or shame, but about accountability. The tutor is holding you accountable in a kind way: they have a structure and plan for you, and you want to follow it together with them.

Moreover, a tutor can give real encouragement and support that means a lot more than a virtual trophy. They can say, “I can tell you’ve improved so much since last month – great job!” or “Don’t get discouraged by this mistake, you’re tackling a really hard concept and I’m impressed with your progress.” That kind of feedback boosts confidence far more than an app’s generic “You’re 10% fluent!” meter. Learning with a tutor, you have someone who cares about your learning. One student of a language coach said that the genuine relationship “fueled long-term motivation” in a way that no app’s artificial achievements could. In fact, an experienced teacher noted that it’s impossible to “code emotional investment” – the passion a good tutor has for your learning, and the emotional support they give, can’t be replicated by an algorithm.

Let’s not underestimate the value of a human connection: “If you don’t have a social or emotional connection, you can have all the software in the world but never move forward,” as one school principal observed about language learning. Humans are social creatures, and we often work harder when we feel someone is rooting for us and guiding us. A tutor provides structure (e.g. “every Tuesday at 6 pm is lesson time”), which keeps you regularly engaged. They provide expectation (you know they expect you to try, to do homework perhaps, to progress). And they provide encouragement and empathy – when you struggle, they can adjust the pace or cheer you up; when you succeed, they applaud you. An app might celebrate you for a 20-day streak, but it’s not the same as a mentor figure saying, “I’m proud of how far you’ve come.”

Finally, tutors can help with the inevitable plateaus and dips in motivation that come with long-term learning. Everyone hits times when they feel bored or frustrated (“Ugh, I feel like I’m not improving”). An app might not even notice – it will just keep serving you lessons. A tutor will notice your morale and can change things up: maybe introduce a fun activity, or simply reassure you that plateaus are normal and you are improving even if it doesn’t feel like it day to day. This kind of psychological support can make the difference between students who quit and those who persevere. With a tutor, you’re in it together – and that partnership can carry you through the rough patches in a way an app’s gamification cannot.


So, Should You Avoid Apps Altogether?

Not at all! The point of this discussion isn’t that apps are evil or that you should never use them. It’s that we need realistic expectations: apps work best when they are used as a tool, not a teacher. In combination with other learning methods, apps can be great. The problem arises only when people rely on them alone and expect them to deliver fluency.

If you are enrolled in a class or working with a tutor, by all means use an app on the side. For example, in between your weekly lessons, you could use an app to reinforce what you learned – review vocabulary or do extra grammar drills for 10 minutes a day. Used this way, apps can provide helpful extra practice. One experienced teacher described it well: “Use apps as supplements, not substitutes. Let them handle the boring drill work while humans handle the meaningful connections.”medium.com In other words, do the repetitive exercises on the app if you enjoy that, but depend on your classes or tutor for the real interactive learning.

Apps are also useful for very casual learning – if your goal is just to get a taste of a language or learn a few basics before a short trip, an app might be completely sufficient for that purpose. They’re also fine for those moments when you have a few minutes to kill and want to do something productive: instead of scrolling social media, why not do a quick review on a language app? This keeps your brain engaged and can help with retention of material.

The key is to remember their limitations (all the things we’ve outlined above). So if you find yourself saying, “I use [App] every day, but I still can’t hold a conversation,” that’s the sign that you need to add in a different approach – such as finding a tutor or a conversation group – rather than just doubling down on the app.

In summary: apps + real instruction = 👍; apps alone = 🤔. Enjoy your language app, just don’t assign it a role it wasn’t designed to fill. Think of it like an exercise app – it can give you workouts and keep you motivated, but if you have serious fitness goals (say, training for a marathon), you’d probably also want a coach or a structured program, not just an app. Language is similar. The app is one piece of the puzzle. For a complete picture, you need human-guided learning too.

(And if you are curious which language app to use as a supplement, we have plenty of tips on the best ones for different needs – but that’s another post!)


Why Proper Teaching Still Matters

Let’s paint a clear picture of what you gain from working with an experienced tutor or taking a structured course, as opposed to app-only learning. At our institute (Olesen Tuition), we see the difference every day between learners who relied solely on apps and those who undergo professional instruction. The outcomes are night and day.

In a weekly German class (or one-on-one tutoring sessions), you get:

  • Sustained, guided progress: There is a curriculum and sequence that builds up your skills in a logical way. Each week builds on the last. You’re not randomly bouncing around phrases as some apps do; you’re following a structured path from beginner fundamentals upwards. This leads to reliable progress you can actually feel. After a few months, you realise you can form sentences and understand the language far better than when you started – a result that can feel elusive with the scattershot approach of many apps.

  • Clear grammar foundations: As discussed, tutors explicitly teach you grammar. In a course, you will cover all the essential grammar points methodically. You’ll practice them in exercises and in speaking/writing, with corrections. Instead of a hazy idea of how the language fits together, you’ll develop a clear mental model of German grammar. This foundation is what ultimately allows you to create your own sentences correctly. It’s often said that if you want to build a building, you need strong scaffolding – in language, grammar is that scaffolding. Classes ensure you build it strong.

  • Regular speaking practice and listening practice: In class or tutoring, you are using the language actively. Even in a beginner class, the teacher will ask you simple questions to answer out loud, or you’ll do a pair exercise with a classmate. In our courses, we incorporate speaking in every session – because the act of speaking helps reinforce memory and build confidence. Over time, this regular speaking practice in a safe environment makes a huge difference. Many app-only learners feel tongue-tied when finally trying to speak; our students, having practised in class, are much readier to speak in real contexts. Likewise, hearing your teacher and classmates speak teaches your ear to process the language at natural speed, something an app’s slow audio clips don’t fully prepare you for.

  • Personalised feedback and answers to questions: In class, if something isn’t clear, you can just ask, “Excuse me, I don’t get this part. The teacher will clarify on the spot. If you pronounce something wrong, you’ll be gently corrected and shown the right way. This continuous feedback loop ensures you don’t develop false understandings. Mistakes get caught and fixed. Compare that to slogging alone – you might spend weeks mispronouncing a word in your head or misunderstanding a grammar rule until one day you find out it was wrong. Proper teaching spares you those missteps by providing immediate correction and explanation.

Now, consider intensive courses or immersive learning experiences (which we also offer, such as one-week bootcamps). These can produce rapid improvement that would be unthinkable with an app alone. When you spend several hours a day learning with a teacher, everything clicks faster. We’ve seen learners go from struggling to string a sentence together to confidently conversing about everyday topics after an intensive course. Why? Because in an intensive setting, you’re fully engaged – you get tons of practice, immediate feedback constantly, and thorough explanations that tie everything together. It’s like the difference between dabbling in an app vs. being immersed in a learning environment. Intensive courses often lead to breakthrough moments: maybe you finally understand that tricky case usage, or you overcome your fear of speaking entirely because, after a week of speaking German daily in class, it suddenly feels natural! Those breakthroughs are hard to achieve with 5 minutes a day on an app.

Both weekly classes and intensive courses offer something that no self-study app can: human mentorship and real communication. You have a guide (the teacher) who not only teaches but also motivates you, tracks your progress, and holds you accountable. You also often have classmates, which brings in social learning – you learn from others’ questions and mistakes too, and you gain partners to practice with. And crucially, you engage in authentic communication during lessons (asking questions, doing role-plays, casual chats with classmates before/after class in the target language, etc.).

All of this results in deeper understanding, faster progress, and greater confidence. When learners come to us after months of only using apps, they often have gaps and insecurities. After a course with us, they finally feel they understand how German works, they’ve had enough practice to use it comfortably, and they get real confidence in their abilities. That transformation is why proper teaching still matters in the age of apps.

To put it simply: if you’re serious about becoming fluent or proficient, there’s really no substitute for learning with real teachers or tutors. Apps can support your journey, but they cannot replace the depth and effectiveness of human-led instruction.


Final Thought

Language learning is not a game, a streak, or a quick hack – it’s a human skill that involves communication, culture, and connection. You wouldn’t expect to become a great public speaker by playing a speech-giving app, or a master pianist by using a piano simulator app alone. You’d know you need practice with the real thing and guidance from those who know the craft. It’s the same with languages.

Apps are a wonderful supplement to have in your arsenal. By all means, use them to enrich your learning – they make vocabulary drilling and basic practice convenient and fun. But remember that they are tools, not teachers. They can’t replace the nuanced guidance of a tutor, the adaptive feedback of a live instructor, or the richness of real conversations with other humans.

If you’re serious about learning German (or any language) to a level where you can confidently speak, understand, read, and write, consider investing in proper instruction. The combination of app convenience plus real teaching is powerful. But app alone, without real practice and feedback, will likely leave you short of true fluency.

At Olesen Tuition, we’ve embraced technology (we encourage our students to use helpful apps as supplements), but we centre our courses on what truly works: experienced teachers, interactive lessons, and personal feedback. We’d be delighted to help you take that next step beyond what apps can offer – with real teaching, real progress, and real confidence in German 🇩🇪✨.

In conclusion: Use the apps – but don’t lose sight of the value of a good old-fashioned teacher. Your future fluent self will thank you!


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