Why You’re Stuck Learning German—And Which Apps & Courses Actually Work (2026)

The big pattern (why adults plateau)

Input is great but input alone doesn’t make you understand *how* a German sentence works.

To speak a language, you need both input and output. You need to recognize and make sense of what you hear and read (input) and you need to produce the language yourself (write, speak). 

It’s a popular myth that ‘instant immersion’ is the best way to learn a language because that’s how kids do it, after all! So, just throw all the information at yourself and muddle through responses (getting corrected all the time, but needing to somehow cipher WHY that correction is correct) … it’s a recipe for (needless!) confusion and frustration.

Children HAVE to learn language in this inefficient trial-and-error way and it’s actually slower, hour-to-hour, than when adults learn. We adults can fully utilize our EXISTING knowledge of grammar to quickly make sense of the nuts and bolts of German.

Why do things the hard way? 

There may be various smart ways for adults to receive German-language inputs, but any smart way to output German is going to hinge on this: explicitly learning German grammar. No guesswork!

Most popular tools revolve around input and simple habit-building. I’m still searching for those that are strong in either explaining grammar or providing coached output.

Quick student-feedback snapshot:

• Duolingo — Loved for its gamified habit building and vocabulary. Most students hit a ceiling without understanding why sentences are changing and find themselves guessing at answers.
• Babbel — A solid practice companion that’s great for routine, vocab, and light drills. That said, they find it rarely gives the deeper explanations needed to truly understand German.
• Pimsleur — Excellent for speaking rhythm and pronunciation on the go. Light on grammar and reading—best as a complement.
• Rosetta Stone — Immersion helps listening; grammar stays fuzzy for many.
• YouTube— Tons of great input; Easy German is the most-watched channel in our audience. Needs a strong linear learning progression or it quickly turns passive and more entertaining than actually educational.
• Grammar books — Great as references and for analytical learners. Can feel fragmented without guidance.
• Storybooks / graded readers — Build reading stamina. Risk of “I can recognize it, but I can’t produce it” unless you build additional exercises for yourself from it.
• Local language schools — Structure and peers help some; others struggle with pace, cost, and unclear grammar.

Color code: Dedicated Language Apps | Video | Books | In-person Learning

Duolingo

What our students like: Great for building a strong learning habit. Lessons aren’t too intense and deliver quick vocabulary gains through repetition. Speaking support is useful even if it is a bit lightweight. Multiple voices help pronunciation.

“Duolingo keeps me accountable.”

Where they get stuck:  The app marks answers wrong but doesn’t build understanding and over time students guess at rules instead of truly learning them. Recognition rises but production stalls. Users recognize words but have a hard time forming sentences or holding conversations. 

“Frustrating when I make a mistake and I don’t know why.”

Laura’s take: Duolingo is the best in the world at forming a habit of learning. HOWEVER, since almost 50% of our students have used Duolingo, I have a lot of experience with counteracting its shortfalls. And it falls massively short in helping students learn crucial grammar concepts needed to actually learn German. It’s essential that you pair your Duolingo use with a strong grammar resource. 

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Babbel

What our students like:  Babbel feels like a nice practice companion. It offers short lessons, reminders, and streaks make it simple to show up. Vocab sticks thanks to spaced-repetition, audio, and light drills. Better incremental grammar learning than Duolingo. Babbel Live adds accountability and real-time practice when needed.

“I like it, but it’s more like a practice method rather than learning.”

Where they get stuck:  Babbel doesn’t provide enough of a grammar framework to provide a solid foundation for German learners. When they do teach grammar, certain areas move too fast. Also, explanations live inside lessons with no central place to review so it’s clunky to go back and relearn a concept. Progress skews toward recognition (reading/listening) rather than production (forming sentences/speaking).

“It’s fine up to a certain level… there isn’t enough grammar explanation.”

Laura’s take:  Use Babbel as a habit and vocab builder. If you want real, durable progress, pair it with explicit grammar instruction and structured speaking. Otherwise, expect a productive start and then a plateau.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read my in-depth Duolingo review here

Pimsleur

What our students like: Hands-free, audio-first lessons that fits with your commute or chores around the house. Strong pronunciation coaching with lots of out-loud practice and spaced repetition of practical sentences. It gets true beginners talking quickly and many report solid recall later.

“Helpful in gaining listening and verbalization skills.”

Where they get stuck:  Little to no grammar explanation so progress stops without a separate grammar source (are you noticing a pattern?). Furthermore, it can feel limited at times with overly-scripted phrases and weak for reading/writing. Pacing can feel slow or too basic (fixed 30-minute blocks; hard to skip ahead).

“Explains nothing about conjugating, gender, or sentence construction.”

Laura’s take:  Pimsleur works well for building pronunciation, ear training, and early speaking confidence, especially for absolute beginners, auditory learners, and commuters. However, like the other apps, it won’t give you the grammar foundation you need. Pair it with a clear, structured grammar course to advance beyond the basics.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rosetta Stone

What our students like:  Strong ear and mouth training. The picture-prompt & repetition loop gets you speaking out loud and helps words stick. Some felt it moved faster or even better than Duolingo for basic practice frequency.

“Helpful in gaining listening and verbalization skills.”

Where they get stuck:  There’s no grammar map. Learners end up inferring gender, cases, endings, and word order by trial and error. The immersion/picture-matching loop rewards keyword spotting, not understanding, and key cues get dropped (teaching “Katze” instead of “die Katze”). A few also struggled to find the right difficulty or even use the software.

“So frustrated with their approach to grammar.”

Laura’s take:  Use Rosetta Stone as a supplement for listening, pronunciation, and light vocab reps. If you want to actually build sentences from first principles (articles, cases, conjugation, word order), you need a clear grammar resource alongside it.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

YouTube

What our students like:  Obviously, there are so many channels to like and appreciate on YouTube for learning German.  You can find a teacher that resonates with you or find more “infotainment” content that keeps it on the lighter side. Our students are particularly fond of the channel “Easy German”.

“Like the ability to slow down and listen to the pronunciation multiple times”

Where they get stuck:  There’s no single, orderly structure. Content feels random, advice conflicts, and errors go uncorrected. Without structured practice, it becomes passive; recognition rises but production stalls.

“overwhelming how many resources there are”
“it seems passive / not interactive so I forget”

Laura’s take:  YouTube is great for input and quick answers, not for a full syllabus. Use it to target questions (declensions, word order, exam formats) and to get listening reps—but pair it with a clear grammar learning plan and weekly output (speaking/writing). Don’t just cram more videos. Get serious about structure + practice.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grammar books

What our students like:  Useful as a clear, rule-based reference. Charts and short paper drills help some learners focus, and a physical book can be distraction-free. A few appreciate using a basic book as a “reset” before moving on.

“Good for reference”

Where they get stuck:  Too often there are “No real explanations” — “just charts & exercises.” Content feels fragmented and not systematic, so it’s hard to see the whole picture. Levels swing between too basic and too advanced. Many report overload (info-dumps, long tiring quizzes) and a practicality gap: memorized declension tables don’t translate into speaking. Some titles are “not user-friendly,” even “boring,” and conflicts across books undermine confidence. On their own, books don’t cover listening/speaking well and rarely feel sufficient.

“they give you the rules but not the *why* behind them”

Laura’s take:  Grammar books make strong companions for targeted look-ups and quick drills, but they aren’t a complete path. If you use them, don’t expect them to explain the “why” or give a clean, top-down grammar map of German. Pair these books with guided, step-by-step teaching. In short: treat books as a reference and supplement—then add structured instruction to actually build speaking and sentence-forming skills.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️

Storybooks / graded readers

What our students like:  Storybooks are motivating, low-friction input that grows vocabulary and basic comprehension. Parallel texts, audiobooks, comics, kids’ books, and short stories make it easy to stick with, and structured readers help you follow along even when some words are new. Some learners flat-out prefer books over apps.

“I use books. The apps are ridiculously bad.”

Where they get stuck:  Reading rarely supplies the “why.” Students report they still “have no clue about the grammar,” especially word order and cases. Any learning stays passive; you can “cobble together meaning” and “figure out word meanings and pronunciations,” but speaking and confident writing doesn’t follow.

“I have no clue about the grammar”

Laura’s take:  Storybooks at an appropriate learning level (3-4 words per page that you need to look up!) can make for enjoyable input and steady vocab growth, but they don’t build a durable grammar model by themselves because you’re left with trying to sleuth out what is happening, grammatically, and why. Pair reading with a parallel grammar-focused learning system.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar:
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Local language schools

What our students like:  More reliable structure, a clearer path, and real people. Regular meetings create momentum and accountability. When the teacher is excellent, some level of immersion works and progress feels real.

“Enjoyed being with people to learn” 

Where they get stuck:  Experiences can be all over the place with local schools. The top patterns we see are:

1. Teacher quality varies, and the process can feel either overwhelming or terribly inefficient.
   
   “didn’t have the necessary experience in teaching.”
   
2. If students are at different levels in one class, it’s easy for the classes to feel frustrating.
   
   “Mixed levels drag classes off-pace.”
   
3. In immersion schools, students often feel overwhelmed and need an English bridge to translate these new concepts to what they already know.
   
   “without English instruction, it was confusing”
   

Laura’s take:  Local schools can work especially with a strong teacher, level-matched peers, and explicit grammar instruction. I would recommend against immersion learning until you are at least an intermediate student. Without these prerequisites, you may be wasting a bunch of time and money.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar:  Varies widely
Vocabulary: Varies widely

Goethe Institut

What our students like:  There honestly wasn’t a lot of great feedback from my students about the Goethe Institut. A couple of people did feel like it helped them pass their CEFR exam but most found it lacking in one way or another.

Where they get stuck:  They’re exposed to German but not taught the underlying system. Grammar shows up in scattered “snippets,” often without clear English explanations, so rules don’t stick. Pacing swings between too fast to consolidate and too diffuse to master basics. Materials assume a strong teacher, and self-paced tracks feel overwhelming without guidance. Cost was also a big negative.

“there is no explanation of grammar at all”

Laura’s take:  Goethe-Institut may be OK if you need to pass a CEFR exam. That said, it rarely provides a durable grammar foundation by itself. If you choose GI, pair it with a clear, English-based grammar instruction system so as to learn most efficiently! 

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️

German Foundations®

There’s a reason I created German Foundations®: the most popular German language learning apps are typically NOT very good at explaining German grammar. 

And without grammar you’ll never be able to put a sentence together on your own. 

As adults, we can massively speed up the foreign-language learning process by translating what we already know (i.e. English grammar concepts) into crucial German grammar knowledge (i.e. what is the same and what is different? how?). 

Don’t take my word for it, click here to read what my students say.

Laura’s Rating
Grammar: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Vocabulary: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

CLICK HERE TO FOR MY FREE GERMAN FOUNDATIONS® INTRO COURSE

A final word from Laura

Most learners don’t need more time. They need efficiency and effectiveness.  A regular 15 – 30 minutes of quality learning can produce meaningful results. Pick the tool that fits your life. Then give it a grammar foundation and a doable output habit. That’s how adults make steady, visible progress.

Need help with grammar? Start with the first lesson of our grammar mini-course. It helps clarify what’s happening in any tool you’re already using and shows you how to turn rules into real sentences.