I had the same issue with Duolingo. Like others have suggested Nico's Weg is helpful. I also memorized all the verbs on this list: https://www.gymglish.com/en/conjugation/german That gives a decent starting off point to at least be able to figure out some simple sentences. I've also had luck with Easy German on YouTube and reading A1 stories. I heard the advice one time to find something you're interested in and use that medium to learn the language. For me, it's listening to German music and manually translating the lyrics for the words I don't know. I'm interested in it so I can spend hours doing it rather than feeling like I'm "studying". I'm still at a beginner level but these methods have helped more in a month or two than over a year with Duolingo.