Duolingo

I’m using the iOS version to help improve improve my shocking mid-1970s CSE French. The free version does mean that you get a skip-able advert after every lesson, but some are worth a Heart (basically a life) which makes them worth the 30 seconds they’ll take to view.

I find the Tips part for each section almost as useful as the lessons. There is a fair bit of repetition involved, but I learn better that way anyhow.

My only gripe is that it always uses the familiar Tu rather than the polite Vous for “you” as if all the conversations happen with close friends and families. As I’m only 10 days in, this might be deliberate for beginners. I hope so it’s still considered rude to use Tu with strangers.
 
I used it for a few weeks whilst returning to learning German, but have since given Babbel a go and find that much better. Explains the things you need to understand and gives little pointers here and there. The pictures are also very useful when needing to know which you to use (du, ihr, sie..) as Duolingo often expected me at times to guess which it was referring to. Easier for me now and especially if the sentence fits, but at first it was really frustrating.

A mixture of the two is probably the best way to get your vocabulary started, but for really learning a new language there are far better options.
 
Duolingo is OK, I moved on to Bussu, but all of these apps are only s small part of language learning. I find you definitely need to supplement the apps with lots of plain hard grammar to really get the nuances and drill in the spelling and help you understand why certain congations are the way they are. But most of all you have to speak a huge amount of the language every day to make real progress. Podcasts and watching TV help but nothing like having to be forced to speak the foreign language to make you really pick up on the real-time aspect. There is one thing know the differences between subjunitif perfect form conditional or imperfect tenses of an irregular verb, but doing that without even having to think abut it in natural speech is a whole nother matter.
 
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