To ask how you learn a language?

"I asked an ex-Welsh tutor for advice on learning the Welsh language, and she recommended watching Welsh children's TV."

An excellent idea. Postman Pat speaks French (Pierre Martin le Facteur), Danish (Postmand Per), German (Postbote Pat), Latin American Spanish (El Cartero Pat) and many other languages ... all at an easy level and with visuals to assist.

I asked an ex-Welsh tutor for advice on learning the Welsh language, and she recommended watching Welsh children's TV. It makes sense, because children have to learn a language from scratch, so do it as a child would! I have since graduated to bilingual picture books, and always ask people at work for useful Welsh words and phrases! It is a slow process, but I'm hoping to get there one day.

Berlitz used to be popular for learning French. They do fast-paced individual and group online lessons and residential stays.

Just quoting myself to add that City Lit have some nice Return to [language] courses which are for people brushing up an old GCSE or A Level, which is nice as you don't have to start at the beginner level again. For example Return to French (elementary) which is only a few weeks so not too expensive. I sound like a salesperson but I've enjoyed doing a similar course for another language.

Was Duolingo the only thing you used to learn Italian?

The free version of Duolingo seems to be a lot more limited than it used to be.

I’m learning Greek and only get a few minutes a day before I have to watch ads to gain more energy.

something to consider is old school but free, but have a look in your local library and see if they have language courses with books+CDs.

I'd say combine Duolingo with something else.

The value of Duolingo is that it keeps you going with the bite size down time learning.
You don't have to go there lesson by lesson, you can attempt skipping, the newly added things like stories are quite good.

For combination - some intentional learning - classes, online classes, reading, grammar book.

Online course with City Lit? You still have time to enroll before term starts.

I found BBC Bitesize incredibly useful for German grammar basics. It's worth checking out for the other languages which can be taken at GCSE level too. It was much more informative than Duolingo. I also had a fab BBC CD.

link to alliance francaise online lessons
(this is just the manchester branch - there will be other branches offering online lessons)
https://www.afmanchester.org/learn-french/online/
Also, not looked recently but open university had good language learning courses in the past ,which include a week abroad at some point. My df has done several.

Ive taught MFL in the past and respectfully disagree. Whereas there is no way you can reach fluency with it you can definitely pick up a lot of vocabulary and sentence structure. It is useless on grammar but i think used alongside proper lessons has a place. It's also very convenient and cheap. OP I'd recommend it and look up "alliance francaise" who i think do online group lessons.

Duolingo definitely can vary!
Also Klingon, Latin, Esperanto but no Thai?

My impression is that Duolingo's usefulness depends on the language being learned, as well as the personality of the learner. Apparently, each course is "made" by a team of volunteers (overseen by staff) so what goes into them depends on the teams.

Some time ago, DH completed the entire course in one of my native languages. The course was quite short and he definitely couldn't string together more than the most basic of sentences by the time he finished. And also, as mentioned by several posters, he felt reluctant to try speaking up if he couldn't say things with perfect grammar. More crucially, he could hardly follow at all when native speakers spoke to him (quite patiently and slowly) - he said the nice grammatical sentences he'd learned barely resembled the way that people actually chatted to each other in real life.

More amusingly, I did the Duolingo assessment thing for this language and it assigned me at 60% of the course because I was translating the more advanced sentences in a way it deemed incorrect!

I have a difficult target language which I want to learn. I'd like to learn Thai so I can speak to my lovely sister-in-law. But I don't want to learn the notoriously difficult Thai script, I just want to speak it. Anyway, there's no Duolingo Thai course. I'm thinking of finding a YouTube channel or a podcast or something like that.

DH and I did a few months of Japanese classes (in person, group) before our honeymoon there. It was enough to let us get by with shops, hotels, occasional chats with people in bars about where we were from, half in Japanese and half in English. I loved learning something new.

I actually felt that I picked it up much quicker than e.g. French at school, because there was much more emphasis on speaking to each other and less on e.g. absolutely accurate spelling. My biggest tip is to just stop worrying about making mistakes. Just like I mostly understand what people who are speaking imperfect English are trying to say, people mostly understood me!

Duolingo worked well for me, I like that I can replay sentences and repeat until I’ve got it. I find that easier than textbooks. Prob used it for 2 -3 years.

I use Alexa on YouTube for grammar, she breaks it down very well in short videos. Also, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed her numbers video until I knew them off by heart.

I then started a local council course, sadly cancelled from lack of funding.

Then I moved to France this summer, using my French already with trades people and vet etc. They pretty much understand me. I usually look up a few key vocab words before an appointment.

Keep going it is worth it.

Completing Duolingo, for many languages at least, really only results in a competent beginner/promising intermediate, at best.

Lots of good advice on this thread (and a few slightly bonkers ideas). I’ve recently started following Jennifer Kirchner on Facebook as she does bite size posts on French grammar, slang, phrases, vocabulary etc.

I learnt French at school and carried on with it at uni and then worked in Paris for a French company so my French is/was fluent but I worry that it’s getting rusty now I’m back in London and not using it.

I wouldn’t say Duolingo is a complete waste of time - it’s good for vocabulary but it doesn’t give you much understanding of structure or why things happen.
I’d completed it but was still really only at beginner level. Conversational classes are the best way for me whether in person or online. Watching TV programs, listening to radio, podcasts, reading etc helps.

I absolutely agree. I'm a firm advocate of hurling yourself into a conversation and hoping for the best. People are usually quite understanding (even in France, unless I'm actually making less mistakes than I think I am 😆).

You'll learn way faster than only opening your mouth if you're 100% sure what you're going to say is grammatically correct.

I did GCSE French at school and do it on Duolingo. I found Duolingo OK for bringing back my school knowledge. Useless for learning grammar. I also tried it for another language I'd never done before and I could recognise words on there but couldn't say a thing. Certainly couldn't communicate.

I've been on holiday to two French speaking countries this year and spoke quite a lot of French. That definitely helped.

To progress further I think I'd need to find a way to speak it to someone here, and improve my grammar and listening using textbooks and watching French films or something.

"So learning (alongside) the grammar from a textbook for new learners, will help you to get it right. E.g. irregular verbs so you don’t end up sounding like the little kid who says ‘I bringed it,’ or ‘I goed…’. Which is fine when you are 3 or 4! But most adults would prefer not to make such mistakes with a foreign language."*

But this is one of the problems that adults give themselves - the self-conscious fear of not getting a sentence or phrase 100% correct. Children don't have this fear, so they just say "bringed it" and learn over time the correct grammar, but in that "bringed" moment they were able to communicate sufficiently for the conversation to flow. When you're learning a language, getting a sentence slightly wrong is fine whether you're 3 or 4 or 34 and nobody goes from being a total beginner to being totally fluent without making mistakes along the way.

Adults tend to hold back instead of just giving it a go - asking "Train station this way?" is just as understandable as "Excuse me sir, would you kindly direct me to the nearest railway station?" and having the stock phrase "Sorry, my [language] is not so good" helps both when asking the question and when receiving the reply. In addition, much of face to face communication uses non-verbal signals, so absolute spoken fluency is not necessary as hand signals and facial expressions can also be used.

I used Duolingo a lot to learn Welsh. It was great for learning words and sentence structure which gave me a headstart when I joined an online class with Dysgu Cymraeg.
I agree with others, immerse yourself in the language, Domingo, online classes, residential weekends, read, listen to radio, watch French Netflix.

I'm exactly the same - whatever I'm learning, I need to be able to read it. I have French to Higher level (Scotland) but never used it in real life. So unsurprisingly I forgot almost all of it. Decades later, Duolingo was helpful in reminding me of the basics, whereas a holiday in France didn't help much as I couldn't 'see' what people were saying to me!

Duolingo can be good if you stick at it, but please don’t be taken in by those people who say you can learn the way young children do, by listening, understanding and repeating.

Babies’ and young children’s brains are programmed to mop up language - the ability does decline when you’re older. And children have many years in which to absorb and perfect language. Adults rarely do!

So learning (alongside) the grammar from a textbook for new learners, will help you to get it right. E.g. irregular verbs* so you don’t end up sounding like the little kid who says ‘I bringed it,’ or ‘I goed…’. Which is fine when you are 3 or 4! But most adults would prefer not to make such mistakes with a foreign language.

*honestly not hard to learn!

I also found duolingo useless tbh. I don't understand what the fuss is about.

Online classes might be better

It completely depends on how you learn best. I am a very visual learner ( as I have poor hearing). I need to see how things are spelled and also understand sentence construction.

i have learned 3 languages ( in addition to English). As a child I learned French by total immersion ( ie living there). However as an adult this didn’t work when I tried the same thing (with Italian). This was as although I lived there, my language course was almost completely based on listening and speaking. We literally weren’t allowed to write things down or have them spelled out. It drove me insane.

when I moved to another country and tried to just pick things up by listening, it didn’t work. So I went to evening classes which followed a text book, and I then flourished. Other language aids (like just conversation) could only help a little.

Everyone has a preferred style of learning. You need to find yours.( also Duolingo is useless). And practice practice practice.