To ask how you learn a language?

You can find a 1:1 online tutor through italki.com. One of my son's friends tutors English and the organisation is quite picky who it uses.

City Lit has a good reputation for language learning classes online.

If you have Netflix, watch it in French. Just 30 mins a day.

You have to experiment and decide what works best for you. Personally, I find reading a book in the language I'm learning the best. That, combined with YouTube videos.

I have taught myself French that way. I'd especially recommend dual language books, where you have the French on one side and the English translation on the other. They have done Flaubert, Proust, Maupassant, etc. You can also buy English-language classics with the French translation on the other side. Don't rush. The key is keeping at it. Just do a little every day. I have dual language copies of Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Mr W. H., D. H. Lawrence's short stories, and Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. I'd rather try something lighter like P. G. Wodehouse, or even the Narnia books, but I don't think they've been turned into dual language editions (then again, Wodehouse is probably untranslatable.)

The infuriating thing is that you think you are making amazing progress and then suddenly find all your confidence knocked out of you. I actually read a few pages of Proust a while ago (Proust!!) and found I could understand it. I was buzzing. Then I tried to hold a conversation with someone in French and mumbled and stuttered and hadn't got a clue. I find the same with reading. Sometimes I'll pick up a French book, open it at random, and find I can read an entire page. Then a week later I'll be in a different shop, pick up a crappy detective novel, and struggle to get past the first sentence.

God how I wish I'd concentrated at school. Education really is wasted on the young. I had such brilliant, keen French tutors, and I just sat there in a sulk ignoring everything they said.😕If I was 16 today, I'd do A Level French and A-Level Italian (or maybe Latin) and work like a slave.

I completely agree we have a complex about Irish! I moved back to Ireland with a foreign-born seven year old and within a month at his school, he’d already absorbed from his new classmates that Irish was boring and pointless.

SquaredPaper

Ah I think I just went off on a tangent- not what you were saying, sorry!!!!

SquaredPaper

m Sorry but you’re lucky you’re in that area, there have been talks and talks about how to get more people speaking and understanding Irish, it’s always asked how schools get it so wrong (except Gaeltacht areas and gaelscoils) and how we only know about five phrases etc. I had a grinds teacher who used tk bitch about how many people marked on the census that they were fluent. It’s something I’m interested in because I did it for years and still just can’t wrap my head around it so am always looking out for ways to learn it (I listen to raidio and gaeltachta, used to read the Irish newspaper- everything!!)

If you can have the time off work, an intensive course may be an option.

Hope something works for you and good luck.

If there are no face to face classes within reach, research online language classes. Lots of respectable educational institutions provide them. It's not a cheap option, and you may have to commit to a full term in advance as well as buying a textbook, but it's a reliable way of being taken through the language in a logical progression and at a realistic pace.

Have a look at BBC Bitesize for the language you hope to study.

If you've got some experience of language learning, Duolingo isn't completely useless. I've found it helpful in introducing vocabulary and grammar beyond what I'm getting in class. As a sole resource, however, it's possible to play it as a game without learning any of the language, and I believe it's now a pain in the neck to use without a paid subscription. I decided the cost of a subscription was worth it because it's an easy way of doing half an hour of the language every day on top of whatever else I do.

Learning a new language as an adult is HARD. There's no way round the need to put in the work of learning lists of words and memorising irregular verbs as well as becoming familiar with the structure of the language and its pronunciation.

I started with Duolingo, developed a long streak, but quickly realised it was more of a game really. I completed all the German, and English from German too (as that taught more German), but there are definitely much better options out there for language learning. I actually play around on the Duolingo Maths now, but because I added that while in German to English mode the Maths is actually using German language terms.....🤣🤣🤣🤣

Ah, thank you, that's very kind of you!

I love languages and really enjoy learning them, because I find it makes the experience of travelling more enjoyable - I find that people are almost always friendlier and more accommodating if you've made the effort to at least learn please, thank you etc in the language of the country you're in.

I studied it in primary school, had extra tuition outside school, did it for GCSE, then A level, then went to uni and did a degree in it including a year abroad. I still don't speak it all that well 😂😂. I obviously speak it a lot better than your average person, but I'm not fluent at all.

I think I made the most progress during my year abroad, so think the answer is probably to spend lots of time in the country where they speak the language you want to learn

Go to the country and find a boyfriend/girlfriend from that country who lives there.
You'll soon learn.

I just spent a month in a country where I didn’t speak the language at all. I did 100 days streak of Duolingo (the full premium version which included speaking exercises) and tried to listen to the news in easy (language) a couple of times a week before I went. I was amazed when I got there to find I could get by very easily - had all the vocab I needed for basic interactions and could understand what was being said to me. I’m sure my grammar and accent were not fantastic but it certainly wasn’t a waste of time and in fact was a good starting point and confidence builder.

I share a house with one. Years and years of Duolingo, unable to order a beer 😀

I have some sympathy as I did A level French and had to sit on a bench in the Gare du Nord working out how to order my breakfast when I went to be an au pair.

Languages teacher here. Ideally you would learn in a way which involved actually being able to speak to people, for example at a class (even a virtual one).

Duolingo is pretty good as a starter, but it is pretty limited. You don't gain any kind of level of conversational fluency with it. The most important thing is to do LOTS of listening, whether it's podcasts, YouTube videos or (eventually) audiobooks. Listening improves your comprehension, vocab, grammar and sense of sentence structure, pronunciation and accent. If you are aiming to speak (rather than write), you ideally learn by listening, not reading.

You are an inspiration!

I share a house with one. Years and years of Duolingo, unable to order a beer 😀

I have some sympathy as I did A level French and had to sit on a bench in the Gare du Nord working out how to order my breakfast when I went to be an au pair.

I have been taking classes with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra – Il nuovo sito dell'Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra https://iiclondra.esteri.it/en/Istituto Italian Cultural Institute - they have lots of options!

Edited to say - apologies, not sure why the link went a bit mad!

Institut Francais (and various other places such as City Lit) do online evening courses.

www.institut-francais.org.uk/french-courses/#/

'Telford' should read 'record'. Apologies!

My DD used Duolingo and has a decent 2 year streak. She now has additional conversational classes online with an Oxbridge student which help think on your feet, learn grammar better and practice her accent.

Language learning apps
Language learning CDs
BBC Bitesize
Watch TV in that language (Netflix, Walter Presents on Ch4)
Watch YouTube videos/listen to podcasts in/teaching that language
Listen to music in that language
Evening class

I've gone from knowing basically no German to understanding spoken and written German reasonably well, while getting slowly better at speaking....and did/do all of the above. 😃

I am bilingual (English and Gaelic), speak fluent French and am also reasonably competent (B1) in Japanese and Korean (but I had intensive lessons in both and lived and worked there for a while).

I recently decided to learn Italian and have taken a mixed approach - Duolingo is good for habit-forming, but I also attend both in-person and online classes on a weekly basis and do 'the hard yards' in terms of memorising verb tables the old-school way by just constantly writing them out. I also listen to Italian podcasts and radio stations

I've gone from 0 to roughly A2/lower B1 in about five months this way, but I appreciate it's quite hard-core - that equates to about at least an hour of practice a day. It will probably take me about two years to get to C2 without immersion.

However, I've just got back from Italy and I was able to converse with native speakers easily, so worth it!