Has anyone learned a second language in recent years?

[taranaki]

I did Spanish in secondary school (so over 20 years ago) and i would love to take it up again. I have one more year of being a SAHM (kids are 5 and 6) so i have free time. Just wondering has anyone learnt a language and if so was it using Duolingo, a real life class or a tutor. I don't expect to be fluent or anything like it but I'd love to be able to speak to a decent level.

I did, by going to a university summer school in the country concerned, as I knew it would not happen otherwise. Strange to be a forty something in the class, but it was a worthwhile investment as it were.

with subtitles in target language I mean watching in target language with the subtitles in that language as well.

A woman in my class has changed her phone to Spanish to immerse herself as much as possible.

English living in Dublin for a few years, I've tried to learn some Irish, but it's not been a success. Classes are either for total beginners, or people are very fluent and will switch to English :( There are great books, documentation, etc. ... but limited resources for speaking. DH is not interested in learning either.

From DH/family I've learned a lot of Welsh, and can have basic conversations. I love visiting his home area/village! But it's been no help to me in learning Irish.

Following. I learnt several languages to an OK level as a teen but lost a lot of it in the intervening years. Recently I have been rekindling my interest by watching the Tageschau online, listening to radio, and watching things like Spiral, and things on Walter Presents. I also have loads of old Hola and Paris Match magazines! I watch ZDF Tivi with my kids when they will let me, you can get it on the Firestick. Love all these app recommendations. I would ultimately like to pick up one again at an evening class.

Duolingo Spanish is part of my daily routine. It has made me pretty proficient at reading and understanding. I also attended classes but the tuition was a bit unfocussed. As a change from Duo I like The Thinking Method, free on Youtube.
DH is learning Portuguese with Duo so that he can use it to converse with our DGS who is being brought up to be bilingual (Brazilian mum) and is doing very well. I found it too confusing to do Spanish and Portuguese at once.

I have been trying to learn Spanish for the past year and after a lot of trial and error would recommend:

1. Dreaming Spanish - Pablo uses the Comprehensible Input method and has almost 500 videos on YouTube. They are really entertaining and most are suitable for young children too, so you could watch some with your children if you wanted to include them. Pablo has various blogs explaining the approach- basically you build up comprehension before you ever attempt speaking. It's not for everyone but it has been a revelation for me.
2. Notes in Spanish have a great podcast.
3. Story Learning Spanish have recently launched a podcast that's great- more suitable for intermediate learners.
4. Preply- I recently signed up for 1:1 online classes. My tutor is fab, but just after I signed up I came across Dreaming In Spanish and the Comprehensible Input approach. After only a month of watching videos my comprehension has vastly improved and I've decided to hold off on the classes until my comprehension is at a level where speaking is appropriate.

I am learning French. I started with you tube lessons, as I can't access classes at the moment. then added children's songs in French with subtitles, and learned some verb conjugaisons with songs. then finding a mixture of teching videos and podcasts.

I need to go to lessons at some point so I can speak it, but you know, Covid etc.

My degree is French and Spanish and I live in Italy. I'm doing Norwegian on Duolingo and dusting down my Spanish.
Netflix is responsible for the fluency and vocab of many of my students.

@Dreams25
I love notes in Spanish and want Ben and Maria to adopt me!

I'm trying to learn Basque but I struggle to be motivated and it is such a difficult language. But I don't like that my kids can speak it and have secret conversations in front of me!

Spanish is a great second language to learn because there is so much good tv in Spanish available widely on Netflix. And of course so much if the world is Spanish speaking so you can reward yourself with a fantastic holiday!

I took gcse Spanish so I wasn't a complete beginner but not good

I decided to take it back up 2 years ago. I started with duolingo but I basically learnt practically nothing because I just found it soo boring. Jesus it was dull

I then signed up to a group class which was better but there was such a big variation in the group's skills (despite us all being supposed to be level a1) that it wasn't massively useful

Started 1 to 1 teaching a year ago and it has made a huge difference. I have improved massively in 1 year

I still see my tutor once a week and also read Spanish newspapers online. I also watch Spanish YouTube channels- Español con Juan is great for grammar and I am currently binge watching a channel called Luisito Comunica, which is a Mexican guy who basically travels to other countries and tries the local food

I'm using a combination of Babbel and Memrise to learn Spanish and I love it. Duolingo uses Latin American Spanish which isn't as good for me as I have family in Spain.

I emmigrated to Denmark, and for the first seven years got nowhere with the language.

Then I fell in love with a single mum who quite reasonably said we had no future if I couldn't communicate with her kids.

I hired a private tutor, which worked wonders and got much faster results than any independent study I'd tried.

A few years later and those kids are the perfect little teachers for correcting my pronunciation and grammar on a daily basis. Next challenge is raising their new little sister bilingual - I forget to speak English to her a lot...

Thanks everyone. I've made a list of all the suggestions and already started on the podcasts.

Check out languagetransfer it's amazing 🌟

Timetochoose123, yes, Language Transfer is brilliant. It is sort of sub-titled the Thinking Method, which is how I referred to it up thread.
Really excellent explanations of any tricky grammatical points and as a bonus the 'tutor' has the most beautiful liquid voice.
Available free on Youtube.

^ Ha yes he has!

I think the combination of the languagetransfer with duolingo & Italki is what worked for me. I only wish LT had the language I'm learning in full as I definitely accelerated my learning most with that. I also watched a really addictive soap with pretty obvious acting/facial expressions to expose myself to the language in an entertaining way.

I've been doing a bunch of Pimsleur courses because I am h&m artist and spend a lot of time in the car. I first started almost ten years ago when my husband was posted to Hong Kong. So far I've done 4 levels of Mandarin, 3 of French, 3 of Hebrew, 2 of French, 2 of Farsi, 1 of Cantonese. Each level has 30 half hour lessons and you learn about five to ten new words in each lesson.

Of course I have been avoiding the one language we probably all ought to learn: German.

My DD has learned Italian in the last 2 years using books, duo lingo to start and now following podcasts and most importantly an app where you match with a speaker f the language you want to learn who wants to learn your native language. She sends texts, voicemails and phones to talk to a couple of people and she has leapt up to c1 in last few months. She already had French but found the Italian grammar tricky

I think the repitition part of duolingo is useful alongside other stuff as it helps properly push words into your head so they come up without as much effort when you need them. But used by itself it can get boring and if you arent also practising conversation/writing/listening in more real life ways* you can only make so much progress.
*by real life I dont mean you have to go to France/wherever and live there for 6 weeks. But watching shows on Netflix etc in the target language (I started with cartoons and worked my way up) as well as, if possible, lessons online or in person or conversation practice are all good.