Best way to brush up in language skills as an adult?

[Wotrewelookinat]

Hello, looking for recommendations... I'm nearing retirement and want to improve my very rusty french and Spanish (got to O level standard) for future travels in my campervan. The adult language lessons near us are during the day, so as I'm still working I can't get to them. I've tried duolingo but not a big fan. Can anyone suggest any YouTube channels or books that they've used please?
Merci beaucoup!

I find reading simple books I know well, often children’s books, in translation, really useful for growing vocabulary and basic grammar — if you know the plot and characters well, you don’t have to look up every other word.

The other thing my school-aged DS likes is turning on the French or German audio for tv series he likes, with the subtitles either in English or in the other language. He was watching Ted Lasso in French to revise for his Christmas exams.

Try a language partner on Language exchange.

For Spanish you could look at Dreaming Spanish

French:

Le Monde has a free app which you can read in French

If you have Netflix you can search for French language series and films. Lupin is good, as well as Dix pour cent which is a comedy series set in Paris.

French Amazon will deliver to theUK so you can buy easy books.

I follow various French tv and other people on Twitter - macron is on there.

Not sure whether that link is doing weird things, it's meant to be www.dreamingspanish.com/

Coffee Break Languages on podcasts & YouTube, & also Easy Spanish on YouTube.

Agree reading an easy novel in Spanish is a good way to keep your vocab up.

But pick your book well! It can be surprising to find that “easy” books in English are not actually easy in a foreign language - I’ve been reading the Shardlake books in German, and hadn’t really appreciated that a) I don’t know a lot of words for Tudor or religious items like “doublet” or “reliquary” in German, and b) I hadn’t noticed in English that every second word in a shardlake book is a fucking adjective - people don’t get on their horse and ride off, they “swing themselves up easily onto their tall, elegant, snorting, prancing, Flemish chestnut thoroughbred and gallop swiftly away, silver bridle jangling gaily in the still night air”. The plot is straightforward, the vocabulary isn’t! I read the English version in a couple of hours over the course of a flight, I’m still wading through the German version months later, a page at a time.

I read the local papers online. French in my case.

Great ideas, thank you everyone 😊

I learnt a couple of languages with iTalki. I found a couple of lovely tutors and was able to learn evenings and weekends, whenever suited. I prefer 1:1 online tutor style to books as you can practice speaking with native speakers. (A bit hard to not speak when you're the only one in the class!) :)

There is duolingo. I can't get on with it, but have friends and family that like it.

Seconding Dreaming Spanish. I started from almost nothing a couple of months ago - I only knew hola, amigo, hermano and a few other words. 150 hours later I'm now working towards a B1 listening comprehension level. Spanish feels so much more natural and spontaneous in my head than any language I've learnt the traditional way - probably because it's similar to the way I acquired my first language.

The videos are presented by a variety of "guides" from all over the Spanish-speaking world, so you can get used to hearing different kinds of Spanish. Each "guide" tends to make videos on topics they're passionate about - travel, geography, science, history computer games etc. There are also themed series such as the history of Spain, stories from the Bible, Mayan civilisation, and loads more.

Dreaming Spanish has free videos at every level but if you want more you have to pay for access. It's $8 a month, which imo is the best value for money you're ever going to get out of something that helps you learn a language.