I've used Duolingo French mostly daily since last August, along with reading children's books of gradually increasing difficulty. (I'm into the first Harry Pott

I've used Duolingo French mostly daily since last August, along with reading children's books of gradually increasing difficulty. (I'm into the first Harry Potter book at this point.) I think I could've learned substantially more efficiently than with Duolingo, if I could've focused on it as a top goal, but it worked well enough as a way of turning time when feeling tired with no initiative into learning time. You just fire up the app and do what it asks you to, for some delimited time per day, and gradually do get good enough at French to read real books. I wish it were better still -- some other responses have pointed out criticisms I agree with -- but by the standards of when I grew up, in the 80s, it offers something that afaik just didn't exist then. I took several years of Spanish in school but probably could not read it as well as I read French now. (I'll have to grab a Spanish Harry Potter and check.) Conversations out loud might be a different story.