Of all the tools I've tried to begin learning a language, Pimsleur audio lessons have been the most effective. They're entirely auditory. They teach you a rela

Of all the tools I've tried to begin learning a language, Pimsleur audio lessons have been the most effective. They're entirely auditory. They teach you a relatively small vocabulary using spaced repetition, and if you do the lessons, you really learn that vocab well. They challenge you to speak (under time pressure) from the first lesson onwards, and because you're only learning words by ear, you can avoid pronunciation pitfalls that people who learn from written sources fall into. You can't get to fluency with Pimsleur, but you can build a very good initial base. I don't think Duolingo is really a very effective way to begin learning a language. In my opinion, early on, language learning should be intensely focused on auditory and speaking skills, and only later on branch out into writing, formal grammar, etc.