I spend ten minutes or so on a lesson very similar to the Language Lab sessions I used to do when I was 11. I'm keen on Language Labs but it didn't work for me. I didn't learn French.
The reason was that my family moved house so I had to switch schools. And the school I went to did Verb table French, the classic system.
It would probably have been OK if I had been a decent student but languages are not my thing.
So I never even took O Level French and managed to do pretty badly at CSE French.
But I have to tell you that things are changing. My French is definitely improving. This is not particularly because of the slow grind of the Duolingo French course but because I have discovered TikTok.
Thanks to Joe Biden's cack handed attempt to ban TikTok I decided to sign up and start using the Chinese social media. If Biden wanted to get rid of TikTok it couldn't be all bad.
What I discovered alongside the welter of Chinese products which always turn out to be smaller than expected when you buy them, was a fascinating collection of sometimes erudite lectures, and sometimes faux pornography. And then there were the French lessons. Hundreds of different ones. People just seem to decide teaching French would be a good thing. Let's do it. And so they do. The effect of having a genuine human being seemingly talking directly to you can be electric. It replaces what Duolingo lacks, which is the conversational element. It also gets rid of that bloody cartoon owl!
However, my poor brain still aches after about ten minutes of this. It may be a more efficient way to learn French. God knows 1,300 lessons can't be efficient. But it doesn't make you younger or more mentally agile.
Jonathan Brind