I started already a few weeks ago to revive my French. I did not speak it for 50 years. Only a few words when I was shortly in France.

Since I will be in a French-speaking country for the next few months, I decided to revive my French.

I started already in Panama with Duolingo for Spanish, I changed from Spanish to French.

Although this app is not bad, one can see that it is made with an English backgroud and that there French native speakers are not involved. It looks like the whole course is made with an AI application not understanding what every human teacher understands as an important matter.

The genus, or gender word is neglected in a way that nouns in vocabulary exercises are never presented with their gender. Verbs are not presented with the personal pronouns. The gender and the matching of personal pronouns has to be guessed and memorize from context of a given sentence.

Although stated as “Read the grammar hints and basic sentences” there are no grammar hints, only basic sentences.

The childish animation can fortunately switched off in the settings

Being forced to see their commercial over and over again gets annoying. And there is also a statement showing up saying language lessons should be free of charge and then they try to sell additional practice time at a hefty price on the next screen. This also in the paid subscription, which I have.

As I don’t like that, I will as the next app test the language course of Babbel and see if this is better.

As for my French, I really understand a bit more and It became easier for me to have simple conversations in French.

Hitchhiking in France was 50 years ago for me a great possibility to practice my French. Now, I hitch between the little port and the village of Atuona and enjoy these communication chances again.