Quick update - in August I continued to use Duolingo most days, as of the 31st of August I have a 52 day Duolingo streak.

I still need to find something to supplement it with. I have just ordered a French Short Stories for Beginners book - I'll let you know how I get on with it.

In July I really got back into the habit of using Duolingo most days, as of the 31st of July I have a 26 day Duolingo streak. I also had done some practice in the first few days of the month, but then lost the streak in the first weekend of the month.

I've changed my approach a little bit in the last few days. Duolingo has a series of courses, and at the end of a bunch of lessons is a checkpoint. Each course has 5 levels. I've done most of the lessons up to checkpoint 2, but I've only done two or three levels of most of those courses. I really started to struggle on the course 'People 3' so I've gone back to the beginning, and I'm working on completing all levels on all the courses up to checkpoint 1 before continuing any further

I still need to find something to supplement it with - I'll have a look for something in August.

Again, not really much of an update.

Although I haven't got back into the good habit of doing a little bit everyday on Duolingo I have been doing some most weeks.

I still need to find something to supplement Duolingo with.

I'll definitely do better this month.

Not really much of an update.

I completely failed to get back into the habit of using Duolingo on a regular basis.

I used it on a few days, but not really much progress.

Must do better this month.

Argh…

I lost my Duolingo 58 consecutive day streak, on the 4th of March.

Noooooooo!

Strangely the app gave me 1 days grace, and if I'd have completed a lesson on the 5th of March then the streak would've continued. But I just feel like that is lying. And I forgot on the 5th. I've taken a few days off as it. So starting that again today.

And if you sign up to the premium you get streak protection

Still super impressed with Duolingo. Still need to find something to supplement it with.

After having a bit of a hunt for local courses, and having a look for learning French CDs, and not having much luck, I took a look for an app, and came across Duolingo.

I'm not sure I wasn't expecting much from it, but so far I've been very impressed with it.

It's structured into courses, each course has 5 levels, and each level has 4 lessons, and each lesson has a series of questions. Courses include Basics, Greetings, Family, Travel, Habits, etc. There are a vareity of formats of questions, which help to repeat the same words enough to help you remember without it becoming repetitive.

In the free version you are issued a heart every few hours, and making a mistake in a lesson cost you one heart. If you run out of hearts you can't start another lesson. Completing lessons earns you gems, which can be spent on hearts, or outfits for the little owl character.

There are also 'stories' - these weren't quite what I was expecting at first - they aren't quite short stories, but more conversation which help put the words you've learned into context.

A nice little feature is that it keeps track of how many continuous days you've completed a lesson - I'm current on 30 day streak.