Pamela,
I use Preply, I’m fortunate to have the time to take lessons 5 to 6 days each week, and do about an hour of flashcards and practice each day afterwards. Still I find it difficult to join in on conversation, mostly because I’m too slow with my translation to keep up. My comprehension has improved greatly. However my friends and fiancé all love to improve their english speaking with me which does not help me a lot.
While preply is certainly not free, I found after 6 months of duolingo I was not progressing. Babble was better. But preply has been the game changer for me.
I’ve also purchased some french version of books that I loved and read more than once in english. I find it quite helpful.
Bon Courage
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Thank you for sharing, @Metrish. I was looking at this to help the elder brother of my English student who is on a plateau at B2 and needs to reach C2 in order to practice his profession overseas.
I have already suggested their household practices an hour daily English speaking only, while their French only mother is preparing dinner. Will help a bit but there is no one correcting because their father is a lovely softee.
I am thinking to recommend the young man joins a Preply native English tutor maybe 3 hours a week. I’m glad you are finding it good for French and wish you continued learning!
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Another vote for a response along the lines of “Don’t be daft!”… I was 65 when we moved here full-time and we’d had the house as a maison secondaire for nearly 20 years at that stage. However, I very much agree that living here is completely different because you can (should?) engage with the local community at a different level.
The main problem with Duolinguo in my view (apart from it really beng aimed at Americans, which can be difficult for Brits) is that life isn’t long enough to do it! It’s based on repetition, a bit like for very small children, but as an adult it is very much too slow. You learn some very basic stuff but you can be doing it for years and not progress much.
I embarked on some on-line stuff, a local face-to-face teacher, as many encounters with local people as I could engineer, then joined some local Associations (walking group, choir etc) and formed one of our own (Franco/English conversation group).
Yes it’s difficult learning as an older person - it’s ideal really to be of working age when you come here because then you are thrust into the middle of real French life and have to engage with it. Beiing older means you don’t have those routes, nor do you have the chance of conversation with other parents, whose children are at the same school.
We took a DELF/DALF exam last week which certainly showed up the holes in our ability to function fully in French BUT there was nothing at all there that I didn’t understand. We’ll know better what to do next time.
All I would say to @Pamela_Shields and @Grumpy_OldMan is that, if you try as many means of encountering French as possible both spoken and written, and try to form relationships with people, you will learn far more effectively than by using an inappropriate on-line platform. We all learn differently and need to give ourselves every chance. Don’t get depressed - you’ll get there 
(It may take a little while…)
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The preply tutor provides flashcards with words/sentances relevant to the lesson each day. You practice those over and over until you can mark it easy. It should be beneficial to the elder brother.
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Well done! But you may not need a next time surely?
So kind… but yes, unfortunately 
(Unless the pass mark is a GREAT deal lower than I would have thought!)
Just stay away from Goethe 
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We’ve just spent a few days in Switzerland - german speaking bit. Both OH and I were convinced we should understand it, it just sounds so clear and logical. Sadly my german speaking stopped at 5 years old, so our expectation far exceeded reality. One day maybe i’ll have a go.
Schwytzertütsch isn’t easy - I can mostly manage ok because I’m used to hearing Alemannisch in Freiburg but I certainly wouldn’t say I’d understand 100% of eg 2 people speaking rapidly together, and yet German is my second language.
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Did you ever meet anyone who became fluent in French by using Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, or any of the other language apps? Me neither. It seems like it should be possible, but it never actually happens.
On the other hand students of Alliance Française and other similar schools routinely achieve B2 fluency and go on to continue their studies at a French university or work in French companies. If you don’t have access to such a course of study where you live you can study online at Alliance Française locations around the world via Zoom. Or you can sign up for private online tutoring from a number of websites such as Preply.com.
Nearly all of the foreigners you have ever met who are fluent in French learned it in a classroom. If you put in the time and effort that method will work.
I have studied French at a couple of US universities, at the Alliance Française in Paris and New York, and currently with a tutor at Preply.com. University-level instruction is the best, but AF is good, too. The tutoring is for conversation practice after having learned the basics of grammar, usage, etc. in the classroom. When I move to France next year I will prepare for the DELF B2 test and then continue study at some institution to progress to C1 or maybe even C2.
I do wonder if this is age related? I had a very traditional education where you studied something leading to examination. My brain is now wired this way. Younger people had a much more interesting education with projects, and creative approaches.
But even so, before we actually moved to France I had the DELF B2, and studying for DALF. Which was fine in terms of being able to decipher administrative forms. But I wouldn’t say I spoke French with any fluency at all!
I don’t believe the failure of the language apps has anything to with age, since as far as I can see the younger generation isn’t succeeding at second language acquisition via apps any better than their predecessors. My opinion is that language learning apps are the same kind of scam that we remember from seeing guys with six-packs promoting body-building via stretchy rubber bands for sale. Those body builder types actually all got their six packs the same way, by pumping iron in the gym.
As for different styles of learning, that is mostly bunk that came out of the prevalence of consumer advertising in modern culture. So, I don’t think that the younger generation’s penchant for creativity has much application in language learning.
DELF B2 is necessary for qualifying for French citizenship, but, of course, the goal has to be native, C2 fluency.
Not sure I consider C2 as native fluency? I know this is what is set out in texts, but to me it only means proficiency. And can you be a native speaker without loosing your foreign accent?
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I think you can be as fluent a speaker as a native, but losing your mother tongue accent completely is very rare. I knew only one person who was taken for Spanish from his accent, for example, and I can always spot a non-native speaker of English.
Losing an accent is not a skill of language, but of acting and impersonation.
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Which is why a parrot can speak without an accent?
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Still sounds like a parrot though. 
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Native isn’t comparable though, in many cases someone educated and who has achieved C2 will speak better, with more precision and with a greater breadth of vocabulary than some native speakers - but they won’t generally be mistaken for native speakers. Often their pronunciation is a bit off. Sometimes you can hear the other language’s structures behind what they say.
I meet people all the time who are supposedly perfectly bilingual, only they aren’t, in fact.
I think it’s a term bandied about rather a lot especially by people who can’t actually tell, just as theories about bilingualism come out of the mouths of monoglots a lot of the time and are frequently (in my subjective opinion) a load of rubbish.
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What was his native language? Because I know lots but they aren’t native English-speakers.
I have rudimentary Italian and whenever I visit (usually Tuscany or Umbria) I am asked which part of France I come from.
Down in 86, if I come out with a practised phrase, I have occasionally been accused of being a Parisian. It’s almost certainly an insult and one that I blame on my French teacher (M. Titus) in a 1960s English grammar school.
p s. as soon as I speak on they seem to realise I’m probably English…
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