My Daily French Routine with Podcasts and Duolingo

I've been studying French for about four months now, and the routine is fairly simple: private lessons twice a week, Duolingo daily, and podcasts for listening whenever I can fit them in.

The structured part

The private lessons are where the actual grammar and structure come from, twice a week with someone correcting me directly instead of guessing whether I've got something right. That's the piece I don't think an app alone would give me at this stage.

Filling the days in between

Duolingo is daily, even on days I don't have much time, just enough to keep vocabulary and basic patterns from going stale between lessons. It keeps me in contact with the language every single day, even though the real structured learning only happens twice a week in the private lessons.

Podcasts cover the listening side. I put one on when I can, sometimes actively following along, sometimes just in the background while I'm doing something else. Four months in, I still catch maybe half of what's being said in a normal-speed episode, but that's improving week to week.

Where I'm at after four months

I'm at a basic level, which feels about right for four months of part-time study. The combination of structured lessons, daily Duolingo, and regular listening is working, it's just going to take longer than four months to get past basic, and I'm fine with that as long as the routine keeps holding.