In preparation for a two-week vacation in Italy in 2001, I began learning Italian in my mid-60s. I fell in love with the country and the language and have continued to study Italian since.
For a long time a group of five of us met with a tutor once a week, a woman who was a serious teacher who was patient and helpful. I've also spent two week-long language-learning sessions in Bologna. I am certainly not fluent as I am reminded every time we watch an Italian movie or mystery series. But in Italy I am able to make myself understood, ask directions (and understand the answer), reserve a hotel room, order a meal.
According to Wikipedia the idea for Duolingo originated in 2009 by Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn and his Swisborn post-grduate student Severin Hacker. "A driving motivation was von Ahn's upbringing in Guatemala, where he saw how expensive it was for people in his community to learn English. Hacker . . . believed that 'free education will really change the world' and wanted to provide an accessible means for doing so."
Although Duolingo can be free, I subscribe for $90 a year and am not pestered by ads. The program gives learners a variety of exercises to reinforce what we've learned. These include vocabulary quizzes, translations from Italian to English and English to Italian using an assortment of words provided, repetitions of spoken Italian, writing dictated Italian, translating into Italian without aids, and more.
I like the program because the principle is to teach the language the way a child learns: Introduce words and show how to use them without much grammar explanation, although some grammar is available. I like it because it keeps track of your daily performance and I am obsessive enough that now I've got a streak going I want to keep it going. And once a year, you can check your achievement.
Am I learning more Italian? Yes. Am I becoming more fluent? Probably not. Will I someday be able to read an Italian story? We'll see.
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