I learned Thai as an adult but lived there for a year so that helped...

The key to learning a language is to learn the way a child learns, it's how our brains work. Children are not better adapted to learn languages as most assume, the problem is adults change the way you naturally pick it up. Children don't open books and memorize dialog, they listen to parents and siblings, they hear others talk, they watch t.v etc. In other words, they are surrounded by hearing language and it still takes them 5 years to start putting sentences together and another few years to read and write.

So, leaning takes a while but the best way to do it as an adult, is to listen to natural speakers, not stale dialog. As an adult who has already learned a language, you can do it much faster than a child but you still have to do it in order (ie. listen-talk). I would watch you-tube videos of simple movies that you can follow without words. That will give you a sense of pronunciation and basic ways to speak naturally. Then you can pick up specific phrases and for that there should be lots of that on YouTube.

Babbel can work as can many others Google Play has a free app. Knowing how to say Thank you, please, bathroom etc should be your priority. The other thing I found that came in very handy was my ability to read a menu. This link can help you with that;

https://www.thoughtco.com/...-french-menu-1371302

Almost every business will have people that speak English so don't worry too much, just enjoy your time there.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Wife has been learning Spanish for the past year on one of those free apps. We just got back from a trip to Cuba and I was amazed how good her Spanish was, at least in every day situations. She works on it every single night and repetition is the key. I've been concentrating on French, but haven't put it to the test yet.

Again???

My French is limited and I live there.

I can function for ordering beer, food, general life tasks

My five year old is completely bi-lingual, has been for 18 months, prior to that she'd been in nurseries since birth and understood everything, had had massive exposure but really started speaking fluently at about 3.5-4 onwards

My three year old has just started being exposed but does not speak, she sings nursery rhymes but conflates English / French but by thr time she's in school she'll be fluent

Two things help: exposure and practice

Unlike many / most non French ex pats here, my kids go to French only non international schools, so there exposure is all day and both of them are the only non French kids in their respective schools

Our French friends and strangers are shocked by my eldest French. She speaks completely accent less French, hearing her switch is amazing

I'd suggest, exposure - institute francaise has an online radio I think where they speak much slower, watch series and whilst you won't understand you will increasingly hear accents and familiarity

As my French teacher said, learn to say a limited range of things really well

Michel Thomas and benny the Irish polyglot are worth looking at

thanks all. i think i will do babbel, because i have the free time at work to play around with the lessons.. sounds like listening/hearing it is also important.. i wonder if i could get my hands on Back to the Future in French.. a movie that i have memorized most of the dialogue, so perhaps it would be easier to link the french words/phrases w/ english

I'm going with my son to see the Tour this year and neither of us know a lick of French and plan to get by with the Google Translate app. You can have conversations with the app. We think it's all we will need :)

I've been doing DuoLingo for Spanish for a while now, and repetition is really important. Another thing that I realized was the importance of actually repeating ALL of the words and sentences out loud. I would sit with the family while they watched TV or whatever and do a few modules, but silently as to not disturb. But your mouth doesn't get trained to the way things are actually spoken and pronounced. I mention it cause you said you'd do it at work...

I am fluent in French, and pretty solid in Spanish now. Knowing one def. helped with the other, as the concept of things being masculine / feminine and the verb conjugation structures are similar...

Don't all DVDs have a language option? They do here, if you can't find your film, drop me a line and I'll mail you a DVD from Quebec... :)

EDIT TO ADD: Just checked Netflix up here lets me play BTTF in French...