Learning French on Duolingo

I'm on my second trip through the French course on Duolingo. 

The first time I went through it, I used the free course, and learned basic things about grammar, as well as establishing a lexicon.

This time through, I signed up for Duolingo Max (it's about $150/year). This gives me help with errors, explaining what I'm doing wrong; it also lets me "talk" to the characters, via phone calls and role play. There also seems to be more talking and listening involved in the lessons this time through -- before, I was mainly reading and writing. Now about half the lessons involve speaking and listening.

That's made a big difference. I can (mostly) understand spoken French now, and because I get feedback on my spoken French, I can see where I'm fucking up.

It's also helping me with reading French -- I can now read French stories and novels if they are not too hard, and with the occasional help of a dictionary.

I've started trying to learn Russian, but that course doesn't give as much help as the French one does. The Latin and Greek courses as similarly useless, giving almost no help with the grammar or with errors. And I've been learning chess as well -- that course is pretty good, at least so far. (I knew the basics of chess, but nothing about the strategy or why certain moves were better than others.)

If you can justify spending the money, I'd go for Duolingo Max, is what I'm saying.