Lessons for complete beginners

The first few months of a language are more predictable than most people expect. Sounds and the alphabet come before any grammar, because pronouncing a word wrongly for a year is hard to undo later. Then a few hundred words, chosen because they cover most ordinary situations rather than because they appear on a list. Somewhere in there you cross the line where a menu stops being a puzzle, and much later, usually to your own surprise, the line where you can follow a conversation that was not aimed at you and slowed down for your benefit. What a tutor mainly supplies at this stage is the order. An app will happily teach you the word for elephant in week one; a person looks at why you are learning, which language you already speak, and what you will need first, and sequences it accordingly. Lessons run in person or by video, and a free first one is normal.