Hi, I've been using Duolingo to learn some German and just by doing a few exercises everyday for about six months, I find myself on German messageboards accidentally but able to understand things that are being said! Not all of it, as my progress is quite slow but Duolingo itself (free service website that has an iOS app too) has helped greatly - it provides articles that you can translate or review other people's translations and offers use of the language and words in may contexts, each sentence to be translated has a little messageboard where people discuss its validity etc. I even picked up French and Portuguese!