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Learning paths for French

A path is an order to do things in. Pick the one that matches what you actually want — they lead to different places, and the fastest route to a conversation is not the route to reading a novel.

From zero Nothing → A2 · 3–6 months, 30–60 minutes a day

Where it gets you. Understand simple spoken sentences and say what you need in a shop, a café or an introduction.

Take this if You have never studied this language and want a route that does not depend on willpower.

Not this if Anyone who already understands basic conversation — start at Get talking instead.

  1. Get the sounds in first

    Weeks 1–2

    Before any grammar, spend a fortnight just hearing the language. An audio course is ideal because it forces you to say things out loud from the first lesson without showing you a spelling to mispronounce.

    Why: Every hour you spend now on the sound system is an hour you do not spend later unlearning an accent built from reading. This is the cheapest correction you will ever make.

    5 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  2. Put a spine under it

    Weeks 2–12

    Add one structured course and work through it in order. One. The temptation to collect four is the single most common way this stage fails.

    Why: A sequenced course decides what comes next so you do not spend your daily half hour choosing. That decision fatigue is what actually kills beginner streaks, not difficulty.

    • FSI & Peace Corps courses (Live Lingua) Free Free public-domain US government language courses with textbooks and audio.
    • Duolingo Freemium Gamified daily lessons in 40+ languages; great for habit-building, weak beyond A2.
    • Busuu Freemium Structured CEFR courses with written corrections from native speakers.
    • Coffee Break French Freemium Four seasons of teacher-and-learner audio lessons, absolute beginner to advanced.

    11 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. Start hearing real people

    From week 4, alongside

    Ten to twenty minutes a day of listening made for learners — slow, levelled, and mostly in the language. You will not understand most of it. That is the point.

    Why: A course teaches you sentences someone wrote to be teachable. This is where you meet the language at its own speed, early enough that the gap never becomes frightening.

    2 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. Make the words stick

    From week 6

    Start a spaced-repetition deck, but only with words you have already met in the course or the listening. Ten new cards a day is plenty.

    Why: Flashcards are a memory tool, not a learning tool. Cards for words you have never encountered in context produce people who can recognise a word and not use it.

    • Anki Free The gold-standard spaced-repetition flashcard app with community decks for every language.
    • Memrise Freemium Vocabulary drills backed by clips of native speakers saying the phrase.
    • Clozemaster Freemium Fill-in-the-blank sentence drills for vocabulary after you know the basics.

    3 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  5. Say something to a person

    Month 3 onwards

    Book a first tutor session, or find an exchange partner. Half an hour, once a week, is enough to change what the other three stages feel like.

    Why: Speaking is the one thing no amount of input arranges for you, and the first conversation is the hardest one you will ever have. Have it while your expectations are still low.

    • HelloTalk Freemium Text, call and correct with native speakers in a language-exchange feed.
    • Tandem Freemium Language-exchange app with moderated profiles and easy voice/video calls.
    • italki Paid Marketplace of online tutors and community teachers for 150+ languages.
    • Preply Paid Large tutor marketplace with subscription-style lesson packages.
Get talking A2 → B1/B2 · 6–12 months

Where it gets you. Hold a real conversation about your life, your work and your opinions without rehearsing it first.

Take this if You can read a menu and survive a transaction, and you freeze the moment somebody asks you something unscripted.

Not this if Absolute beginners — the material here assumes you already have a few hundred words.

  1. Talk to someone every week, without fail

    Throughout

    A weekly tutor or exchange session is the engine of this whole path. Everything else exists to give you something to say in it.

    Why: At this level progress is limited by production, not comprehension. You cannot fix that by consuming more; you fix it by being stuck mid-sentence in front of a patient person.

    • HelloTalk Freemium Text, call and correct with native speakers in a language-exchange feed.
    • Tandem Freemium Language-exchange app with moderated profiles and easy voice/video calls.
    • italki Paid Marketplace of online tutors and community teachers for 150+ languages.
    • Preply Paid Large tutor marketplace with subscription-style lesson packages.

  2. Move to material made for people, not learners

    Months 1–4

    Swap half your listening from learner podcasts to things natives actually listen to. Interview shows are the gentlest entry: one topic, two people, slow turns.

    Why: Learner audio is levelled to be understood; the real thing is not. The step across is uncomfortable for about three weeks and then it is simply where you live.

    6 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. Close the grammar gaps you keep tripping on

    As they come up

    Keep a reference to hand and look things up when a mistake gets corrected twice. Do not work through it front to back.

    Why: At B1 the useful grammar is the specific handful you personally get wrong. A grammar book read cover to cover mostly teaches you things you were not about to say.

    • Lawless French Free Thousands of free grammar and vocabulary pages — the reference you'll keep tabbing back to.
    • Le Conjugueur Free Type any French verb, get every tense, mood and agreement rule instantly.
    • Français avec Pierre Freemium A career FLE teacher covering A1–C2 grammar, pronunciation and DELF prep.
    • Kwiziq French Freemium Adaptive grammar testing that maps exactly which CEFR points you haven't mastered.

    2 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. Read something long enough to forget it is a lesson

    Months 3–12

    One graded reader or one easy novel, read for the story rather than for vocabulary. Look up only what blocks the plot.

    Why: Extensive reading is where the passive vocabulary that makes conversation feel easy actually gets built, and it is the cheapest hour in this whole list.

    • Language Reactor Freemium Dual subtitles and click-to-look-up on Netflix and YouTube.
    • LingQ Freemium Read and listen to real content while tracking every word you know.
    • Readlang Freemium Click any word while reading the web to translate it and make a flashcard.
    • Short Stories in French (Olly Richards) Paid Eight genre stories per volume, written to be readable without a dictionary.

    1 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

Input first Nothing → B2, slowly · 12–24 months, patient

Where it gets you. Understand the language deeply and speak with a good accent, by listening for a long time before producing much.

Take this if You have bounced off grammar drills before, you have time rather than a deadline, and an accent matters to you.

Not this if Anyone who needs to speak in the next few months. This route is deliberately slow at the start.

  1. Hours of levelled listening

    Months 1–6

    Beginner comprehensible input, daily, in volume. Aim for hours a week rather than minutes a day, and stay at a level where you follow most of it without translating.

    Why: The whole bet of this path is that quantity of understood input does what explanation cannot. Half-measures give you the slowness without the payoff.

    3 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  2. Let it get harder on its own

    Months 4–12

    As the beginner material starts feeling easy, move up rather than adding study. Intermediate input, then native content aimed at a general audience.

    Why: The level should rise because you did, not because you decided to be ambitious. Material you understand 50% of is entertainment, not input.

    13 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. Add reading once listening is solid

    From month 6

    Bring in reading only after your ear is established, and keep it easy. A tap-to-look-up reader keeps you in the text rather than in a dictionary.

    Why: Reading early is what installs a spelling-based accent. Reading late, on an ear that already knows how the language sounds, does not.

    • Language Reactor Freemium Dual subtitles and click-to-look-up on Netflix and YouTube.
    • LingQ Freemium Read and listen to real content while tracking every word you know.
    • Readlang Freemium Click any word while reading the web to translate it and make a flashcard.
    • Lingopie Paid Licensed TV shows with interactive subtitles in 15 languages.

    2 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. Speak when you want to, not when a schedule says

    Month 9+

    When you catch yourself thinking in the language, or answering a podcast out loud, book a conversation.

    Why: This path's strongest claim is that output emerges from enough input. Its weakest point is that some people wait forever — if a year has passed and you have not started, start.

    • HelloTalk Freemium Text, call and correct with native speakers in a language-exchange feed.
    • Tandem Freemium Language-exchange app with moderated profiles and easy voice/video calls.
    • italki Paid Marketplace of online tutors and community teachers for 150+ languages.
    • Preply Paid Large tutor marketplace with subscription-style lesson packages.
A trip in a month Nothing → enough to be polite · 4 weeks

Where it gets you. Order, ask, thank and apologise without switching to English immediately, and understand the answer often enough to keep going.

Take this if You are travelling soon and you would rather arrive able to say something than nothing.

Not this if Anyone building toward fluency — this is a deliberately narrow sprint and it does not compound into much.

  1. Pronunciation for four days

    Days 1–4

    Learn how the letters sound and which syllable is stressed. Nothing else.

    Why: Being understood at all is mostly a pronunciation problem, not a vocabulary one. Four days here beats four days of extra words you say unintelligibly.

    • YouGlish Free Hear how a word is really said, searched across millions of YouTube clips.
    • Forvo Freemium Crowd-sourced pronunciations of nearly any word by native speakers.
    • maprofdefrançais Freemium A Montreal teacher on the accent and vocabulary of Quebec French.

    2 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  2. The two hundred words you will actually use

    Days 3–21

    An audio course, in the car or on a walk. These are built precisely for this: greetings, numbers, directions, ordering, asking for help.

    Why: Audio courses drill recall out loud under mild time pressure, which is exactly the skill a counter transaction demands.

    4 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. Hear the accent you are going to meet

    Days 14–28

    Ten minutes a day of native audio from the place you are going, even though you will barely follow it.

    Why: The gap between a course's studio speech and a real street is what makes people give up on day one of a trip. Meet it before you arrive.

    18 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. Something to point at

    Before you go

    One phrasebook or offline dictionary on your phone.

    Why: You will hit a word you need and do not have. Having somewhere to look costs nothing and saves the conversation.

    • Anki Free The gold-standard spaced-repetition flashcard app with community decks for every language.
    • Dico en ligne Le Robert Free Le Robert's free monolingual dictionary with usage examples, etymology and conjugation.
    • Larousse Dictionnaire de français Free The classic monolingual French dictionary: 135,000 definitions, free online.

    20 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

Read it Nothing → reading B2 · 9–18 months

Where it gets you. Read novels, news or academic material in the language, without needing to speak it.

Take this if You want the literature, the sources or the news, and conversation is genuinely not the point.

Not this if Anyone who wants to talk to people — reading transfers to speaking far less than people expect.

  1. A fast pass through the grammar

    Months 1–3

    Unusually for this site's advice, go through a grammar-led course quickly and do not worry about producing anything.

    Why: Reading is the one goal where front-loading grammar genuinely pays: you need to parse sentences, not generate them, and a table you can consult is enough.

    13 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  2. Graded readers, in quantity

    Months 2–9

    Start far below where your pride suggests. A book you finish beats a book you admire.

    Why: Reading speed is built by volume at an easy level. Grinding through something hard builds tolerance for grinding, which is a different skill.

    • Language Reactor Freemium Dual subtitles and click-to-look-up on Netflix and YouTube.
    • LingQ Freemium Read and listen to real content while tracking every word you know.
    • Readlang Freemium Click any word while reading the web to translate it and make a flashcard.
    • Lingopie Paid Licensed TV shows with interactive subtitles in 15 languages.
    • Short Stories in French (Olly Richards) Paid Eight genre stories per volume, written to be readable without a dictionary.

    1 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. A dictionary that does not break the page

    Throughout

    A tap-to-look-up reader or a good bilingual dictionary you can query in a second.

    Why: Every lookup that takes thirty seconds is a lookup you stop making, and the words you stop looking up are the ones you never learn.

    14 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. The real thing, chosen for interest

    From month 6

    News, essays or a novel you would want to read in English anyway.

    Why: At this stage motivation carries you through the difficulty, and nothing is more demotivating than a hard text you did not care about.

    17 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

Pick it back up Rusty → where you were, then past it · 2–4 months to recover, then continue

Where it gets you. Get back the language you studied years ago, and find out what you actually still have.

Take this if You did this at school or lived somewhere once, and you have no idea what is left.

Not this if Beginners. Almost everything here assumes there is something buried to recover.

  1. Find your real level before choosing anything

    Week 1

    Try an intermediate podcast and an intermediate text. Whatever you can follow at 70% is your actual level, not the level of the class you once took.

    Why: Nearly everyone in this position either restarts far too low and quits from boredom, or aims at where they used to be and quits from frustration.

    7 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  2. Listen your way back in

    Weeks 1–8

    Daily listening at that level. Recovery is much faster than learning was — most of it is still there and simply cold.

    Why: Recognition comes back before production does, so listening gives you the earliest evidence that this is working, which is what keeps you going.

    28 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  3. Fix the specific things you know you never had

    From week 4

    You almost certainly remember which tense or case you never understood. Go straight at that one thing.

    Why: Rusty learners have sharp, well-mapped gaps rather than general weakness, and those gaps are unusually cheap to close now.

    • Lawless French Free Thousands of free grammar and vocabulary pages — the reference you'll keep tabbing back to.
    • Le Conjugueur Free Type any French verb, get every tense, mood and agreement rule instantly.
    • Français avec Pierre Freemium A career FLE teacher covering A1–C2 grammar, pronunciation and DELF prep.
    • Kwiziq French Freemium Adaptive grammar testing that maps exactly which CEFR points you haven't mastered.

    2 more in the catalogue match this stage — browse all French resources.

  4. Speak sooner than feels reasonable

    From week 6

    Book a tutor and tell them you are returning, not starting.

    Why: The words come back much faster with someone waiting for them, and the embarrassment you are avoiding is smaller than the months you would spend avoiding it.

    • HelloTalk Freemium Text, call and correct with native speakers in a language-exchange feed.
    • Tandem Freemium Language-exchange app with moderated profiles and easy voice/video calls.
    • italki Paid Marketplace of online tutors and community teachers for 150+ languages.
    • Preply Paid Large tutor marketplace with subscription-style lesson packages.

Paths are opinionated on purpose. They are one defensible order, not the only one — and every resource under them is in the full French list, which you can filter yourself.