Top French Learning Techniques for Beginners

If you’re just starting out learning French, the most important thing to get right is your method. Mastering techniques will help save you hours of wasted time and streamline your learning process.

If you're reading this blog, then you're starting on the right foot. Many learners don't take the time to plan ahead and formulate their learning process. Instead, they launch right in, tackling hefty vocab lists and memorising rules. While that might seem like a straightforward way to learn a language, it’s also the best way to get yourself into a slump. Studies show that if you learn without context, you’re more likely to forget what you learn - and then you’re back to square one. Learning French isn’t just a numbers game. It’s about getting yourself into a position where you can communicate effectively and understand French as it’s actually spoken.

As a beginner, it can be tempting to throw yourself into the deep end. We get it: you want to learn French quickly, rather than going over the things you probably already know. But jumping ahead will only make you lose motivation, and if you haven’t grasped the fundamentals, you’ll struggle to understand or retain the trickier parts of learning the language. Here are some suggestions for practising French as a beginner:

• Follow a course - Following a structured course, such as Alexa's Complete French Course, which takes learners from A1 to C2 of the CEFR over the course of 40 video lessons, is one of the best ways to make learning a linear process that's easy to follow. You'll encounter key concepts, vocabulary and grammar points only when you're ready to take them on, rather than confronting the entirety of the French language from the start - an understandably daunting experience.
• Prioritise your vocabulary - When it comes to vocabulary, focus on the most common words first. Articles, pronouns, common words for places, occupations, colours: these are all words you'll use over and over again. There are well over 100,000 words in the French language.
• Get started on conjugations - For verbs, make sure you know how to conjugate them. That doesn’t mean learning all the tenses and moods immediately. If you can master the présent, the passé composé and the futur proche, then you'll be able to speak about the past, present and future. These tenses are important foundations for learning more complex tenses, such as the plus-que-parfait or futur antérieur.
• Get listening - It’s important to integrate audio into your learning as early as possible. Pronunciation and spelling don't always match. Silent letters, liaisons, and natural speech patterns can surprise learners who only study from text, and many French learners often get to an advanced stage without realising that they’re mispronouncing œil and oiseaux. More importantly, the more you listen to French, the more you’ll get used to it, and the easier you’ll find it to listen and understand when people speak it. If you've not listened to Alexa's podcast series yet, this is one of the best - and most entertaining - ways to get passive listening experience in French.

An effective routine for beginners might be as simple as spending 25 to 40 minutes a day learning. Spend part of that time listening to real French, part repeating aloud, and part reviewing words or phrases that you already know.

Find a routine that works for you. Something you can fall back on every day that covers all bases: reading, listening, writing and even speaking. Not only will this keep your learning interesting and varied, it will also get you into the habit of practising on a regular basis, which is essential if you want to develop proficiency in French.

The routine should be what works for you, but here's an example you might want to follow:

1. Listen first for sound - Play a short native audio clip, dialogue, or one of Alexa's read-along or dialogue videos. Don't worry about understanding every word. The important thing is to notice the rhythm of the sentences, and how familiar words and expressions are incorporated.
2. Repeat aloud - Try pausing the clip after each sentence and imitating the speaker. Do your best to capture their accent and intonation. You can also record yourself - that way you can listen to the tape and see where you might need improvement.
3. Use the phrase yourself - Try modifying the phrase in a way that still makes sense. For instance, if the phrase is Je n'aime pas ('I don't like'), try it with different subject pronouns, or even in a different tense.
4. Review tomorrow - Spaced repetition is essential if you want words and phrases to stay in your memory. Revisit what you've learned the next day, the next week, and so on.

Many beginners collect long vocabulary lists, then forget them under pressure, or when the context in which they learned them is no longer there. Better French vocabulary learning techniques connect words to pictures, emotions, places, gestures, and routines. This is the principle of association - that we remember best when those memories are connected to different senses, places or situations.

This can involve learning words in different rooms, or imagining them as different colours, or even building a memory palace to house all your new words and phrases. For instance, you could associate each word you learn with a different object in your immediate environment. Next time you enter that space, there's a good chance you'll remember each word as you take in each object again.

Repeating this for thousands of French words might seem a tall order. But over the long term you’ll save time, because the words will be far more likely to stick.

You can also integrate learning vocabulary into your daily life. Tricks include changing the language on your phone to French, or turning on French subtitles when watching TV.

Be careful with cognates. French and English share many related words, but pronunciation can be very different, and some familiar-looking words do not mean what you expect.

As a French learner, you won’t start off speaking quickly or fluently - and that’s fine! Native speakers will not expect you to be on their level, and will appreciate the effort you put into learning their language. It's normal to forget words and mispronounce the ones you remember, or to incorrectly conjugate verbs and mix up your articles. But this is all part of the learning process. The more mistakes you make, the closer you’ll get to where you want to be.

That said, you can get good speaking practice in before ever meeting with a native speaker. Read sentences aloud, repeat lines from French audio, or even pretend you're having a conversation in French. These are all good ways to practise French without fear of embarrassment.

Once you’re ready to practise speaking alongside other learners, be sure to check out our speaking practice classes. These are small online classes centred on material in the Complete French Course and covering different levels of the CEFR, in which everyone gets a chance to speak French.

Most beginners struggle for predictable reasons. They avoid speaking, rely only on written French or jump between too many resources. These habits make French feel harder than it needs to be.

To avoid wasted effort, keep your system simple. The Learn French With Alexa website for example has all the resources you need to attain C2 level French - and beyond, from The Complete French Course to verb and vocabulary lists, plus Alexa's YouTube videos.

When it comes to self-study, it's good to diversify your learning materials, but try to avoid these common mistakes:

• Studying silently: French must be spoken and heard, not only read.
• Memorizing isolated words: Context is key. Put new words into phrases immediately.
• Avoiding mistakes: Perfectionism can be a hindrance - just try your best to make sense, and the rest will come naturally.
• Using content that is too advanced: It can be temping to choose the more challenging material, but you'll learn most effectively when learning with resources suited to your level. You can find your CEFR level with our placement test
• Expecting instant fluency: Fast progress still requires repetition, patience and lots of immersion.