Salut !
Si vous voulez progresser en français, il vous faut un plan. Une structure efficace, pour vous permettre d’avancer vraiment, et sans toujours repousser vos envies à plus tard.
If you want to improve your French, you need a plan. An effective structure, so you can make real progress and stop putting your goals on hold.
J’ai aidé des milliers d’élèves à parler français avec assurance, et à créer des relations réelles avec des francophones d’ici. Alors aujourd’hui, je veux vous aider, vous.
I’ve helped thousands of students speak French confidently and form real connections with local French speakers. So today, I want to help you, specifically.
Learning French can feel overwhelming. Let’s see how you can create a clear study plan (and why), and the seven powerful techniques to become fluent in French.
1) What’s your personal goal?
You’ll learn effectively if you have a clear goal in mind – the one you picked for your own personal situation. Like:
- A C2 level at the exam
- Chatting with the vendor at the marché provençal
- Understand a guided tour of the Louvre in French
- Talk about movies with French friends
- Or anything else that you’re looking forward to
Once you have your goal in mind, you can figure out what you need to reach it – with practice.
2) Schedule for your skills
Here are different (overlapping) skills you can improve to reach your goal:
- Reading
- Writing
- Speaking
- Listening
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
Pronunciation
- Assess your level for each of them (be honest) on a scale from 0 to 7
- Slot them into your weekly schedule, spend more time on those you need to improve
- A skill with a self-assessed level of “5” means you’d practice it 2 days a week, while a level of “3” means you’d practice it 4 times a week, etc.
For example, your Weekly Practice Schedule could look like this:
If you only have 40 minutes in your day to practice French, and 4 skills in your schedule for that day, then you can spend 10 minutes on each skill.
Spend more time on those you need to improve (be honest), and less time where you feel like you can reach your goal with your current skill level. Even 5 minutes a day, if it’s a regular habit, will do wonders.
3) How to practice your skills
READING
- Reading quickly: try to understand the general meaning of a text.
- Detailed reading: try to look at every single word, translate the ones you don’t understand.
Pick resources for your level:
- 1jour1actu
- Le Petit Prince
- Recent best-sellers, like: Un Animal Sauvage (Joël Dicker)
- Classic of French literature: Notre-Dame de Paris (Victor Hugo)
- Newspaper articles: Le Monde, Télérama, Le Un, Beaux-Arts Magazine, Village Magazine
WRITING
What kind of writing will you need to reach your goal?
Write drafts for that: practice writing postcards in French, an email to a French B&B to ask about availability, or a short note to a friend describing a delicious meal you had.
SPEAKING
Imagine confidently ordering a café crème and a croissant aux amandes at the bakery, the next time you’re in Paris!
Conversation practice is wonderful, whether with a friend at your local Alliane Française, or your peers and teacher at the Comme une Français Conversation Club.
You can also (yes!) speak to yourself. Try saying your French thoughts out loud!
I have personally used this technique when I was learning English in the UK, and I can tell you it works.
LISTENING
Listen to French media, like movies or TV series in French, like:
- Call My Agent on Netflix
- The new Asterix mini-series
- A classic movie with Catherine Deneuve or Alain Delon
- Something at random, really
Then:
- Listen for two minutes without subtitles.
- Listen to the same two minutes again with subtitles in French
- Write them down, translate them
- Listen again without subtitles
You can adapt this exercise with audio only, with French podcast with transcript like those on Radio France, or even a French song on YouTube or Spotify where you’ll check the lyrics after listening to it in French.
VOCABULARY
When reading French, you found a lot of new words and expressions that you didn’t know. How can you remember them?
- Write them down in a notebook or diary, on your phone or on paper
- Create lists by themes or situations
- Take the time to review them for practice
- Practice spaced repetition – it’s the one effective method for real memorization
GRAMMAR
- Pick a grammar rule you want to explore, maybe one that you encountered in the rest of your practice.
- Focus on one concept at a time: conjugation, pronouns, agreement…
- Study the rule and see how it works
- Sit down and write 10 to 20 sentences using that concept, make sure you’d use these sentences yourself in everyday life (towards your goal)
PRONUNCIATION
- Just like vocabulary, create a Pronunciation List of words that you found difficult to pronounce
- Sit down and practice: mimic a French person’s pronunciation until you can say the word perfectly.
- Pay attention to nasal vowels, the French “R”, the difference between “u” and “ou”, the “euil” sound, etc.
- If you don’t have the native French person’s pronunciation at hand, play the word in GoogleTranslate’s French mode to listen to it.
- It’s an imitation game: leave your ego aside, just pretend to be playing the character of a French person, with the accent and pronunciation. Go overboard. That will actually bring you much closer to real French pronunciation that you think!
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Having a personalized schedule is good, but what if you had a step-by-step, ready-made roadmap? To help you even further, I’ve created a Personalized Weekly Action Plan specifically for French learners.
This Weekly Action Plan includes:
- Customized schedules for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners
- Daily activities designed specifically for each of the seven skills
- Easy-to-use progress tracking tools
- Proven French-specific strategies for overcoming common challenges like pronunciation, listening comprehension, and grammar confusion
Thousands of students have dramatically accelerated their progress using this guide.
Click here to get your Weekly Action Plan now
This weekly plan will help you stay consistent, which is the real secret to language learning success. Whether you’re a beginner or advanced, having a structured approach will dramatically speed up your progress.
Now take action, and start improving your French today!
À très vite !
See you in the next video!
Commonsense advice that is easy to follow. One just needs the discipline to put it into everyday practice.