How to learn French effectively
Salut! This page is meant to answer a few commonly asked questions about how to learn French and use Italki to optimize your learning.
First of all, if you’ve booked a lesson with me, thank you. I’m looking forward to it!
If you’d like to book a lesson, you can go to the Italki website. Remember that paid subscribers to French With Frederic get a 10% discount on my lessons.
First, a few words about me. I was born and raised in Quebec, and lived in the USA for a few years in my early twenties. In my thirties, I also lived in Vancouver and Costa Rica. During that period, I also learned Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German. I don’t speak all of those languages equally well, but I've learned them to an intermediate or advanced level. I even wrote a book on the topic, called How to Learn Any Language in a Flash.
I currently run the free newsletter French With Frederic on this website, with weekly bilingual tips on learning modern French, with a Quebecois focus.
My formal education is in classical music, but I have worked most of my life in Internet marketing and copywriting.
A few years ago, I decided to transition away from my business career to pursue a new career in languages. I’m currently a student at the Université de Montréal in modern languages. I’ve done over 2000 lessons on Italki, teaching French exclusively.
Our lessons together
During our lessons, I take notes and correct what I hear. We’ll take some time to review those notes at the end of the lesson.
I pay attention to pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary.
One of my strengths as a teacher is that I can easily spot false friends and guess what you’re trying to say. This is even if your language skills are basic. I can spot mistakes coming from all the languages I learned.
The idea is not to speak exactly like a native speaker but rather to identify common errors you might not have noticed on your own.
What should I do with corrections after lessons?
I suggest practicing them for 5-10 minutes a day. It’s not necessary to learn all the words by heart. What’s important is to understand those differences and pay attention to them next time you speak or listen to French.
How many lessons a week should I book?
If you’re a beginner, I recommend the following self-learning resources to learn French: Pimsleur French levels 1-5 (best purchased on Audible for five credits for each level - the most economical way is to buy all the credits at once for one year.) I also recommend Assimil “French With Ease.”
My recommendations as a beginner are to take one lesson per week, to stay focused and on track. For beginners, I recommend 45-minute lessons.
If you’re intermediate, you should do two 30-minute lessons per week, or one 60-minute lesson.
If you’re trying to reach a C1 or C2 level, or need to pass an exam, I also suggest three 45-minute lessons a week.
Cancelling Lessons - Important!
Please download the Italki app and check the website.
With Italki, you can reschedule lessons up to 24 hours in advance. If you don’t show up for the lesson, I will wait 15minutes. If you arrive late, we can finish the rest of the lesson until the scheduled time. If I have to wait for more than 15 minutes, the lesson will be considered complete.
That being said, if you need to cancel on short notice, just tell me at least an hour in advance. I can credit the lessons back to you.
My approach
My approach is based on a method called Comprehensible Input, coined by linguist Stephen Krashen.
To learn more about this approach, watch this short video:
That’s why I’ll always suggest engaging content for you to read, watch and listen to.
Finally, you might ask, why so much content? Because only exposure to comprehensible input (content that you understand) will make you learn the language. For more details on this concept, here are a few videos to watch (in English).
What can I do to improve my vocabulary and grammar?
The most helpful thing you can do to improve your French is to read a lot.
Most likely you will underestimate the amount of vocabulary required to be a competent French speaker. Reading is the fastest way to acquire vocabulary because there's a higher density of words than in conversation or movies/videos. Also, with reading, you can see the words, pause as you wish and look them up.
You should seek material where there are no more than 4-6 unknown words per page of text (in a standard pocket edition book). If there are more unknown words per page, then find accessible material.
For grammar, I suggest getting a basic grammar book. The best books I have found are the Teach Yourself Series.
Because grammar can be boring if you do too much of it, I suggest doing 5 to 10 minutes a day when you are alert. For me, that’s first thing in the morning (after coffee!).
Should I make flashcards? Should I look up every word?
You can make flashcards with the words you encounter or look them up. I now think flashcards are overrated. Your brain will learn a word once it’s encountered it 10-15 times in different contexts.
I suggest getting high-quality dictionaries as apps on your phone. The best bilingual dictionary is the Collins French-English dictionary available as an app. With this app, you can bookmark words you've looked up. That way, you can tell if you look up a word more than once. But what’s great about this dictionary is the quality of the translation and the number of examples provided. I recommend this app instead of Google Translate.
You can also use DeepL Translator, a better online translator than Google Translate. But I really recommend the Collins app for most vocabulary searching.
How much reading is necessary to reach C1 level?
My answer will surprise you, but I think each level gets more difficult. C1 might require twice as long as B2.
The reason is that at A level, vocabulary is commonplace. You encounter it all the time. But C1 vocabulary is not as common, and therefore you need to read a lot more to create the necessary frequency to learn new words (10-15 times per word).
I suggest the following guidelines for reaching:
A level: 15-30 minutes a day, or more
B level: 30-45 minutes a day, or more
C level: at least one hour a day
This may seem excessive but believe me, it’s what’s required to make progress and eventually reach C1 or C2. One hour a day might be broken down into three 20-minute chunks. When broken down in such a way, reading in French will be less daunting.
What can I read?
You can read anything you like: newspaper articles, magazines, novels, short stories.
Subscribers to my French With Frederic newsletter also receive a complete newsletter in French, along with new vocabulary.
I can provide students with reading material in the form of eBooks separated by difficulty levels. But the best thing you can do is ask me for recommendations, and I’d be happy to give you ideas on what to read.
If you don’t like reading, you can watch lots of movies and series, but in French and with French subtitles.
Keep in mind that this activity will only be effective if you regularly pause the video to look up words you don’t understand.
YouTube channels
Here are some recommended YouTube channels.
L’histoire nous le dira
Voici une chaîne québécoise intéressante, avec beaucoup de vidéos bien faites.
InnerFrench
Cette chaîne propose des contenus en français pour des étudiants intermédiaires.
France Culture
Je trouve que France Culture propose des émissions intéressantes, pour un point de vue plus français sur l’actualité.
Rad
Une chaîne québécoise, jeune et dynamique qui traite d’enjeux sociaux.
Urbania
Un peu comme Rad, mais un brin plus irrévérencieux.
Audrey D.
Une chaîne populaire d’une Québécoise qui explique la culture québécoise aux Français et aux nouveaux arrivants, en plus de faire des vlogs sur divers sujets.
What about movies, TV series, YouTube videos, podcasts?
Films and series are an excellent way to consolidate your learning, but they won’t help you make much progress. I suggest only watching movies and series if you can do it relatively easily with French subtitles. Otherwise, it’s wise to keep this activity for when you’ve built enough vocabulary. Instead of video material, I tend to prefer podcasts, which feature “more language” per hour of content and can be very interesting too.
To find a good podcast, check out iTunesCharts.
Look for France and Canada, and find the podcast section. You will see which podcasts are popular in those countries, and this can give you many ideas.
For Canadian French, I also recommend the podcasts produced by QUB.
How can I improve my pronunciation?
Speaking comes after listening. The reason we have an accent when speaking a foreign language is not just because we can’t reproduce the sounds — but also because we don’t perceive them. In other words, when you hear French pronounced, you have to pay attention to details and how the native pronunciation differs from yours. Only when you hearthe difference can you reproduce it.
An excellent exercise to do this is to listen to audiobooks while reading at the same time. This is an exercise that can pay substantial dividends once you reach B2. Find a good audiobook that you also own as a paper book or eBook. Then the exercise is to follow along with the text as you listen to the audiobook.
Is it useful to read newspapers, and if so, which ones?
Reading newspapers (online or on paper - but online or on your phone will be more practical nowadays if you don’t live in a French-speaking area), can be useful to acquire another range of vocabulary. If you’ve been consuming other material for a while, like novels, it might be wise to change things up and read newspapers every day for several months. This will expose you to other words that you might not find as often in novels, but that are just as important. I find LaPresse to be the best overall newspaper to read for my students.
Some more recommendations: novels, tv-series, comic books, and more.
One of the questions I’ve been asked the most is: “Do you have good quebecois series to recommend?”
This is a future topic for my newsletter. Every week, I send updated content suggestions of videos, music, novels, non-fiction books, articles and more.
Au plaisir!
Frédéric