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Study guide · English speakers learning French

How to learn French: a step-by-step plan for English speakers

Sounds and silent letters first, then gender and the core verbs, then the past tenses and your first 1,500 words, then a lot of listening. What to drill at each stage, what to pick up from input, and how long it honestly takes.

11 min readUpdated 30 Oct 2026Level: beginner to intermediate

On this page · The plan
  1. The plan
  2. 1. Sounds
  3. 2. Core sentences
  4. 3. Past and words
  5. 4. Spoken French
  6. 5. Native media
  7. Easy and hard for English speakers
  8. Your study stack
  9. References

French is one of the quicker languages for an English speaker. The US Foreign Service Institute puts it in its easiest group, estimating about 30 weeks (750 class hours) for its students to reach professional working proficiency (FSI). You can read a surprising amount early, because so much English vocabulary came from French: more than a quarter of English dictionary words, by one count (Finkenstaedt & Wolff (1973)). The hard part is the ear: much of what's written isn't pronounced, so French is easier to read than to understand.

The planIf you study about 45 minutes a day
  1. 1
    Sounds, silent letters and liaison

    The vowels English doesn't have, nasal vowels, the French r, which letters you don't say.

    Weeks 1–3 · mostly drill

  2. 2
    Gender, articles and the core verbs

    Le and la, agreement, être, avoir and aller, il y a, the present of regular -er verbs.

    Weeks 3–8 · mostly drill

  3. 3
    The past tenses and the first 1,500 words

    Passé composé with avoir or être, the imparfait, numbers, everyday vocabulary with daily reviews.

    Months 2–5 · half and half

  4. 4
    Graded input and the gap between written and spoken French

    Easy reading and learner podcasts, most of your time. Notice how speech differs from the page.

    Months 4–9 · mostly input

  5. 5
    Real shows, podcasts and books

    Series with French subtitles, native podcasts, novels. Drill only what you mine.

    Month 9 on · mostly input

Times are rough ranges for a beginner studying most days, not a schedule. Less time a day stretches them; that's fine.

  1. SoundsWeeks 1–3
  2. Core sentencesWeeks 3–8
  3. Past and wordsMonths 2–5
  4. Spoken FrenchMonths 4–9
  5. Native mediaMonth 9 on
Red is drill, grey is input. Roughly how your study time splits between drill and input at each stage. Illustration: Open Lingo.

The thing to get right first: learn how spelling maps to sound before you build a big vocabulary. Silent endings and liaison follow rules, and words learned with the wrong pronunciation are hard to fix later.

The split this guide uses: deliberate practice speeds up the parts of a language that are regular and countable (letters, endings, high-frequency words). Studies of classroom teaching find that explicit instruction in forms and rules produces large gains that last (Norris & Ortega (2000)). The feel for nuance, register and natural phrasing comes mostly from large amounts of meaningful listening and reading. So each stage below says what to drill and what to leave to input. Early on most of your French time is drill; by the end most of it is input.

Sounds, silent letters and liaison

Weeks 1–3 · mostly drill

French spelling is consistent in one direction: once you know the rules, you can usually say a word you read, even if you can't spell a word you hear. Most final consonants are silent, and some come back in liaison before a vowel: les amis is "lay-za-mee".

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • u vs ou. tu (you) vs tout (all): English has neither vowel exactly.
  • Nasal vowels. vin, vent, vont (wine, wind, go): three different words.
  • Silent endings. parle, parles, parlent all sound the same.
  • Liaison. The required cases are a short list; learn them.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Optional liaison. Whether people say it depends on register. Listening teaches you which.
  • Rhythm. French stresses the end of a phrase, not each word. You pick it up by imitating.

On this site for this stage

Gender, articles and the core verbs

Weeks 3–8 · mostly drill

Every noun has a gender, and articles and adjectives agree with it, so learn each noun with its article. The handful of irregular verbs you use constantly (être, avoir, aller, faire) are worth drilling until automatic. Start a spaced-repetition habit now with a few new words a day.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Gender with every noun. Learn la table, not table.
  • Contractions. à + le → au, de + le → du.
  • The core irregular verbs. je suis, j'ai, je vais, je fais, all persons.
  • Possessives and agreement. mon, ma, mes; petit, petite.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Adjective position. Most follow the noun; a common few (grand, petit, bon) come before it.
  • On for "we". In speech on va is far more common than nous allons.

On this site for this stage

The past tenses and the first 1,500 words

Months 2–5 · half and half

Spoken French uses the passé composé for events (j'ai mangé, I ate) and the imparfait for background and habits (il pleuvait, it was raining). Learn the forms by drill and the choice between them mostly from stories. Aller + infinitive covers most of the future you'll need.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Passé composé. Which verbs take être (je suis allé), and the common irregular past participles.
  • Imparfait forms. Very regular: one set of endings on the nous stem.
  • Numbers 70 to 99. soixante-dix (60 + 10), quatre-vingts (4 × 20). Drill them; they're used every day.
  • Everyday vocabulary. Ten to twenty words a day, reviews every day. Cognates help, but check the pronunciation of each.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Passé composé vs imparfait. Learn the event-and-background idea, then let stories show you the edges.
  • Question forms. Tu viens ?, Est-ce que tu viens ?, Viens-tu ?: hear which one people use where.

On this site for this stage

Graded input and the gap between written and spoken French

Months 4–9 · mostly input

Reading lots of easy material you mostly understand improves reading ability (Nakanishi (2015)). Do the same with audio. In French, listening deserves the bigger share: everyday speech drops sounds and words that textbooks keep. Je ne sais pas is usually "chais pas".

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • The subjunctive forms. For the common triggers: il faut que, je veux que.
  • Words that keep coming back. If you've looked a word up twice, it goes in your deck with its sentence.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Dropped ne. Je sais pas is normal in speech.
  • Reduced forms. T'as vu ? for tu as vu ?, y a for il y a.
  • Object pronouns. je le lui ai donné: speed comes from hearing it, not parsing it.

Real shows, podcasts and books

Month 9 on · mostly input

Start with French subtitles on shows you'd enjoy anyway; they help a lot while your ear catches up with your reading. Quebec, Belgian, Swiss and West African French all sound different from Paris. Listen widely once the standard is comfortable.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Sentence mining. One new word per card, in its original line.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Speed and slang. Including verlan, the syllable-swapping slang.
  • Regional variety. Different vowels, vocabulary and numbers (Belgian and Swiss French have septante, 70).

What English speakers find easy and hard in French

Easier than you'd think

  • Vocabulary. A large share of English words came from French: nation, table, important, possible.
  • Word order. Subject, verb, object, as in English, most of the time.
  • Reading. You can follow simple written French early, long before you can follow it spoken.
  • Verbs, compared with Spanish. Many written forms sound alike in speech, so there are fewer endings to hear.

Harder than it looks

  • Listening. Silent endings, liaison and elision make word boundaries hard to hear.
  • Sounds English lacks. u, which English speakers find hard to tell from ou (Levy & Strange (2008)), the nasal vowels and the French r.
  • Gender and agreement. Articles, adjectives and some past participles all agree.
  • Spelling from sound. vert, verre, vers, ver (green, glass, towards, worm) all sound the same.
  • False friends. actuellement means currently; librairie is a bookshop.

Your study stack

You don't need many tools. Three cover the whole plan, and each has a job it is bad at. Spaced review, whichever app does it, rests on one of the best-supported findings in memory research: reviews spread out over time are remembered far longer than the same reviews crammed together (Cepeda et al. (2006)).

Open Lingo

Stages 1–3 · free

Use it for: A structured French course from zero, with listening and reviews that adapt to what you forget.

Don't expect: The all-in-one app with your own shows and books built in. We're working on it; see the roadmap.

Anki

Stages 2–5 · free on desktop

Use it for: Nouns with their article and audio, verb forms you keep missing, and sentences from what you watch.

Don't expect: Teaching. It only reviews what you put in, and the queue grows quickly if you skip days or add too many cards at once.

Language Reactor

Stages 4–5 · browser extension

Use it for: French shows on Netflix and YouTube with two subtitle tracks, click-to-look-up and saving lines for later.

Don't expect: Accurate translations or a course. The second subtitle track is machine-made and often loose, and it is easy to end up reading English instead of listening.

Try an Open Lingo lesson with no sign-up. The French course starts from zero.

Sources

  1. (US Foreign Service Institute: Foreign language training (language categories and class hours))
  2. (Norris & Ortega (2000): Effectiveness of L2 instruction, a meta-analysis. Language Learning 50(3))
  3. (Finkenstaedt & Wolff (1973), Ordered Profusion, as summarised in Wikipedia: Foreign-language influences in English)
  4. (Nakanishi (2015): A meta-analysis of extensive reading research. TESOL Quarterly 49(1))
  5. (Cepeda et al. (2006): Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin 132(3))
  6. (Levy & Strange (2008): Perception of French vowels by American English adults. Journal of Phonetics 36(1))

Related

Study stack

  • Anki

    Nouns with their article, and mined sentences.

  • Language Reactor

    French subtitles on YouTube and Netflix, from stage 4.

  • Open Lingo

    A structured course for stages 1–3.

We're building this

One app for the whole plan: lessons, reviews, and the French stories and shows you read and watch, in one place. We're working on it.

In progress · Roadmap →