Advice For Anyone Learning The French Language

Learning French is a real challenge and if you are trying to study it, you need to know that it is possible. You can get fluent in French, it just takes time and effort.

I will be going through some simple advice that I wish I had been told at the beginning of my French language journey, which will now hopefully help you on yours.

Immersion, Immersion And More Immersion

Immersion really is the secret weapon when it comes to learning French. Immersion just means that you need to surround yourself with French and take in as much of the language as possible. You want to be listening and reading to as much French as possible throughout your day.

The more you can do this, the more you will really get the language inside you. You still need to be actively trying to learn things and the material you need to be immersing in also needs to be a level that you can get a basic grasp of. 

Immersion may seem very passive and pointless, but it’s not. It is fuel for your subconscious to work out what is going on and to see the patterns in the French language.

Just trust the system and try and do as much immersion in your free time as possible. It will really help you get results faster. 

(You can read more about – How To Find Comprehensible Input for Learning French)

Have A Good Plan

French is a big language with plenty of rules and you need to have a good plan on how to conquer it. Doing plenty of immersion should be a part of any plan, but it is not the only thing you need to do.

You need to make sure your time is used wisely and you are learning what you actually need to know.

You will need to put a lot of effort into learning French, so knowing what needs done and how to go about it is going to be really useful.

If you don’t have a plan you are just going to be dipping your toe into the language now and again and not really get anywhere, which is just going to lead to frustrations and ultimately you will give up, which is not what we want.

(You can read more about – Making A Study Plan For Learning French)

Consistency Is Key

Our brains are designed to filter out the nonsense and only keep the information we need. This is why consistency is so important when it comes to learning French. You need to be studying French often and consistently so that your brain actually understands that this language is important and you need it.

If you just dabble in your French studies, doing a lesson every few weeks, you will literally get nowhere. For a start you will just not cover enough information to actually grasp the language and secondly you brain will assume it’s not really that important and not make an effort to remember what little you have tried to learn.

Be consistent and regular with your French studies, you will see results.

(You can read more about – Language Apps I Have Used To Learn French For Free)

Pace Yourself

A common mistake I suffer from is trying to do too much at once. Learning French is a long game. You need to go slow and steady.

If you try and over do things and learn too much too quickly, you will be overwhelmed and if you are like me, you will probably end up stopping studying for a few days to recover from the overload.

This is not very productive and you are going to have much better results pacing yourself. Doing a little bit of French every day, consistently, is much better than trying to spend a full day on it once a month.  

You can’t learn all of the French language in a day, so pace yourself.

You Need More French Vocabulary

When you are learning French, vocabulary matters. You can never have too much. Of course some words are going to be obscure and never really be used, just like in English, but in general, the more words you know the better.

This is especially true for the common words. The sooner you can master these, the sooner the majority of French will seem less intimidating.

You should also try and learn the gender of any nouns, I know this sucks, but it does make life easier in the long run.

However, try not to get too stressed out about this. If you use a word with the wrong gender, the natives will still understand you perfectly fine; you will just sound a bit funny. 

Verbs Are Important

When you are learning French, verbs are so important. Grammar in general is hugely important in French, but if you focus on the verbs the rest should fall into place fairly easily.

The first step is to actually learn the verbs, much like vocabulary, the more verbs you know the better you will get. Verbs are pretty much the core of any sentence. You are pretty much always going to need them when you are trying to communicate, so the more you know, the better.

Once you are comfortable with the infinitive forms of verbs it is going to make conjugating them less stressful.

Being able to conjugate verbs will unlock the different tenses, which really means you will have a much wider understanding of the language. 

Practice French Pronunciation

An area often ignored by French learners, especially beginners, is pronunciation. It can actually be hard to get those French sounds at first, you will be moving your mouth in ways that you are not used to and the only way to get good at it is to keep practicing.

It can feel very silly at first, but you almost have to try and speak with a French accent. As you practice this will seem less forced and ridiculous and become more natural. However, you will now be pronouncing the words more correctly.

You should also try and do this while you are reading. Make sure you are pronouncing the words properly in your head. This will help you when you actually go to say them.

Of course listening to a lot of French through immersion is going to help train your ear to how the words should actually be sounding, so the more you immerse, the more it will help you with your pronunciation.

Cognates and False Friends

French may be very similar to English in a lot of areas and you will find plenty of crossovers, but you still need to be careful.

A lot of the cognates look the same, but sound different. French has a lot of silent letters, so words like Hôpital may look similar, but it’s very easy forget the H is silent and then pronounce it wrong.

At least in this instant, the meaning is the same so you can still understand what is going on. This isn’t the case for false friends, where the French word looks very similar to an English word, but the meaning is very different. If we take the word Bras, this to an English speaker would be some underwear, where as to a French person this would be the word for “arms”.

You can see how that is a very easy trap to fall for and unfortunately French is littered with them. It’s inevitably you will make some mistakes but if you are careful you will start to recognise the words that can be trouble makers and avoid making these mistakes.    

Conclusion

The last bit of advice I would give to anyone learning French is to not give up. It’s a long, hard journey to get fluent, but it’s a journey anyone can make.

If you just keep going, you will get there. It may push you to the limits, but if you are determined you can learn French, it is entirely possible and if you take the advice I’ve given above on board, you will find that journey a little smoother, just don’t give up.

(If you are wanting to learn French you can check out my unofficial French Course and get a grasp of the basic structure of the language)