Can You Learn French In A Year?

Learning French is a goal that millions of people around the world have. It’s a beautiful language full of history and rich heritage.

It is also very popular language to learn, especially for first time language learners, but this inevitably leads them to ask how quickly they can learn and I am repeatedly asked if it is possible to learn French within a year.

(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)

Is It Possible To Learn French In A Year?

The answer is yes, you can learn French in a year. If you put your full effort in to it, then anything is possible.

However! Let’s not get too excited. Learning a language, even an “easy” one like French is still very hard and for most people they are not going to manage it within a year. You can get a lot done in that time, but you need to realistic. You are not going to master the language in this time and that is okay.  

Learning French is a long and winding journey. Once you start there is no finish line. You will be continually improving for the rest of your life. You can take a lot on board in your first year, but it will never just stop there, so why try and put a time limit like this on it. 

Set Goals In French Learning That Can Be Reached

If you do want to go for it within a year, I think it is important to set some goals and understand what can actually be reached.

If you are an English speaker the Foreign Service Institute suggests that it will take you around 600 hours to learn French to a good level, or what they call “professional working proficiency”. They also suggest this is possible within 24 weeks.

If you do the maths on that, they are expecting you to put in about 25 hours a week for 6 months. While this is possible for some, that’s a pretty big commitment. Stretching that out over a year sounds even easier, only about 2 hours a day. This is possible, but it will be hard work.

Even 1 hour a day can be very overwhelming and exhausting. Setting goals like this is much easier on paper than in reality.

What Level Do You Want To Reach In French?

If you want to learn French in a year you will really need to work out what level you want to achieve.

Native Level Of French

You are going to have No chance reaching this. You may study for 25 years and still not reach this. As a learner of any language you need to realise this may be impossible, but you can come pretty close, but not within a year.

Fluency In French

This will be very hard to achieve in a year. As above the Foreign Service Institute service thinks you can get good in 6 months, so if you went at that pace for a year you are going to be really good at French, maybe even fluent.

It will be hard to reach this level on your own this quickly. If you where in some sort of intensive course, or even moved to France and only spoke French for the year, then you are going to get close to this. It will be very hard, but it’s not impossible.

A Good Level Of French

If you are looking to really get a grip of the language, then this is possible, in the right circumstances. If you can put in the 600 hours of focused study you should reach this level. If diplomats can do this, there is no reason you can’t. Again it will be a lot easier if you are in France or in some sort of intensive learning program. Within a year you could realistically reach this level.  

A Solid Basic Level Of French

This is totally achievable and is probably what the vast majority of us will reach. Starting from zero you can get a good grasp of French within a year. While you may not be confident in talking or maybe you find listening really hard, you will at least have a rough idea of what is what.

There is no reason why you can get the basics down in this time and have a good working knowledge of how French works. This may not seem like a lot, but having this core understanding is a great foundation to build on moving forward. In the following years you can keep studying and build on this base you have built.

Why It Can Take Longer Than A Year To Learn French

Learning French, or any language, is not linear. What I mean by this is that you may spend months feeling like you are not making progress and think that nothing is sticking. You can learn something and then forget it and maybe this happens a few times before it finally sticks.

This is pretty frustrating and is why most people give up.

If you keep going with it you will start to notice little things are making sense and are becoming easier to understand. Your understanding will suddenly start to snowball and you will really start to see a rapid increase in your ability, which is of course awesome.

The thing is you can’t get this rapid growth right from the start. You have to slog through the confusing, depressing time period of understanding very little. Many people may spend a large amount of their first year stuck in this part of the learning journey. That is totally normal.

Some people may feel like this for long and other people may get things to click a lot faster. Your brain just takes time digesting and processing everything, but if you keep doing it, you will get there, just don’t be surprised if it takes much longer than you expect.

(Read more about – How To Speed Up Learning French)

Don’t Put A Time On Learning French

If your brain will click with the language at some point, which you can’t control when, then why do we make trying to learn in a year so important? For some reason we as humans like to put time scales on things we can’t control.

Trying to say you will learn French in a year is like saying you will only pee for 14 seconds the next time you go to the toilet. You can’t really control this, and then what happens when you’re not finished in that time? …Exactly, you keep going and don’t really worry about the fact it took longer.

The same is true with French, once you get to the end of the year you may have made incredible progress, or maybe you felt like you didn’t take on too much, but no matter what you do, it doesn’t matter, you will still need to keep going.

Control What You Can

While you can’t control how fast you can learn, you can control how and what you learn, as well as how often.

If you focus on putting the effort in and being consistent, you will make progress. Your brain will only go at the speed it wants to go at. So just do your part by being consistent with your learning, as you can control that, then your brain will absorb the language and start understanding it when it’s ready.  

If you are consistent the language will come. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, if you do the work it will happen.

It’s Not A Competition

I think it is also very important to understand that learning French is not a competition.

If someone did it in 3 months, that’s great. If it took you 3 years to get the basics, that is also great.

It’s not a competition so it doesn’t matter how long it takes you. You are only competing with yourself and trying to always beat your past self. Every ones language journey will be different, so you really should not worry about what anyone else’s progress, only your own.   

Conclusion

Learning French within a year is possible, but only in some rare circumstances, basically where you can go to France or study it like a full time job.

For most of us, this is not possible. We are much more likely to be able to really master the basics and possibly get a good grip on the language within a year. This is totally fine and a great start. Learning any language is a long and slow process and the first year is really only the beginning of the journey. So long as you are consistent, you will get there at some point. 

(If you think you can do it in a year, you should read – How To Learn French In A Year)