How Often Should You Study French?

Learning French is a long and slow journey, but we can all achieve fluency.

The secret to learning any language is to get comfortable with it. To do this we need to study more often and to make sure we are getting lots of exposure to the language.

The best way to do this to study little amounts of French, every day.

How Long Does It Take To Learn French?

I’m going to assume that if you are learning French, you want to reach a good level, probably to the B1/B2 Level at least. If this is the case then you are going to have to put a lot of work in to get there.

This goal is totally achievable, and of course it is reasonable to ask how long does it actually take to learn French to this level?

This is a tough question to answer, however, if you study for roughly 600 hours, you should have a really good grasp of the language. (You probably won’t be fluent and you might not be a B1 level, but you should end up with a good grasp of the language)

So in order to ask how long it takes to learn French, you really need to ask yourself how quickly you can get 600 hours of study done.

The more often you study, the faster you will reach 600 hours.

(You can read more about – How Long Will It Take To Learn French?)

Pace Yourself When Learning French

Pacing yourself is vital when learning French and deciding how often you should be studying.

You can mathematically get 600 hours of study time by doing 10 hours a day for 60 days straight. However, this pace is going to be impossible for 99.99% of us. Most of us will burn out and give up, let alone the fact that most of us can not just commit to studying for this long. Most of us have lives to live and 10 hours a day for 3 months is not something we can just decide to do.

It is best to start slow and build things up. You will reach your goal of 600 hours, it will just take some time.

You should start low and test yourself and see where the limits are. Maybe only do 15 minutes a day at the start. You might think this is not a lot, but you will be surprised how quickly you can get tired. When you start learning French everything is new and overwhelming and it’s easy to use up your cognitive power very quickly.

The good thing is that you won’t keep this pace forever, as you get comfortable you will be able to extend this study time to something longer. Try and build it up to 30 minutes, an hour, even 90 minutes. Just keep building on how long you can study for.

Do Lots Of Smaller Sessions

A very good way to get around the learning fatigue is to break your study into chunks throughout the day.

It is often easier to do a couple of short 15 minute lessons throughout the day, rather one solid hour long session of study, so you do not overwhelm yourself.

Personally I do this all the time. Mostly as it’s easier to squeeze learning into my busy life, but also as it’s not as overwhelming.

I like to do some Duolingo early in the morning, and then a few hours later I will go through my Anki decks. After lunch I will do a short lesson on a certain topic (which could be just a 10 minute lesson on YouTube), and then in the evening I just relax and try and watch some things in French, which is of course immersion.

I might only do 15 minutes a time of each of these different study areas, but over the day it’s an hour I am spending with French. 

Studying this way also allows me to focus on different parts of the language. I’m practicing my listening skills at one point and then learning vocabulary at another part of the day. I’m doing a little of everything and it all adds up.

The more often I do this, the quicker I will get results.  

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

Can You Study French Every Day?

You can absolutely study French every day; in fact I would encourage it. It is better to be consistent and do something every day and spread your learning out.

Doing lots of smaller sessions still makes sense on the larger scale. It is much better to spend 1 hour a day studying French for 7 days in a row, rather than spending 1 day a week, studying for 7 hours. 

You are going to find this so much more manageable and while committing to every day sounds more difficult, it’s actually a whole lot less stressful and in fact your forget less as you have shorter periods of time in-between study.

If you break your days down into small chunks like I said before, it is very easy to study quite a lot without it feeling like it is overwhelming.  

(You can read more about – How Often Should You Study French?)

Work Smarter, Not Harder

How you study is vital. It’s easy for me to sit here and tell you to study more often, or to study for 600 hours. However, this is pointless if you are just studying inefficiently.

If you are studying inefficiently you may end up studying for 1200 hours and feel like you have made no progress.

You need to make sure that when you are studying you are doing it correctly and efficiently. If you do this combined with studying often, you will be unstoppable and will make rapid progress.

(You can read more about – What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Learning French?)

Stop Studying And Just Make French A Part Of Your Daily Life

The aim of learning French should be so that you can use it in your daily life. Once you get the basics down you should start to focus less on the lessons and more on just using French as a language.

You can only learn so much grammar, you really need to leave the classroom style learning and just use the language and learn it by using it.

You need to start making parts of your life French and use the language every day.

(You can read more about – How To Use French Throughout Your Day)

French Immersion Is Key

Doing some immersion every day is how you make French a part of your life. Even if you are not actively studying, immersion should be happening.

It’s really easy, you just need to do whatever you would normally do in your life, and do it in French. Immersion is all about input, so whatever way you like to take in your native language you should do this in French.  

This means watch TV, Movies or Youtube. Listen to podcasts, music or audio books. Read anything you can like books or websites. These are all things I know you do in your native language, so start changing them to French.

All forms of immersion are extremely helpful to your overall studies. It may seem very passive but it is solidifying everything you have actively learned.

You can also change the language on your favourite apps and websites to French, or talk to French people, in French.

Just surround yourself in the French language as much as you can and use it as much as you can. Become French and make French a part of your life.

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

Conclusion

Study French as often as you can. Ideally you should be doing little bits throughout the day, every day.

Over time these will all add up and you will have spent a lot of time with French.

Learning any language is very simple, you just need to spend time with it and get comfortable, the more you can do this, the faster you will make progress. Of course we have busy lives, so lots of small little chunks of learning every day will get us there.

Trust the process and you will make progress.

(You can read more about – Advice For Anyone Learning The French Language)