How To Learn French In A Year

If you want to learn French, I’m sure you have asked yourself if it is possible to do it in a year.

The truth is, you can, but it’s not easy and it’s not common. For most people they will have a good grasp of the language after a year, but will feel nowhere near fluent and that is fine. Language learning is difficult and while French may be one of the slightly “easier” languages to learn as an English speaker, it’s certainly not simple.  

(You can read more on Can You Learn French In A Year. If you think you can do it in a year, or you even just want to try as hard as you can to see where you end up, this is what I would do.)

Effort And Motivation Is Everything If You Want To Learn French In A Year

If you are only giving yourself a year to learn French, then you need to use this time efficiently and you will need to put in the maximum possible effort.

If we look at the Foreign Service Institute, they say that they teach diplomats French in about 24 weeks, which is about 600 hours of classroom time. That roughly translates to 25 hours a week for 6 months. That is a lot of work and will take a lot of effort. I would argue that it’s almost a full time job (but then I guess it is the diplomats’ jobs).

While you may be giving yourself twice and long, it is still a very steep mountain to climb and that level of effort will be hard to sustain long term. If you want to do this you are going to have to be very motivated and really put the work in.

A year is a very short time when it comes to language learning and if you don’t put the right amount of effort in you are going to find it goes by very quickly and you will not be making progress.

Basically the more you study the more it will sink in and the more you will improve. The more French you can expose yourself to, the better. You need your life to become French for the next year.

Your Past Experience With Languages Matters

Before you even start you need to consider what you already know. For many of you, French will be your first foreign language and you will have a totally different experience to someone who already has learned a second language before.

The same goes for your native language. English and French have a lot in common, but if you are a native Spanish or Italian speaker you may find French has different similarities which may help you even more.

We all may have the same 365 days to learn, but your past experiences will definitely play a role in how far we can progress in French during this time. I know we can’t change this, but it is still something to be aware of as it can affect how quickly you can learn.

How You Study French Is Important

How you study French is also massively important. When you only have a year, you need to use your time wisely and spend it productively.

As I’ve already mentioned, the more French you are exposed to the better. The best way to do this is immerse yourself in the language. Moving to France or a French speaking country is always going to be the most efficient way to do this. Everywhere you turn there will be French, it will be inescapable.

Of course this is not possible for everyone, but you can still surround yourself with a lot of French while at home.

No matter where you are, you will need to make sure that your dedicated study time is efficient and effective. Just watching French movies on Netflix with English subtitles on is not going to really get you very far. While it can be helpful and help with your immersion, you need proper studying. You need proper resources that actually teach you things and you should really be looking at using 1 on 1 tutors to really maximize your learning potential.  

What You Study In French Is Important

The information you actually learn is going to be very important. Like how you study, what you study needs to be productive and efficient. It is very easy to learn useless stuff, especially in French.

There are a lot of tenses that you just don’t really need, such as the ones that are only used in literature. Of courses these can be useful, but you will be much better off sticking to the solid basics that you are actually going to using every day and actually have relevance to how you want to use French in the real world.  

We are also lucky that a lot of French words are the same as English words, things like this can be used to your advantage to quickly and easily build your vocabulary and really speed up your progress over the year.

Should You Learn Written or Spoken French, If You Only Have A Year?

There is an argument that if you focus on either just reading or just speaking a new language you can make a lot of progress faster.

This can be true at times. Spoken French and written French can be very different and it will take a lot of processing power in your brain to get to grips with both. If you are trying to spread your time equally across reading, speaking, listening and writing it is probably going to slow you down.

However, in the long run you are building a stronger foundation by focusing on all four areas. I would rather spend the year getting the basics of all of these areas really strong and then building on this foundation in the following years.

If you really want to focus on just speaking or reading, after a year you may be pretty good, but really over all you don’t know much. You are not well rounded and if you can only speak, what happens if you are shown some text? While you may want to learn as much as possible in a year, I still think this isn’t the best approach.

Use French As Much As You Can

One of the best ways to get faster results from with a language is to use it. If you are giving yourself a year to learn French then you need to get the basics down as fast as possible then start building some real world experiences.

This is why moving to the country that speaks the language will get much better results; you are forced to use it. Studying is of course very helpful and will push you far, but getting that repetitive exposure is what builds up your skills and confidence. Basically practice is king and the best way to practice is to actually use the language.

Get out there and start talking to people, read and watch as much as possible and just try and use the language in your life. You can do this all online, so there is no excuse. 

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

Conclusion

A year will go fast and even if you can dedicate hundreds of hours towards your French, don’t be upset if you are not fluent within the year. It is extremely hard to learn a language in this small window of time. Your brain really needs a long time to process and deal with everything which can take years to achieve.

However, with a year of work you will find you have made incredible progress. If you look back to the start of your journey you will realise how far you have come.

Maybe you didn’t reach your main goal, but that’s fine, you can just keep on studying after the year. This can be your lifetime project and hopefully you are happy with your first year’s progress. 

(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)