A1 – B2 French - How I did it and my Resources
Over the past 2-3 years, I’ve taken my French from complete beginner (A1) to B2. This has been entirely self-directed, I’ve not taken any classes to do so, and I wasn’t in an area where I was immersed in French. This is how I did it, along with a whole load of the resources I used to get me there.
For reference, if you don’t know what A1, B2… means, see here. I refer to these levels quite a bit.
Commitment
It’s going to take you time. A lot of time. You can’t learn a language in a month and anyone who says otherwise is spouting bollocks. The key is consistently learning every day, or close to. You need to build a habit of constant exposure to your language, and that’s the only way to make real progress. There are loads of estimates out there about how many hours total it takes to learn a language. I would guess that I’ve averaged about 30-60 minutes a day. When I spent more time each day, I progressed faster, it’s that simple.
The Basics
Duolingo. Everyone loves it. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s addictive. It’s also shit. Complete and utter shit. You won’t get anywhere with it. No matter how much money they spend on advertising, you will not learn a language from duolingo. I found duolingo semi-useful at very introductory levels because it is a way that you can learn vocabulary, but it’s pretty poor for anything beyond that. Once I got to an A2 level, I quickly found that duolingo was a waste of time and that there were more efficient ways to learn. The one thing it does have going for it is that it’s very good at ensuring you stay consistent. What if there was another app that I could use as the basis of my French learning?...
Anki
Everyone recommends this, and there’s a reason. It’s how many med students get through medical school, and it’s the basis of how I learned French. It’s amazing. All it is is flashcards which get shown to you in a certain number/order every day based on how challenging they are for you. It was the main way I was able to retain what I learned, and it’s brilliant for vocabulary, verb conjugations, and grammar. You know, just the major stuff you need for a language.
There’s an android app which is what I used most of the time, but there’s also a desktop/ios app.
I used three decks, one which I made myself, one that was a vocab deck, and one that was a collection of French sentences. Lots of advice seems to say that you shouldn’t use other people’s decks, and that you should only make them yourself. I disagree. I learned a lot of vocab from these other Anki decks, and it was a good way to reinforce common French phrases.
It’s very important to set the number of cards you see each day to something reasonable. I found seeing a total of 30 new cards over all my decks worked well for me. This didn’t seem like enough initially, but as the number of cards I had increased, this number worked well.
One thing I wish I did better earlier on was creating my cards more effectively. There’s lots of information online on how to do this, including some great stuff on Reddit. I love Cloze cards. They’re a tad weird to learn how to use, but they’re essentially just fill in the blanks.
As an example, I struggled with mixing up the verbs demeurer (to remain) and démarrer (to start). I created two cards that looked like this:
Elle ne peut pas _ en place. (She can not _ in place)
And
Nous devons _ un processus dynamique. (We have to __ a dynamic process)
Whenever I saw these cards, I had to fill in the blanks and put the right verb in place. After I created and learned these cards, I never had a problem again.
Assimil
Assimil French With Ease is a classic French learning book which consists of a series of audio extracts which have French/English transcriptions in the text. It’s a bit dated, but I found it was a fantastic resource for me to push me through A2. Assimil’s suggestions on how to how to use their book wasn’t what I followed. Instead, I followed the following:
- Listen with the book closed.
- Listen to the audio whilst reading the French transcription
- Listen to the audio whilst reading the English translation
- Listen whilst speaking along
- Create Anki cards based on the lesson
Prior to every lesson, I would also listen to the audio of the previous ten or so lessons as well. There’s lots of different twists online that semi-follow the technique I used.
I only used French With Ease, although they also have two other French books: Assimil Business French and Assimul – Using French, which are both at higher levels. All of these books can be purchased or obtained through alternative internet-based means.
Grammar
No one likes grammar. It’s boring, but also necessary. I bought a copy of Easy French Step-By-Step. There’s loads of other grammar books out there, but I think picking up at least one is necessary. I was happy with this one. I also heavily used a youtube channel with lessons called Learn French with Vincent. French grammar is unfortunately stupidly complex, so you’re never going to get it all correct, but a little bit of work here can make you sound like less of a fool!
I'm sure you get the theme by now, but after learning some grammar, I would put cards into my Anki deck based on it.
Langcorrect
Langcorrect is a website where language learners write short blocks of text and native speakers of my target language who are learning another language correct them. It’s entirely free and it has been a really fantastic way for me to get feedback all the way from about A2 until now. When I wasn’t at the stage where I was comfortable speaking with other people, this was my main way to get feedback on my French. Because it is a community-based thing, it is very important that you correct at least as much work as you receive corrections for! Generally, I tried to make my writing entertaining; I would often make them silly stories. All of the corrections I received became Anki cards.
Podcasts
Everyone loves a good podcast whilst commuting. Here’s the ones I listened to:
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Innerfrench – Really high quality and always recommended. Great for levels A2-lower B1, but you will outgrow it
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Duolingo French Podcast – Great for levels A2-lower B1. I ripped on duolingo earlier, but their podcast is fairly decent. I found there was a bit too much English in their French podcasts though!
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Rocket French – Levels A1-A2
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Coffee Break French – Levels A2-B1
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Learn French By Podcast – Levels A1-B1
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RFI – Journal en français facile – Level B1-B2 – A daily news podcast that is done in easy French
Once you reach B1, you start to get to the stage where all the podcasts/resources for learners are too easy for you, but all the native content is too hard. This is what I call “intermediate hell”. To make the transition to native content easier, I found that nature/ecology focussed podcasts were often simpler to understand than others despite their complex topics due to their “David Attenboroughesque” speaking style. One I would recommend trying is Sur Les Épaules De Darwin.
TV Shows/Movies/Videos
There’s a fantastic chrome extension called Language Learning with Netflix that I used heavily. It lets you watch Netflix with subtitles in both English and French simultaneously, and allows you to blur the text out as you progress. It has loads of features like pausing the video after a sentence and so on. It was crucial for me. I originally started with both English and French subtitles displayed, then the English ones blurred, and then both the English and French ones blurred. It’s important to progress away from just having subtitles fully displayed so that you are actually listening and not just reading the English or French subtitles. 😊
Some Netflix series that I watched/would recommend:
- Au Service de la France
- Marseille
- H
- Appelez mon agent
- Dérapages
It eventually reached the point where I was just watching whatever trash I could find in native French, which included:
- Le cercle
- Plan Coeur
- Tout part en fumée
Outside of Netflix, there’s an animated series of almost all the Tintin comics, that I’d recommend watching. Innerfrench also has a youtube channel and I quite enjoyed this standup show. In addition, Lumni.fr and FranceCulture.fr both have a large amount of educational video content that I found interesting. Some of it is geo-blocked, but a lot of it is very well produced.
Reading
I found reading crucial to learn new vocab and see grammar in context. I read the following:
- Le Petit Prince
- Tin Tin
- Various young adult fiction
- Several books from Mondes en VF
The last one is a series of books that are written specifically for language learners but focus on adult topics. As a result, these books are much more interesting than many young adult books. They also come with an audio version which is a nice accompaniment.
Speaking With Natives
It’s inevitable, and you are going to feel like a fool for the first few times, but you will eventually get over the fear and learn to enjoy speaking. I had a couple of tutors through Italki who I would setup lessons with once or twice a week. I found it incredibly motivating and it was also very noticeable how much faster my French progressed when I was speaking regularly.
There are also a few websites or apps out there that allow you to find language exchange partners. This has the advantage of being free, but I found it challenging to find someone who was motivated and I could speak to regularly. This innerfrench video goes through several of the sites/apps to find a language exchange partner. On a couple of the apps I found people seemed to be more keen to use the apps à la Tinder than for language exchange, as a minor word of warning.
Accent Reduction
Listening to French/speaking it will gradually improve your accent, but I still found mine terrible. I used WorkAudioBook to help improve my accent. It’s a program where you can play an audio file and then record yourself speaking and compare the difference. I used this quite heavily on my Mondes en VF books. It's not exactly the nicest looking program, but it definitely was useful for me.
Another useful resource for me was various youtube channels focussed on pronunciation. One I would recommend is this one (FrenchSounds).
Miscellaneous Resources
My favourite translator website is this one. It provides really nice conjugation tables as well as good sentences in context.
I completed this free online course. I would give it as a decent recommendation if you’re at a B1 level. Some of it is better than others, but I found their sections on pronunciation quite good.
When I struggled to come up with topics to write about, I found this list of topics useful.
My favourite French news sites are RFI and Le Monde, both have large amounts of free content accessible and good apps to read from. RFI also has a large series of podcasts.