How to Learn French Online for Free
By: William Sidnam
Tags: French, Language, Self Improvement, Education, Language Learning

How to Learn French Online for Free

Upgrade your language skills without paying a cent

Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash

As an unrepentant Francophile, I’ve spent around a decade learning French.

While my French is still far from perfect, it’s decent enough to do things like rent an apartment, open a bank account, and study at a university in France without embarrassing myself too much.

Before I reached a semblance of fluency, however, I really struggled to string sentences together. In fact, during my first three years of high school, I made frustratingly slow progress. One good thing did come out of this state of discouragement, though, as I figured out a few tricks that made the task of learning French so much easier.

If you’re planning on visiting France, making friends with French speakers, or you simply want to add another string to your language bow, I’d like to share some personal insights into how you can learn la langue de Molière online in the most enjoyable and effective way possible.

I learnt all these insights via a process of trial and error — insights I wish I’d known when I first started learning French. But if my early stumbling around in the dark can help you take your French to the next level, then more power to you.

1. Grab a notepad/exercise book/phone/computer

First things first, make sure you have a notepad, exercise book, phone or computer on hand. This will help you get the most out of the following resources. I’ll explain why soon.

2. Listen to ‘Learn French By Podcast’

Next, Look out for Learn French by Podcast on all the major podcasting platforms. Without exaggerating in any way, the podcast is one of the best free substitutes for French classes around. Each episode features a 5–10 minute conversation between two native French speakers, followed by a discussion about the key words and expressions you just heard.

I used to listen to Learn French by Podcast before exams, and I found it improved my French by leaps and bounds. In fact, it has led me to believe that listening comprehension —more than speaking, reading or writing — is the most important aspect of a language to work on when you're starting off.

That’s because when you listen to someone speaking, you not only hear the informational content of their words; you also hear their emotions and intonations — features that, despite not being so readily discernible in the written word, help make the language feel a little less abstract and a little more tangible, real and human. Indeed, the fact that babies learn language sounds before they’re even born would seem to support the idea that before you learn to read and write, you first need to listen.

What’s more, by working on your listening skills, you also become better at speaking, since your ability to speak depends on using words you’ve heard others use before. You’ll also indirectly improve your reading and writing skills since you’ll become better at ‘hearing’ the words that you read on a page, while also being able to write down words that you might otherwise use in conversation.

How to make the most of it

While listening to the podcast, write down the words and expressions you hear on a notepad, and repeat them over and over again until they’re safely stored in your memory.

By writing words down, you’ll be much more likely to remember them. You’ll also save yourself that nagging feeling of having forgotten a word that you would have really liked to use at some point. Much to my regret, I often hear a word I like and then completely forget it later on; had I written it down, I would have saved myself a great deal of needless gnashing of the teeth.

It might also help to re-listen to the podcast episode a few days later and see how many of the words and expressions you can recall. Don’t be hard on yourself if you’ve forgotten a few words, though — you can always pick them up again later.

3. Tune into French-language radio stations

While Learn French by Podcast is great for picking up new words and phrases, it also pays to listen to the shows that native speakers tune into. After all, while the former might provide a well-designed safe space for learning French words and expressions, non-language-learning podcasts and radio stations aren’t written to suit language learners. Following them is considerably more difficult as a result, but on the plus side, they might push your brain to pick French up faster.

How to make the most of it

Find a radio station such as France Inter or France Culture. Most radio stations livestream online, but you can also listen to them as podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform.

Oh, and don’t worry if you don’t understand a great deal of what’s being said — or anything at all, for that matter. Just put the show on in the background and listen as attentively or as passively as you want. Most of the time while I have the radio on, I’m not paying attention at all; but simply by listening inattentively for a few minutes, I instantly feel more fluent later on.

Now, while you’re listening to French, see if you can visualize the words being spoken. If you can ‘see’ them spelt out in your mind, it’s a sure sign that you understand what is being said. Conversely, if you can’t see a visual representation of the words being spoken, you’ll know you don’t understand them — and so you’ll know what to work on.

4. Watch ‘Easy French’

If you’re after more colloquial French, I recommend subscribing to Easy French on YouTube. The channel features interviews of normal people on the streets of Paris and other French cities, so the language you hear is much more ‘normal’. And the best part is, there are French and English subtitles on every video, so you can read and listen at the same time.

While the channel doesn’t break down expressions the way that Learn French By Podcast does, having something to look at makes for a more engaging learning experience.

How to make the most of it

Watch their videos and write down any useful words or phrases that you hadn’t heard before. You might need to pause videos while doing this, though, since people can speak pretty fast.

5. Watch TV and movies

It’s sometimes claimed that the best way to learn a language is to watch movies. However, while there’s no denying their usefulness, movies are a less efficient medium for improving your listening comprehension than dialogue-heavy podcasts and radio stations. Not that it really matters, of course, since movies are a great way to discover French culture and, well, watch movies.

The same goes for TV shows, YouTube channels and news channels. Just find a French YouTuber or a news broadcaster like France 24 on YouTube — or, say, a short film on YouTube or Vimeo — and you’re all set.

How to make the most of it

Once again, it might pay to write down on your pad any new words or expressions you come across so you can lock them in your memory. But if you’re really engrossed in the film, you might prefer not to do so and just enjoy the experience as it is.

5. Use Word Reference

If you want to find a particular word, wordreference.com is a great place to start. While it’s a fully-fledged English-to-French and French-to-English dictionary (among other languages), it also has verb conjugation tables, synonyms, examples of how a word would be used in a sentence, and a whole bunch of useful expressions.

Say you wanted to find the French equivalent to ‘blind as a bat’. Just type it into the search bar, choose the ‘English — French’ translation option, hit enter and you’ll get ‘myope comme une taupe’, which literally translates as ‘myopic as a mole’.

There’s also a forum option at the bottom of the webpage, and so if you’re not sure about the translation you've been provided, you can ask native speakers for their opinions.

How to make the most of it

While looking up the definition of words, don’t just write down the French word and its English equivalent like this:

du coup = so

Instead, see if you can also find and write down examples of how the word is used in a sentence, like this:

J’ai eu un problème avec ma voiture ce matin et du coup, je suis arrivé en retard au boulot. Mince, le resto est fermé. On fait quoi du coup ? [I had a problem with my car this morning, so I got to work late. Blast, the restaurant’s closed. So what shall we do?]

That way, you’ll be far better able to use the word correctly when the occasion calls for it.

It’s also worth thinking about words less as ideas in themselves and more as LEGO-like blocks which, when combined in a certain way, convey a given idea. The reason I say this is because French often employs completely different words from English to express the exact same idea. For example, the sentence ‘I’m excited to see you’ might be translated as ‘J’ai hâte de te voir’, which literally means ‘I have haste to see you’. The reason you’d use such a construction is that French — or at least formal French — simply lacks a one-word adjective that conveys the meaning of the word ‘excited’ and hence expresses the sentiment by alternative means.

So while it’s great to consult a dictionary and find the French equivalent of English words, always bear in mind that the word you’re looking up might not be used in French the way you would use it in English. That way, you’ll do a better job at avoiding English sentence constructions while speaking French, which will help you sound more like a native speaker.

6. Google it

If you want to check the validity of certain expressions, Google is not a bad place to start. Since Google search results contain the word or phrase that you’re searching, the more results an expression gets, the more widely used it is. In other words, Google is a useful way to learn everyday French, if not necessarily elite Académie Française French.

How to make the most of it

Let’s say you aren’t sure if ‘myope comme une taupe’ is a valid expression. So to check how common an expression it is, simply Google it while putting quotation marks around the first and last words.

In my experience, if the expression receives more than 10,000 search results, there’s a very good chance it is used in everyday speech and/or is grammatically correct. If the top search results are from French dictionaries, moreover, you can infer that it’s a legitimate expression, and so you should be able to use it in your speaking and writing without getting into too much trouble. In other words, it would be worth writing down in your notebook.

If the expression receives between 500–10,000 search results, it’s probably perfectly fine to use, but the paucity of results suggests it might be a little irregular or not particularly French-sounding.

If it receives under 500 results, however, you would probably want to avoid using it altogether. I’ve tried using such search terms in French essays before, and let’s just say it did me no favors in the marks department.

It also pays to analyze the top results. For example, if the expression is separated by other words or pieces of punctuation, it might not be as common an expression as the number of search results might suggest, and might just be plain bad French.

7. Read Quora in French

As a Q&A social media platform, Quora is great for reading interesting content in bite-sized pieces. Its language tends to be more on the informal side, which is great for picking up slang. What’s more, the French version of Quora has a lot fewer junk questions than the English version, so you can enjoy superior content while improving your French skills.

How to make the most of it

While reading answers, try to identify and subsequently practice using what I like to call ‘set phrases’ that have to do with expressing an opinion — set phrases along the lines of ‘je pense que’, ‘je crois que’, ‘j’ai l’impression que’, ‘à mon avis’, and so on.

It also pays to do likewise for words and phrases related to ‘actually’ (e.g. en fait, justement, par contre, etc.), ‘so’ (e.g. alors, donc, du coup, etc.), ‘anyway’ (e.g. de toute façon, en tout cas, quand même, etc.), and similarly omnipresent phrases.

While they may not convey anything in terms of actual content, peppering them in your speaking and writing will instantly make you sound more fluent in French — even if you’re just mindlessly reciting them while thinking about what you plan to say next.

8. Read Voxeurop

As a pan-European news hub whose mission is to keep Europeans informed about transnational issues that impact upon their lives, Voxeurop publishes every one of their articles in a range of European languages including English and French. So if you read articles in both languages, you’ll be able to improve your reading comprehension and vocabulary without having to consult a dictionary.

How to make the most of it

Simply open an article in French and begin reading. Then, once you’ve finished reading it, simply choose English in the ‘select a language’ option on the left-hand side, and read it again to see how much of it you understood in French. You might also like to have the article open on two separate tabs so you can consult both English and French versions at the same time.

9. Use Duolingo

While I’ve never used this immensely popular app in French (I tried it out in Spanish), I can imagine that the learning experience would be similar across all languages.

Duolingo can be a great tool for expanding your vocabulary, pronunciation and understanding of grammar rules. While it might not offer a learning experience quite as comprehensive as its rival Rosetta Stone, it’s more convenient and, better yet, it’s free.

The downside is that due to the inherent limitations of its teaching methods, you really can’t become fluent by using Duolingo as a standalone tool. That’s because while Duolingo can teach you new words, it doesn’t necessarily give you the context in which they ought to be used; nor does it teach you how to apply them in a spontaneous way, which is important if you want to become fluent.

How to make the most of it

By all means, use the app but spend more time speaking French, reading French books and articles, and listening to French podcasts. That way, you’ll be able to improve your vocabulary, grammar and fluency at the same time, rather than just the former two.

10. Use HelloTalk

HelloTalk is a social media platform that’s based around language learning. You simply select your native language, pick the language you want to learn (in this case French), and then find native French speakers who want to learn English.

Since it works like a messaging app, it can be a surprisingly powerful tool for improving your vocabulary as well as your reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. The app even has a built-in oral messages function that lets you take snippets of you speaking and sent them to your conversation partner.

What’s more, if you use HelloTalk as an English native speaker, you almost never have to seek out people to chat with — since so many people want to improve their English, they’ll come to you.

The downside is that since it’s a messaging app, the quality of your language learning will only be as good as the quality of the conversations you have with strangers on the app. And while some users will be ready and able to correct your mistakes in French if you correct theirs in English, others might not be nearly as helpful or agreeable.

How to make the most of it

Find a good conversation partner. This may take a while, but once you find someone who’s willing to invest time and energy into helping you improve your French, you could make a substantial amount of progress.

Conclusion

If I were to summarize all the above insights, I’d say that it’s important to focus on your listening and speaking skills first before you worry about reading and writing.

Of course, being able to listen and take notes does require at least some basic knowledge of reading and writing, because in order to write down what you’ve heard, you’d have to be able to know — or at least guess — how to spell words, including ones you’ve never seen or heard before.

But if you’re just starting out and haven’t yet learnt much writing, don’t worry: you can still get a lot out of listening to podcasts, even without taking notes. And once you know how to write a bit of French, your progress will accelerate even faster.

And last but not least, make sure you’re having fun! After all, if you're not enjoying yourself, you simply won’t want to practice French very often — and not doing so won’t get you anywhere fast. So have some fun, consume some French culture and watch yourself improve!