How to Learn French in 30 Days: An Adaptable Guide

for Your Personal Language Goals

fluentu.com/blog/french/learn-french-in-30-days/

Michael Cristiano February 4, 2019

They say it takes 30 days to create a new habit.

You could start hitting the gym. Cut out social media. Go to sleep earlier at night.

But what if I told you that you could even learn French in 30 days?

All it takes are some smart study strategies and quality resources to build a healthy
French learning habit that lasts for the month—and way beyond.

Don’t just dream about it. Make it a reality! Here’s how!

Get your pen, notepad and berets ready! It’s time to find out what steps and resources
you should use to learn French in 30 days.

We’ll take you through the process with guidance that you can adapt depending on your
specific learning goals. In our final step, we’ll put everything together with a sample 30-
day French learning plan so you feel totally equipped setting foot on this journey.

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Step 1: Define Your French Learning Goals
First things first: define your French learning goals. This means that you need to clearly
outline why you’re learning French. Do you plan to travel to France and find a job? Do you
want to read one of the French literary greats or watch and understand artsy French
films? Do you simply want to be able to have a French conversation with a native speaker?

Knowing why you’re learning French will help you choose the most effective and efficient
language resources for the month (we’ll discuss different types of resources below).

Just make sure your goals are realistic for how much time per day you’ll be spending on
French. If you’re a beginner right now and you can only allot a half hour each day to
learning French, it’s unrealistic to think that you’ll become an advanced speaker after only
15 hours of study throughout the month.

Step 2: Build Your Personal Reference Library

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Textbooks and dictionaries aren’t sexy, but they’re a necessary
tool for self-studying French learners. A good reference book will
give you concise explanations for key language concepts that you
can continue to build on way after the 30 days are up.

In my opinion, textbooks are perfect for getting an overview of the

basics. They include essential grammar and vocabulary pertinent
to the most common conversational experiences. These are often
stylized as complete “French courses” that give you everything you
need to have a good base in the language.

Want to maximize your 30-day program? I recommend buying and

using both a traditional French course textbook and a grammar
guide. Grammar guides are books that focus solely on grammar:
no frills, just explanations and drills. I recommend “Barron’s
French Grammar” or “Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French
Grammar” for a grammar guide. I still use the latter with students
to this day!

The only thing to note here is that textbooks can be limiting in the
sense that they only expose you to the vocabulary they deem to
be “essential.” This may be an issue because you may find you
don’t need to learn the names of zoo animals if you’re trying to
learn French for the purpose of traveling to Paris for a week.

So, be sure to look for vocabulary references that apply directly to

the language goals you established in step one. Maybe swap out
those animals and plants for vocabulary about food for your visit
to an haute cuisine (high-end) restaurant!

You can find excellent vocabulary references on Lawless French.

There are tons of themed word lists organized by level.

Step 3: Bookmark Pronunciation Resources

Perfecting how to actually say things in French is an important skill that must be
developed during your journey. To be frank, if you don’t understand and can’t produce
the sounds of French, your 30 days will be for naught. Languages are meant to be spoken,
after all!

French can be a tricky language to pronounce as well as understand. With nasal

consonants and liaisons between words, it can be hard to parse sentences into individual
words. However, don’t fret! Learning the rules is easy with the internet.

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Make sure to bookmark Forvo’s French audio dictionary and
download the app (iOS or Android) onto your device. Forvo allows
you to look up literally every word in French and listen to the word
pronounced by native speakers.

Throughout your 30-day French learning journey, look up new

words frequently on Forvo so that you can understand them when
spoken and pronounce them correctly yourself.

ielanguages is another crucial tool to bookmark. You can learn

about the language’s distinguishing sounds with ielanguage’s
French phonetics tutorials as well as actually practice doing so
with ielanguage’s phonetics exercises.

Further, you can learn and practice French pronunciation with

Austin Community College’s interactive French tutorial.

Step 4: Download Apps for On-the-go Learning

In our modern era, French language apps are great for learning vocabulary and applying
grammatical constructions in contained situations. These apps will be invaluable in your
journey to learn French in 30 days because they’ll pack a lot of learning and practice into
relatively short periods of time, and best of all, these apps can be accessed anywhere!

FluentU teaches you French with authentic French

videos—like movie trailers, music videos, inspiring speeches
and more—that’ve been transformed into personalized
learning tools. For example, every video comes with
interactive subtitles. You can click or tap any word while you
watch for an instant, in-context definition.

When you’re done watching a video, there are flashcards and fun
quizzes to make sure you remember what you’ve learned. There
are also vocabulary lists and full transcripts built into every video.

In other words, you’ll be actively building your French skills while absorbing the language
as native speakers really use it. FluentU works at any level, with hundreds of videos
organized by genre and proficiency level. FluentU will even suggest new videos for you
based on what you’ve already learned. You can check it out at home on your computer or
on the mobile app for iOS and Android.

Duolingo is a popular language app you’ve probably heard of, but you might not
know about some of its newer features. For example, Duolingo Stories is a set of
mini-stories designed to improve your comprehension, while Tinycards is a catchy
visual flashcards tool.

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 Memrise is a to-the-point spaced repetition app with lots of French learning
material. “Spaced repetition” means the app uses an algorithm to review
information at set intervals, making the memorization process more efficient.

Clozemaster is a little rudimentary in its design, but it’s a great place to learn
French words in context such as sample sentences.

Step 5: Create Your Study Plan

The most important step to learning French in 30 days actually has little to do with the
French language at all. You need to create a French study plan, so that you stay on track
and accountable to yourself throughout the 30 days.

This will look different for every single learner, but there are two rules everyone should
follow:

Make sure each learning task is highly specific. “Complete the sentence structure
exercises in my French grammar guide” is a much stronger task than “study
sentence structure.”

Make sure each learning task is directly related to your learning goals from
step one. If your goal at the end of 30 months is to be able to get by on a trip to
France, your tasks should focus on essential phrases, pronunciation skills and
listening comprehension, not memorizing complex grammar rules.

Finally, make sure your French learning plan follows a logical progression. There’s no point
learning an advanced topic such as the French subjunctive if you have no idea about the
French present tense. Lucky for you, most textbooks and grammar guides will establish
this logical progression for you, so this should be easy since we already built a personal
reference library in step one.

Now let’s look at a sample schedule that I would recommend for a beginner learner who
wants to have travel-ready French skills. If you’re an absolute beginner right now, some of
the terms below may sound unfamiliar to you, but rest assured these are foundation
concepts that you’ll find easily in the resources we covered above.

A Sample Plan for Learning French in 30 Days

Day one: Welcome to the first day of French. Today you should memorize the
pronunciation of French letters of the alphabet and letter combinations (those can
be tricky!) as well as common greetings and introductory expressions such
as bonjour (hello) and comment ça va? (how are you?). Use Forvo for pronunciations
and create flashcards for the expressions.

I recommend at least two hours of focused study for this.

Day two: Now that the bare bones are out of the way, it’s time to delve into some
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 French grammar. Create conjugation charts for common irregular verbs such
as être (to be), avoir (to have), aller (to go) and faire (to do/make).

I also suggest learning some common French vocabulary, so grab your vocabulary lists.
This should start with objects around your house and workspace as well as words that
describe you (your job, your hobbies, how you look, etc.).

Days three to 10: Now that we’ve got a strong foundation, let’s explore verbs
further. List the present tense word endings for the three main verb groups (-
er verbs, -ir verbs and -re verbs) as well as other irregular verbs and reflexive verbs.

At this point, you should be growing your vocabulary flashcards to include adjectives and
adverbs (try to aim for 15 to 30 new words a day!). Don’t forget to learn the rules that go
along with these adjectives and adverbs. Gender and plurality agreement can be a little
tricky!

Days 11 to 20: With a good hold on the present tense, it’s time to learn the French
past tenses (the passé composé and imparfait). Further, I recommend starting to
memorize direct and indirect object pronouns and continuing to grow that
vocabulary.

Generally speaking you should have a vocabulary of around 500 to 1,000 words by now!

Days 21 to 30: The good news is that the past tenses are the most rule-heavy tenses
in French. The future tenses (futur proche, futur simple) should be a welcome change
to all that memorization, but also take a stab at more advanced French tenses such
as the conditional and French subjunctive.

With steady learning, your French vocabulary should exceed 1,000 words at the end of
your monthlong French journey.

Step 5: Follow Your Plan (but Be Flexible)

Looking at our sample plan one more time, I understand that it looks like a lot of material
covered in a short time. The reality is that there’s a lot of material you’ll need to cover to
learn French in 30 days.

However, don’t be overwhelmed. Take it day-by-day, and re-adjust your learning plan
every so often if you have to. It’s better to learn thoroughly and consistently than to
rush through without understanding—or worse, burn out and give up.

No matter how strong your will power is, there will come a time mid-month when your
French learning motivation starts to dip. So return to your learning goals. Remind yourself
why you committed to learn French in 30 days and how much you’ll have grown by the

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end if you stick to it. And be sure to reward yourself for your accomplishments
throughout the month! You don’t need to wait until the 30 days are up to pat yourself on
the back.

C’est facile, oui? (It’s easy, right?) Well, maybe not easy, but you should now feel confident
and prepared for success as you set out to learn French in 30 days.

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