5 easy ways to learn French from home ‹ EF GO Blog | EF Global Site (English) (2024)

FAQs

5 easy ways to learn French from home ‹ EF GO Blog | EF Global Site (English)? ›

One highly effective way to learn French is through immersion, which involves studying the language in a French-speaking country like France. Immersion allows you to surround yourself with the language and culture, providing the opportunity to practice speaking and listening skills in real-life situations.

One highly effective way to learn French is through immersion, which involves studying the language in a French-speaking country like France. Immersion allows you to surround yourself with the language and culture, providing the opportunity to practice speaking and listening skills in real-life situations.

Is there a free version of Babbel? Yes, Babbel does technically offer a free version; however, the free version only includes access to one lesson per language. It is more of a free trial. There is no true free version like you get with Duolingo or Memrise.

For example, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI)¹ – the institution responsible for training US diplomats – estimates that it takes 30 weeks or 600-750 study hours to learn French. On the other hand, according to the Alliance Française,² it takes 1,060 cumulative hours of study to reach a C2 level.

If you're purely looking to learn conversational French, your first stop ought to be the different words for greetings, or things that are likely to come up in conversation, such as the weather, directions, food and drink. You can't go wrong with sorting vocabulary into different groups of related words.

Watching films in French with French subtitles is one of the best ways to learn. Not only will you discover everyday idiomatic expressions and new vocabulary, but you will also be able to read words as the actors pronounce them: an ideal way to train your ear and improve your accent.

What is the key to learning French? ›

Speaking is key.

Written and spoken French can seem like two different languages, so it's crucial to study with audio. Peysson-Zeiss asks her students to record themselves speaking and then make their own edits. “They have to be able to identify what the mistakes are and where their weaknesses are,” she says.

Self-study is a practical approach to learning French, as it allows you to work at your own pace and focus on areas that are most important to you. We found great resources for learning French, including online courses, mobile apps, language learning books, podcasts, and practice exercises.

Commit to learning 20 new words a day, and write them down. Make flashcards, label items in your house, change your phone settings to French – whatever you need to do to commit them to memory. You'll progress so much faster for setting a tangible goal like this.

While it may not be possible to become fluent in French in just 10 days, it IS possible to learn the basics in a short period of time and move on to becoming fluent. Don't be discouraged. You can and will learn French much faster than you expect.

Of course you won't learn it all in a month- but you can prioritize what you do need to learn for your main objectives. For example, maybe you don't need to learn the names of all the animals in the zoo or names of sports in French, but maybe vocabulary about directions and getting around is useful. So focus on that!

The best way to learn French on your own through listening is filling your ears with as much French as possible, to create a sense of immersion in the language. You can introduce French listening practice into your life through: Podcasts in French on French language, culture, news, etc.