Learn French

My 30 Favourite Free sites to learn French Online

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I often get asked in my lessons where could I find a good site to learn French? There are plenty on the internet and it becomes a real mine field trying to find the right one. These are my suggested sites and have been posted in a random order.

My top picks are

1. TV 5 monde has different levels from beginners to advanced.This site also has videos with transcriptions and some grammar exercises. This is well worth a visit because it has so much content for French learners.

2. Francolab and Francolab junior are two Canadian sites run by the TV5 version in French Canadian language. You will listen to stories and songs and there are exercises to complete. A good way to practise listening in French.

3. Digital dialect is a great site for children and adults alike. I often suggest children’s sites to my students to practice their French.This one has plenty of games, some grammar exercises , vocabulary, pronunciation and many more games for beginners.

4. Language gym was founded by Gianfranco Conti who has lots of expertise in foreign language teaching.This is a free interactive website which provides online learning grammar and vocabulary exercises. I strongly recommend looking at this site.

5. Langageonline is great site to practice French listening.You will find some exercises to complete and many games and songs. There are loads of French resources for teachers and students.This site has been created by the Department of Education in Victoria in Australia and is very interactive and engaging for beginners students.

6 Le point du fle is an exhaustive resource site for teachers and students with grammar and vocabulary for all levels.

7. language guide has grammar exercises as well as text audio with a transcription. The text has words hidden in English to help you work out the translation.

8. Reverso site specialises in online translation aids such as online dictionaries. It gives you several translations of the same word in different phrases and context.

9. Miam is a French Canadian site that provides educational games about food and eating healthy for children and recipes and some interactive games for children along some recipes. Miam means “yum” in French which is quite a suitable name for that site.

10. The French experiment is a site for children with free grammar and vocabulary lessons. This site has some well known children’s stories translated in French.

11. Je parle quebecois is a great site that has some cultural articles . You will find many funny videos to teach Quebecois french accent and language and some expressions typically French Canadian. Well worth a look!

12. Phonetique is a site that provides many audio exercises such as alphabet or word in French that enable you to replay the audio and listen to the pronunciation.

13. Podcast francais facile a site with audio and transcript from learning how to order in a cafe in French or asking for directions or simply learning some grammar exercises or reading text.

14.Learn French with Alexa has a series of videos to learn French. Alexa has created several videos on Youtube which are bilingual French and English where she explains the rules in a very funny, interesting and easy way to understand for beginners students.I always suggest her videos to my students.

15. French today is run by Camille Chevalier and has so many blogs on cultural topics, places to visit, grammar and conjugation exercises, many bilingual audio articles. This is a very comprehensive site about French learning and the grammar rules are explained with lots of examples and easy way to learn French.

16. La chanson en cours de FLE a site created by Carmen Vera Pérez with plenty of songs adapted to different levels but mainly intermediate and above.The songs are very useful to learn verbs conjugation and vocabulary.

17. French games and interactive website for children and quite easy to navigate.

18. Hello world is such a great interactive site for children with load of resources and different themes and providing audio games and vocabulary lessons and a lot more.

19. Tex’s French grammar is a very well designed grammar site with lots of easy explanation about grammar rules.

20. NewsinslowFrench a site where you can finally listen to the news at a slower pace. You might need to subscribe to have access to the whole site.

21. Lawless French is another Free site with load of content, grammar, vocabulary, audio exercises.

22. RFISavoir offers a series of bilingual broadcast on different topics and current affair news.

23. Thoughtco has thousand of resources for students and teachers of second languages.

24. Canadian parents for French Prince Edward Island. This site offer resources to parents as well as for students and has several resources sites for learning French such as a video site called illustrated.

25. Baby bilingual blogspot has plenty of resources to help parents raising bilingual children.

26. Lyrics training is a site for music lovers. If you like listening to French music and learn songs this site has a an online karaoke exercises where you get to fill out the missing words of the songs.Lots of choices of songs. Great for students or teachers of French.

27. Comme une francaise videos founded by Geraldine provide some interesting free and engaging videos about French language and culture.

28. Quizizz as the name says the site offers quizzes to create or that you can use. You do need to signup to use their site.

29. Francais avec Pierre videos. This site offers many free videos which are very entertaining and easy to listen to.

30. Bonjour de France offers lots of resources to learn French online from vocabulary ,grammar and comprehension exercises for teachers and students.

Some Free Apps such as Duolingo or Mosalingua are great for daily French practice. Some of those apps don’t really explain the rules but they can be useful to learn vocabulary and listening to some phrases in French.

One language sets you in a corridor for life .Two languages open every door along the way
Franck Smith

5 great tips to learn French in 2018

Learn French and Speak French

Learning French has been known to have several advantages.In the workforce knowing a second language opens the doors to work in different Francophone countries. Learning French develops an understanding of other cultures and helps you communicate while travelling. The learning of a language has been known to delay onset of dementia as it keeps your brain active and engaged. Learning French in small groups allows you socialise while learning a language.

To have another language is to possess a second soul
— Charlemagne

1.Listen more !

 Watch French films and television programs, You Tube clips, download free apps. Duolingo is a free app and a good resource to learn French. Practice writing some phrases in your own language and translate them to French.

2. Speak French with a French native speaker

Find opportunities to immerse yourself in French while travelling to French speaking country or talking with a French native speaker. There is also lots of conversation groups that you can join for small fees. The best thing is even if you are time poor there are a lot of opportunities to meet people either face to face or online to chat or do French lessons.

A man who knows two languages is worth two men.

3.  Positive Mindset about learning French

Forget about how you felt when you learnt French when you were young, if it was a bad experience or you had a bad French teacher. When learning French you need to be positive toward learning and not fear making mistakes or fearing being judged. You need to have a go at speaking and making the new French sounds. Speaking French involves having your mouth, lips, tongue working differently and you ears listening to new sounds. You do create a visual memory when you speak a new language. Vouloir c'est pouvoir!  Where there is will there is a way!

A different language is a different vision of life

4. Repetition Repetition and Repetition

Learning to speak French is about repetition. Repeat the word, write the word down, listen to the word and use it again in different situations and do the same with some phrases. 

The limits of my language are the limits of my world

5. Focus on listening to words in French

As a lot of my students tell me they can read and understand the written words or phrases in French as some words are spelled the same way as in English but the sound is very different!  For some expressions you can learn them by imagining the feeling! I mean if you are hot in French we say J'ai chaud! which translates as I have heat. Imagine being hot which is easy at the moment in Australia so practice to say J'ai chaud!.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.