Learn French for Free

Let me tell you how you can learn French for Free!

Learning foreign language is very expensive. To do it properly you need to commit your time and money and this requires a lot. The courses in your home country will cost you and will never be so efficient when you attend classes once or twice a week. The best way is to take the intensive course in the country where they speak the language you want to learn. This is an ideal and the most expensive thing ever. Because not only you have to take time off work or school, you have to travel and live abroad but also you pay for intensive course much more. Having said so, this has many benefits and i have shared my recommendation for learning French in France on here.

But I understand this is not an option for many people. But do not worry…my ‘savvy spirit’ of a Pole who loves Free Things and Saving Money, has already been doing some researches and so here you are….

1. Duolinguo French is my best one for an online courseandi think one of the biggestavailablenowadays (nearly 3 millions learners and growing!)Ihave been using it myself and I am very happy with it. It is very comprehensive. It teaches you grammar, vocabulary, listening and writing. It mixes exercise and therefore it is interesting and do not make you tiredandbored when you study every day. You progress there whilecompletingleves so it’s rewarding to see how you are doing, It is FREE & easy to use & creative. It is  not too much & not too little. It is just what you want…trust me!

   

2. BBC French is well knownandvery professional online French course and resource. Unfortunately it seems it hasn’t been updated for some time now. It is very good resource if you want topracticelistenings and have access to the dialogs. It is also a good place where you can check out your French as it has many tests and different exercises for all levels

   

3. About.com French seems to be the biggest, the most comprehensive resource for French (and anything else) online! If you are lost or need a particular info quickly, go there as you are sure to find it! But this is not all, they offer many interesting ways of learning French, interesting (yet  odd and unusual) topics  so can attract anyone to learn French…just check out this one….and you will see 😉

   

4. Learn a Language this is also good online FREE course.Itis designed for beginners and the ones who want to improve their French. It is very comprehensive and have interesting subjects.Itshares a lot of French culture with you and I like it a lot.Itis packed with games, cool flashcards to practice, For me it has too many games so maybe this would be better for kids to keep them entertained. Another thing is that it haslessuser friendly interface and it requires you to have a FB account. In this way you will beableto access more features like mp3 downloads and tracking your progress. Try out with their French Survival course asitis packed with funny & useful phrases.

   

5. FrenchPod101 this is also a very good and comprehensive FREE online course. There are free French lessons released every week and you will get them send over to you via email. So this is a good way of learning if you keep forgetting as a daily email will remind you to check out the new lesson. It says that they have over  500,000,000 lessons and counting. I think that might be true…

   

6. FrenchSpanishOnline  is a good online FREE course but better French language resource. It is run by Pascal who is French and has been teaching French for years through his website, Youtube and even recently through a simple French News in English. To be honest, i used it many times but to learn vocabulary as this is nicely organized into logical sections. It is useful as it has many audio lessons, phonetics and pronunciation tips, videos. There are french idioms and other expressions. There is also French grammar explained. You will find a conjugator for all French verbs and an English French Dictionary, also with “Hear What you Type” option so you can write in French in the box and listen to the text. It helped me a lot at the beginning to start understanding how to pronounce the French vocabulary. I got the mp3 sets on my mp3 player and where listening to it on a bus! But I haven’t used the French online course run by him as yet.
7. ielanguages French  is a very well organized and informative website which provides the FREE language tutorials in 20 languages including French. This is not all it also share tips about expat life in France. It has been created and run by very talented, experienced and impressive blogger Jennifer  whose French is her second language. She is really passionate about helping others to learn and therefore she is not only teaching the textbook French but especially the spoken one, sharing her experience and connecting with others. For one person who is passionate about French the site is really comprehensive and interesting. Thank you Jennifer!

   

8. FrenchCrazy is one of the fastest growing online resources for French learners worldwide and also has been created by a passionate blogger.  John was born in New York City and has been learning French. Now he is a French-English bilingual with many degrees in French. He wants to teach people but also  help them to discover the French language and culture. There are many intereresting blog posts and useful resources. What i like the most is the fact that he also shares his personal recommendations on wherelse on internet you can improve your French. He also posted the very comprehensive list of internal links to his own free resources . What is great about this list is that a lot of his recommendations is funny, satirical or odd that will make you laugh. So get entertained when learning French online for Free

   

9. Lawless French is another multi-category resource centre run by language professionalist  Laura Lawless. She has been a blogger for about.com’s French for 15 years and linguistic specialist and the author of several books on language, including most recently Intermediate French for Dummies.  She offers some free resources on her site such as  “Subjunctivisor” that helps you with the tricky French subjunctives and simple yet useful newsletter with top posts which will teach you interesting topics on French! You can take up the proper online course called Progress with LawlessFrench but you will need to pay for this. For this moment I am very satisfied with the FREE resources she offers.

   

10. The Open University and the Open Culture French is one of the largest online universities in the world, and language learning is a large part of their offer.  So obviously you can sign up and study French as a student, few years & high fees but you will get the degree! When you are not interested in the titles but to learn how to speak French only, use their professional, free online French resources. They have plenty of them and of very good quality be sure of that! The French courses I show here are actually excerpts of the official paid courses, but there are over 800 free courses available  and some videos to choose from. You could not ask for more professional French language resource!

    

11. Talk in French is a website set up and run by another impressive blogger who turned his passion and linguistic experience into very useful resource to learn French.  Thewebsitecontains so much good stuff that I don’t know where to start. There are audio podcasts, movie recommendations, interesting vocabulary, very interesting blog posts  just to name a few.  The  founderFrédéricBIBARD has an aim to keep making his resources more and more interesting, and therefore he keeps making people to come back to check them out. He forms in people a habit & addiction to learn French and make them very motivated.

    

12. 1jour1actu is something different. A very good reading resource for beginners and intermediate French Learners. There is  one news article each day, easy enough to get started with your French. Even if this has been created for French kids (7-13) it has really interesting everyday topics about: The world, culture, France, Science, Sports, and our environment. Learning grammar and difficult French pronunciation is one thing, the other very essential thing in learning a foreign language is the ability to understand the context of everyday life and improve vocabulary so you can build the base to start speaking asap.
13. Forvo – is totally something different but so helpful when learning French. It is a very good, compact and useful resource website if you want to learn and improve your pronunciation. And you know how difficult and important that is especially at French. So use this FREE largest pronunciation guide in the world. There is a database of over 100,000 words and phrases in French. Learn daily a few or use to look up for some trouble worlds in French.

    

14. TV5 Monde Apprendre  – is the site and recourse when learning French which I have to mention! It is e worldwide french-speaking cultural channel, present in more than 200 countries and territories. When learning foreign language, grammar and vocabulary are very important but listening & watching and understanding foreign language is very difficult. So it’s better to start practicing it asap. You can do it with the most comprehensive in this field resource which is TV5 Monde. It has 9 general interest channels specific to each continent.Itis designed for all ages (children, students, professionals …) and developed in partnership with field teaching teams (French Alliances, universities …) This is the first French international chain which uses the new technologies for language trainingfornon-francophones.

    

15. Le Point du FLE – thousands of French Exercises, organized in many categories, groups. There are the General Resources references on grammar and conjugations, the French language, on culture, history, arts, cooking, the French-speaking parties, the literature, the French media and folk tales and legends.

So the list of online recourse is endless! There are few more I use and some more I want to try out soon. I gathered all of them below so whenever you are in a need of Grammar, Reading, Listening you can easily find it below!

For Listening

• BFMTV  is the 24 hour, live French News
• French 24  consists of three separate TV channels which broadcast in French, English and Arabic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Oh La La, I Speak French is 10 minute fun video lessons
• Imagiers.net has lots of free resources, downloadables, video lessons etc
• French-resources.org  have lots of French listening exercises
• CIEL –  Brittany  provide you with the free audio exercies
• News in Slow French

For Learning Grammar

• Ortholud – grammar exercises for French kids, ideal for beginners and intermediate French learners
• French Exam  – tests to chext your French but especially to help you out  to study for the DILF,BULATS, DELF / DALF, TCF, and TEF French Exams. It is very good to practice your grammar
• Cordial  – many French Grammar Lessons
• Manuel de la grammaire  huge grammar resource in French, you will find here anything

 For Reading

• Le Monde – the biggest and the best news magazine in France
• Le Figaro another very famous news magazine in France
• Yahoo.com France up to date, interesting and simple articles in French
• French Morning  – news and articles in French and in English. Both versions are very interesting!
• LivresPourTous  – SUPER free online reading of French novels and books, You can get a FREE pdf in seconds
• Au Feminin only for women! A lifestyle comprehensive online magazine
• Odieux Conard  quite difficult reading in French but very fully satirical blog to follow
• Boulet Corp funny webcomics in French and English
• Free French Audio Books
• Le NouvelObs is a weekly magazine which gives the overview of what’s going on in France

For Learning Vocabulary

• Ba Ba Dum vocabulary games, ideal for kids; available in 15 languages, it consists of 5 games and 1500 words
• Conjuguemos very interesting grammar and vocabulary site; it has many materials to print out as well as interactive games to play. It is a very good Conjugation resource
• Foreign-lang  is a vocabulary trainer for few languages and French. It has interesting French vocabulary games
• Duolinguist very comprehensive blog which helps learning vocabulary and grammar! Impressive resource and bloggers experience while learning French! Very useful!
• French Together another blogger who will blow your mind! Learn about French Culture, Grammar & Vocabulary with Ben Houy. Very interesting!

My Top Dictionaries

• Google Translate
• Word Reference.com
• Translate
• Reverso
• Linguee
• Picture dictionary

I hope you like the list. I am sure there are many more and if you know any other good ones, please do share with me. I am using some of them and i love to get to know some new ones! In the meantime, have a look at the above, try out for French and any other language you want to learn.